Uncategorized

Postwar Kurosawa: Drunken Angel

On August 20th 1945, only 5 days after the surrender of the Imperial Japan, the first (black) market opened in Shinjuku. This Shinjuku Market was a community of open-air, primitive merchants. In following months, the similar black markets opened in many key locations around Tokyo and other major cities in Japan. The operator of such black markets were tekiya (a sort of mafia/yakuza which specializes in open-air markets (1)), who supplied various merchandise to those shops, provided the protection and controlled the prices. The Shinjuku Market was operated and protected by Kanto Ozu-Gumi, the Shinjuku local tekiya. Territorial conflicts among …

 
Uncategorized

The Issue of Degradation, Part 2

Maybe some of you have migrated your collections to hard disks (HDD). You may have had a collection of DVDs and CDs but copied them on HDD, got rid of all the physical collections and are quite happy about it. An 1TB hard disk costs less than DVD box set these days and can hold hundreds of movies. Directories and folder management is much easier and faster than going through a clatter of disks. I do have some movies on HDD and find them quite useful and easy. But when it comes to trusting HDD, it’s a different story. There …

  /
Uncategorized

Analysis of “There Was A Father”, 00:54:00 – 00:59:59

In prewar/wartime Japan, and postwar Japan to some extent, the clothes, especially women’s, convey various implications as to the social/cultural roles, status and psychology of the character. This implication is clearly evident in Ozu’s films. In Ozu’s prewar, wartime films, majority of female characters wear kimonos, while male characters are dominantly in western clothes. However, after the war, the (young) female characters are completely converted to the western dress, as can be evidenced by “Late Spring”. Noting that “Late Spring” and “There Was A Father” or “Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family” are only less than ten years apart, …

  /