Customer Reviews

Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary (Visible Evidence)

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Not many people know about Japanese documentary. They know about fiction films like Kurosawa. But especially in the sixties, there was much influence between documentary and fiction films. Documentary filmmakers like Kuroki and Matsumoto made fiction films and fiction filmmakers like Oshima and Imamura made documentaries. You cannot understand postwar Japanese film without understanding documentary. Ogawa is maybe the most important Japanese documentary filmmaker along with Tsuchimoto. This book explains where Ogawa came from and analyzes his films. Since many of his movies were political, such as documentaries on the battle against the Narita Airport, this book also tells you a lot about postwar politics and society. Ogawa later went to a Yamagata farm to try to understand Japanese life that had been ignored by modernization. He lived and grew rice with the farmers for many years. He tried to see the truth not by standing far away and being *objective*, but by getting into the shoes of his subject. He also tested the boundary between fiction and documentary in late films. This is a powerful model for documentary that many can learn from.

Abe Mark Nornes has no ability to read or interpret the productivity of the films.
All he can do is just read and quote files left by the dead Japanese documentary filmmaker with the help of his Japanese wife.
The resut is tremendously hideous.
It is not worthwhile to read this book.
Any film scholar-ciritics or film fans of Japanese films must not get any whorthwhile inspiration or information from the short book.