, literally "petty bourgeois film" or "lower middle class film", is a

genre Genre () is any style or form of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other fo ...

of Japanese realist

films A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of Visual arts, visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are gen ...

which focus on the everyday lives of ordinary or middle class people. An alternate term for the is the pseudo-Japanese word , literally "common people drama", which had been invented by Western film scholars. The term as a definition of a specifically Japanese film genre presumably first appeared in 1932 in articles by critics Yoshio Ikeda and Ichiro Ueno.

Themes

Film historians Joseph L. Anderson and

Donald Richie Donald Richie (April 17, 1924 – February 19, 2013) was an American-born author who wrote about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also ...

define the (addressing it as ') as " sentially a film about proletarian or lower-middle-class life, about the sometimes humorous, sometimes bitter relations within the family, about the struggle for existence, ..the kind of film many Japanese think of as being about 'you and me'." In her book ''Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s'', Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano sees the depicting a "newly emerging modern subject, the salaried man, and his middle-class family", which "appealed to a broad cross-section of social classes", thereby helping to create "a modern national subject". Through their portrayal of social inequalities and capitalism's extended reach on daily life in the shape of company hierarchy, these films suggested a split between Japan's call for modernisation and the longing for the "mystic cohesion" of a "traditional" past. At the same time, the was criticised for a lack of genuine political content especially from the

political left Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social hierarchies. Left-wing politi ...

History

The beginnings of the are assigned to the

Shochiku is a Japanese entertainment company. Founded in 1895, it initially managed '' kabuki'' theaters in Kyoto; in 1914, it also acquired ownership of the Kabuki-za theater in Tokyo. In 1920, Shochiku entered the film production industry and establis ...

film studio and its director

Yasujirō Shimazu was a Japanese film director and screenwriter, and a pioneer of the ''Shoshimin-eiga, shōshimin-eiga'' (common people drama) genre at the Shōchiku studios in pre-World War II Japan. Biography Shimazu was born in Tokyo, the second son of merch ...

in the 1920s.

Yasujirō Ozu was a Japanese filmmaker. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in the 1930s. The most pr ...

, a former assistant of Shimazu, and

Mikio Naruse was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 89 films spanning the period 1930 to 1967. Naruse is known for imbuing his films with a bleak and pessimistic outlook. He made primarily Shoshimin-eiga, shōshimin-eiga ("common people drama") films with f ...

are two prominent directors considered to work primarily in the field of the '. Others include

Heinosuke Gosho was a Japanese film director and screenwriter who directed Japan's first successful sound film, '' The Neighbor's Wife and Mine'', in 1931. His films are mostly associated with the shōshimin-eiga (lit. "common people drama") genre. Among his ...

and

Keisuke Kinoshita was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. Ronald Berganbr>"A satirical eye on Japan: Keisuke Kinoshita" ''The Guardian'', 5 January 1999. While lesser-known internationally than contemporaries such as Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and ...

Kenji Mizoguchi was a Japanese filmmaker who directed roughly one hundred films during his career between 1923 and 1956. His most acclaimed works include '' The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums'' (1939), '' The Life of Oharu'' (1952), '' Ugetsu'' (1953), and ' ...

, although having repeatedly turned to modern subjects, the oppression of women under a patriarchical system in particular, is usually not assigned to the genre canon. Important early (and extant) examples of the are Shimazu's ''

Our Neighbor, Miss Yae is a 1934 Japanese Comedy film, comedy-Drama (film and television), drama film written and directed by Yasujirō Shimazu. It is regarded as one of Shimazu's major films, and a representative work of the Shoshimin-eiga, shōshimin-eiga ("lower ...

'' (1934), Ozu's ''

Tokyo Chorus is a 1931 Japanese silent film directed by Yasujirō Ozu and starring Tokihiko Okada and Emiko Yagumo. It was based on various stories in the Shoshimin-gai (Middle Class Avenue) series and shares influences with King Vidor's ''The Crowd (1928 f ...

'' (1931) and '' I Was Born, But...'' (1932), and Gosho's '' Burden of Life'' (1935). Naruse's 1951 film '' Repast'' is often cited as having launched a post- occupation revival of the '. Gosho biographer Arthur Nolletti, Jr. regards the early 1960s as the end of the genre's golden age, with its themes moving mainly to television. Both he and film historian Catherine Russell see it sustained in works like the Tora-san series.

References

{{Film genres History of film of Japan Film genres Mass media portrayals of the middle class

Themes

History

See also

References