A note before we begin. Although the editors of the tome under review elected to list Japanese names in their native order—family name first, personal name second—I will use this format only when citing the book’s title and specific television shows. Japanese names in all other instances will appear in the western format: personal name first, surname last. So: I’ll call The Cinema of Kinoshita Keisuke and The Kinoshita Keisuke Hour by name, but otherwise refer to the eponymous director as Keisuke Kinoshita.
In Audie Bock’s 1978 study Japanese Film Directors, Masaki Kobayashi—the maker of such classics as Samurai Rebellion (1959), The Inheritance (1962), and Kwaidan (1964)—said the following about his mentor, Keisuke Kinoshita: “He can do anything; no one has as much breadth as he does. He’s a real film genius, the only one in the postwar era.” Despite this praise and their professional association, these directors, in many ways, couldn’t have been more unalike. Kobayashi directed a mere twenty features; Kinoshita helmed fifty-one—nearly three times as many. Kobayashi, through his movies, depicted a harsh world populated by rebellious characters; Kinoshita used cinema to showcase an unabashed love for humanity. Kobayashi abhorred television, shooting his drama The Fossil on the condition that he could subsequently edit the show into a 200-minute movie; his mentor not only embraced the small screen but used it to forge a second career in 1964. And in terms of book-length studies in English: Stephen Prince blessed us with a valuable Kobayashi tome in 2017; Kinoshita, sadly, has long lacked the same level of scholarship.
But now, almost thirty years after the man’s death, Edinburgh University Press has published a volume to help fill that gap. Edited by David Desser and Earl Jackson, The Cinema of Kinoshita Keisuke: Films of Joy and Sorrow is a collection of thirteen essays with topics ranging from the titular moviemaker’s technique to the impact his work had on generations of moviegoers (and, it turns out, television viewers). Kinoshita started directing in 1943, the same year as his contemporary Akira Kurosawa. (Eerily enough, they each passed away in 1998, shortly after Kinema Junpo magazine ran a special issue on the two “perhaps,” as Lauri Kitsnik suggests in her essay, “in anticipation […] of the impending demise of both filmmakers.”) Kinoshita is arguably best known for the tear-soaked drama Twenty-Four Eyes (1954), about a schoolteacher who watches her students grow up through Japan’s prewar, wartime, and postwar years. And while The Cinema of Kinoshita Keisuke grants substantial attention to that picture, the book goes above and beyond to discuss other titles in his filmography and how they operated within their genres and aesthetic frameworks.
The thirteen essayists pick and choose from Kinoshita’s fifty-one pictures to delve into their chosen topics. Earl Jackson discusses the “contrary messages” of Kinoshita’s wartime films, Daisuke Miyao tackles cinematography and filters it through the observations of New Wave director—and former assistant to Kinoshita—Yoshishige “Kiju” Yoshida, etc. And in what is most welcome for enthusiasts of the filmmaker under discussion, at long last we’ve received a healthy dose of information regarding the director’s television career. Kinoshita not only endorsed TV but even went so far as to form his own production company to capitalize on the medium. And given that the shows he made (Kinoshita Keisuke Theater, The Kinoshita Keisuke Hour, Kinoshita Keisuke’s Songs of People) aren’t available outside Japan, it’s a treat to at least learn about their origins and reception.
Sprinkled in along the way are glimpses into the director’s life and personality. One highlight comes from filmmaker Yoji Yamada, who comments that no one could join Kinoshita’s team unless they were “an elegant, well-groomed young man.” This (perhaps facetious) remark fits in with speculative tangents attempting to draw connections between the story/visual elements in Kinoshita’s films and their maker’s sexuality. In 1951, the director made a film called Wedding Ring, about a married businesswoman and the emotional fracas she experiences after meeting a handsome doctor played by Toshiro Mifune. This picture contains numerous shots of Mifune—including one wherein the camera travels up his body as he prepares to leap into the ocean—that Earl Jackson has suggested not only represented the heroine’s viewpoint but was also Kinoshita’s way of encouraging “an identification with the onscreen woman by gay male spectators.” In the book, Jackson further speculates that Kinoshita, through his experience as a gay man, might’ve sympathized with a subplot in 1954’s The Garden of Women regarding a young girl who is forbidden to be with the person of her choosing.
The Cinema of Kinoshita Keisuke is rich with translated statements from the titular director as well as his staff—not to mention film scholars in Japan. (In fact, one of the essays, Mina Ku’s, originally appeared in the Japanese publication Eizogaku and was converted into English for this book by Adam Sutherland.) However, there is a particularly disturbing bit of “research” worth addressing. The second-to-last essay comes from editor David Desser, who at one point directly quotes Wikiwand, of all places! Now, I’m the first to admit that wikis can play a role in contemporary research: as starting points to scan references and compile lists of resources to look into later. But to quote a platform that anyone can edit at any time—to treat it as the final step rather than the first—is immediately suspect. To Desser’s credit, he does this just once, but I won’t pretend I wasn’t disappointed to see a reputable scholar resort to such laziness.
Keisuke Kinoshita’s filmography has never been more accessible to Occidental viewers: the bulk of his works is presently available on platforms such as the Criterion Channel in the U.S. and on BFI Player and Box of Broadcasts in the U.K. Given that we live in an age when one can enjoy gems such as The Girl I Loved (1946), Carmen Comes Home (1951), A Japanese Tragedy (1953), and The Snow Flurry (1959), it’s ideal and only fitting to also have an informative text on the man who made them. The Cinema of Kinoshita Keisuke is a much-needed book that has arrived at the most opportune time.
