“The World of the Benshi” World Tour April 18-20 UCLA Film And Television Archive

“The World of the Benshi” World Tour
April 18-20 UCLA Film And Television Archive

Posted by Robin Menken

The Art of the Benshi 2024 World Tour presented by the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities and the UCLA Film & Television Archive, which ran April 5 – 26, 2024, included 12 dates at six venues in five cities: New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and Tokyo.

The idea of the ambitious tour was the result of discussions during a three day symposium (and four film/benshi screening) held at UCLA Film And Television Archive, Hammer Museum in 2019.

At the 2019 symposium, Yanai introduced the first group benshi performance seen since 1920. “Not Blood Relations” and “Jiraiya the Hero” were both shown with narration provided by a trio of benshi. The modern benshi’s had never performed in this style, which died out in 1920 as result of criticism by the Pure Film Movement reformists.

To kick off the five performances in LA, The Japan Foundation, LA co-presented with the Yanai Initiative a lecture & demonstration on “The World of the Benshi" at Japan House.

Mr. Ichiro Kataoka, the lead benshi of the tour, gave a short demonstration and answered questions about the artistry and history of this enchanting live performance tradition.

Mr. Kataoka’s collection of rare benshi memorabilia is featured in the exquisite Tour catalogue, available at
https://yanai-initiative.ucla.edu/explore#publications.

Benshi Ichirō Kataoka performed "Blood Spattered Takadanobaba" (1928).

Over the following LA performances, LA devotees
had an opportunity to watch this early action film narrated by the other master benshi, demonstrating the
personal style, humor and didacticism of each performer.

Three scholars, Dr. Kotaro Shibata, Dr. Makiko Kamiya, and Dr. Fumito Shirai discussed the world of benshi – or “movie orators” – and the history of Japanese silent films.

Dr. Kotaro Shibata, who contributed the article "And the Shamisen Played On: Changing Silent Film Music in Japan" to the tour catalogue, showed slides of Japanese silent theaters (which introduced audiences to western music) and discussed the Japanese modifications of western silent film scores and musical arrangements.

Dr. Shibata, touched on the Pure Film Movement which advocated actresses rather than traditional Kabuki style female impersonators and other Western film innovations like closes ups and shorter takes.

Some of the critics of the PFM became directors (like Norimasa Kaeriyama, whose film "The Glow of Life" (1918), which was one of the first films to use actresses (ie: Harumi Hanayagi).

The Pure Film Movement’s attack on benshi lead to some changes. The introductory remarks that benshi's gave prior to the showing of a film, as well as group "kowairo setsumei" died out, leaving a form of setsumei performed by a solo benshi, combining narration, commentary, and performed dialog while the film was showing. This was the setsumei (“explained”) performance style of the Golden Age of benshi (1925-1932).

Dr. Shibata revealed the discovery of Film Narration in countries as diverse as Korea, Russian Czechoslovakia and France, and showed a fascinating clip of Rene Clair's 1947 "Man About Town" AKA "Silence Is Golden".

Employing research materials from the Hirano Collection, Dr. Fumito Shirai discussed how silent film musical-accompaniment scores, imported from overseas, were accepted in Japan and how they were combined with Japanese instruments and musical compositions when used.

In the early days of silent film, Japanese films were
narrated by groups of benshi ("kowairo setsumei”) at the side of the screen, accompanied by sound effects and traditional Japanese instruments familiar from the Kabuki tradition. Western films were accompanied by brass bands, pianists and small ensembles. In the 1910's a collection of Western scores was imported leading to a form of standardization.

Dr. Makiko Kamiya discussed Modernism, and the introduction of actresses to Japanese silent films.

Michael Emmerich, the Tadashi Yanai Professor of Japanese Literature at UCLA (with a joint appointment as Professor of Japanese Literature at Waseda University), introduced many of the films and translated for benshi Ōmori Kumiko.

"Especially in Japan from the late 1910s to the 1920s, they (movie theaters) were central places where ordinary people heard Western music. "

Benshi—“movie orators”-Since the days of Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope,  "katsudō benshi" have been breathing life into silent film. During the heyday of the benshi, more than 7,000 of these charismatic artists narrated the action in films, and made silent actors speak. Their voices rang out in movie theaters across Japan, Korea and other Japanese colonies, and in Japanese American communities in the United States.

Silent films in Japan were accompanied by Benshi's- live narrators. Employing their refined individual style, they narrated action and dialogue to clarify—and often invent—emotions and themes that heightened the audience’s connection to the screen, providing commentary about the images, western culture and history, and the medium of film.

Many were so popular, they had rabid fans who showed up for their performances rather than the films being showed.

As Akira Kurosawa explained in his autobiography “Something Like an Autobiography”, "The narrators not only recounted the plot of the films, they enhanced the emotional content by performing the voices and sound effects and providing evocative descriptions of the events and images on the screen-much like narrators of Bunraku puppet theatre." Kurosawa's brother Heigo was a popular Benshi, who lead the failed benshi union strike as sound films began to put the benshi out of business.

The benshi resisted the coming of sound to Japanese cinema and the practice continued, though with increasing rarity, into the sound era. The art, today, is carried on by a small group of specialized performers who have been apprenticed by the preceding generations of benshi, creating a continuous lineage back to the original performers.

LA audiences were treated to three different interpretations of “The Dull Sword” by each of the benshis. Each benshi highlighted different cultural and historical references and voicing styles.

“The movie essentially is conducting us, and we’re responding to it.”-Ichirō Kataoka

“The scripts are written by the benshi themselves. So, if the benshi changes, your impression of the movie will also change.”-Hideyuki Yamashiro

Jun'ichi Kōuchi’s 1917 short is the earliest surviving example of a Japanese animated film. The hand-tinted 4 minute animation uses stop motion and silhouette technique to tell the story of a foolish rōnin's purchase of a dull edged sword from a vender. Eager to try out his new Katana, he attempts Tsujigiri (“crossroads killing”). Tsujigiri was the Samurai practice of testing new weapons or fighting styles by attacking a  random defenseless passer-by, in many cases during nighttime. He fails, as his intended village victims knock him down or elude him.

Each benshi had a distinct style. Hideyuki debuted as one of master benshi Sawato Midori’s newest apprentices in 2011.
Frequently sporting a cap, bow tie and suspenders, urbane actor/ benshi Hideyuki Yamashiro had a wry presence and deceptively low-key performance style, although he could push the gruff voiced samurai style and ‘sweet voice as needed. His explanations offered fascinating cultural and historical information.

Hideyuki Yamashiro’s performance of Ozu’s 1929 “A Straightforward Boy” brought down the house. Yamashiro’s farcical quick change vocal performances of Yasujirō Ozu’s restored silent comedy short kept pace with Ozu’s gag ridden-film.

An adaptation of O. Henry's "Ransom of Red Chief”, two reels of the four reeler were rediscovered in 1990.

Takeshi Sakamoto (“Passing Fancy”, “Tokyo Inn”) and Tatsuo Saito ("I Was Born But”) kidnap (Tomio Aoki ("I Was Born But”).
The film made six year-old Tomio Aoki a kid star.

Inept, butterfly net-wielding Sakamoto and marginally more ept Saito use treats and toys to lure the seemingly innocent boy back to their lair, where the precocious menace terrorized them, forcing them to try to return him.

Hideyuki Yamashiro’s quick voice change performances as the cast of “Sanji Goto - The Story of Japanese Enoch Arden” were delightful.

“Sanji Goto - The Story of Japanese Enoch Arden”  was directed by Kisaburō “Thomas” Kurihara, who training as an actor with Thomas Ince before returning to Japan to make films for export to the U.S. Sadly, only a fragment of the film survives.

“Sanji Goto” stars Iwajiro Nakajima, “the Japanese Charlie Chaplin,” as a guileless janitor who journeys to the States on the chance of inheriting a fortune.

Banker Kaneko (Goro Kino) is obsessed with a foreign golddigger (Nada Lindon) dubbed 'Foreign Fire' by wiser Japanese men. He doesn't flinch at embezzling to placate her with gifts.

Reading in the newspaper that a wealthy Japanese businessman Sanzo Goto died in San Francisco, Kaneko  suspects office janitor Sanji Goto is the sole heir to the  American fortune.

Desperate for money to keep his mistress in expensive jewels, Kaneko bankrolls trusting Soto's trip to America to claim his inheritance in exchange for half the inheritance. Soto bids farewell to his beloved wife and baby. Delivering the ticket to Goto's happy home, Kaneko tries making time with Goto's wife Haneko (Suzuki Chisato) before Goto's ship has even left the harbor.

Balancing the fate of the embezzler and his faithless blackmailing vamp, with Soto's adventures on board ship and in the States the film, though fragmentary is a sprightly look at Japanese silent films intended for U.S. import.

Radio personality Kumiko Omori learned about benshi on a television show. She commuted from Kansai to study with a benshi in Tokyo and studied silent film at a repertory cinema.

Colorfully clad Kumiko Ōmori’s infectious upbeat Betty Boop/Helen Kane ‘sweet voice’ personality seem to channel the 20’s style of the American Silent comedies she prefers. Ably translated by Professor Emmerich, Ōmori’s irresistible personality enchanted the audience.

Her performance of rediscovered Baby Peggy comedy short "Our Pet", as well the 1927 Our Gang short "Dog Heaven", both peppered with witty asides, were audience favorites.

Restored “Our Pet” (1924), which collector/ benshi Kataoka discovered at auction, stars Diana Serra Cary as the silent series character Baby Peggy. It’s a wacky, charming  short featuring willful Peggy foiling a burglary while juggling a series of courting “boyfriends.”

Told from suicidal dog Pete's POV,  "Dog Heaven" (1927) is a surprisingly dark tale of "no good deed shall remain unpunished" leavened with a happy ending.

In her later performances  “The Golden Flower”, “The Immigrant”, and particularly “The Water Magician” Ōmori played a variety of male characters with moving dramatic force.

“The Golden Flower”, a stop-motion cutout animated short, follows a boy meeting spirits on a mountain. Both funny and fantastic ,the cutout’s scenes of the boy wandering through the mountains were riveting as Ōmori voiced both boy and spirit.

Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1933 feature “The Water Magician” is the tragic story of ‘mizugei” (Water Magician) Tomo (Takako Irie), who falls in love with a young man and works for years to put him through law school. Irie is a fascinating actress and her powerful performance was borne aloft by Ōmori’s fluid, nuanced performance.

Itacho Katoaka, the troupes most seasoned benshi, devotes himself exclusively to benshi work. Like danish actor Mads Mikkelson, he has a true actor's mask, which contorts and reforms to project his character performances. Much like an opera singer, his voice dominates the room, as his expressive facial contortions modify his vocal tract, shift the position of his tongue and lips and projects through the bones of his mask.

He performs with his whole body. Like Keith Jarrett , who in his heyday ecstatically undulated over his keyboard, Katoaka expresses his characters through his body as well as his voice. It is a magnetic emotional style and powerful in its precision.

In 2002 Katoaka, asked the pioneering benshi Sawato Midori to take him on as an apprentice. Since then he has performed in more than eighteen countries, creating and enacting scripts for approximately Japanese, Western, and Chinese 350 silent films .

All of his performances were riveting. He essayed the Job-like tragedy of a low- born samurai with Buntarô Futagawa’s “Orochi”.

"Orochi" (1925) is one of the few silent Chanbara (samurai warrior) films to survive. The original title was “Outlaw” but the Japanese censors banned the title, rejecting the controversial idea of an anti-hero outlaw. The title was changed to “Orochi” (“Serpent”.)

The tragic world view of Japan’s caste system sets the honorable low born hero against the cultural scorn and cruelty of the “protected” nobles and middle class.
Each of his honorable acts leads to public humiliation, banishment, prison and ultimately death.

Heisaburo Kunitomi (Bantsuma aka Tsumasaburô Bandô) is a young hot tempered, idealistic samurai.

Loyal to his master the calligrapher, Eizan or Hyozan Matsusumi (Misao Seki) Kunitomi refuses a drink at the master’s birthday party. The offended well-born samurai Shinpachiro Namioka (Momotarô Yamamura) son of his master, throws the drink in his face.

Kuritomi gets blamed for the scandal. Next, he defends the honor of the master’s two daughters. One, Namie (Utako Tamaki) is his true love. Again, no one listens, and he’s blamed and banished from his hometown as an “outlaw”.

He becomes a wandering rōnin, unprotected by master or family or clan attachments.

He falls for Ochyo (Shizuko Mori) a waitress who reminds him of Namie. Caught brawling, he's condemned to two months in jail where he meets the thief Kokichi AKA "The Rat".

Released from jail, and unemployable, he becomes Kokichi's bodyguard. Now known as "Heizaburo the Outlaw”, brawling Kuritomi ends up back in jail. Released, he's scorned but stays in the town to be close to Ochyo.

He's "rescued" by a rich lord Akagi Jirozo (Kichimatsu Nakamura) and given a home as his sword instructor.

His villainous host is a cheating gambler and pimp who preys on travelers. Kunitomi is forced to help. Eventually Akagi Jirozo invites a couple to their house, to rob and kill the husband and prey on the wife.

She is Namie! Kunitomi’s first crush. Kunitomi rescues them, allowing the couple to flee. Kunitomi is arrested and, after a spectacular fight against countless enemies, and denied the honorable death of Seppuku, is executed, as unseen in the melee, Namie and her husband acknowledge his honor and pray for his soul.

Tsumasaburô Bandô, one of the first jidaigeki stars, set the bar for the warrior actors of Japan’s Golden Age. In the fast-paced, fast-edited battle scene, Kunitomi kills without looking at his opponents' faces, moving from one enemy to another, a kata killing machine.

Director Futagawa is a marvel. He favors tracking shots, wide shots, extreme closeups (which we associate with Spaghetti Westerns), rapid strobe like edits, even multiple exposures.

“Orochi” was made during that brief progressive year (1925) when male suffrage opened the door to democratic forces, and before the re militarization of 1926 (Showa Era). Even so, the film threatened the government and censors forced Futagawa to change many things.

In the film it's the wealthy respected lords who can get away with anything while the honorable but poor hero is  condemned without defense. Money and birth win out, and there is no second chance once a reputation is stained. In this corrupt world, often the most noble suffer the most. The film concludes pessimistically: "There is no justice in this world. Not all who wear the name of villain, are evil men. Not all who are respected as noble men are worthy of the name. In our world live many whose false masks hide the vice and wickedness of their souls."

Itacho Katoaka’s version of Kinugasa’s modernist masterpiece “A Page of Madness” was stunning, perhaps the highpoint of the screenings. The film was a revelation as was Itacho Katoaka’s narrative performance.

Teinosuke Kinugasa’s experimental “A Page of Madness” (“Kurutta Ippeiji”) uses Soviet techniques of associative, dialectic montage, as well as European avant-garde techniques of French Impressionist film (Dulluc, Epstein, L’herbier and Gance, notably “La Roue”), expressionism, dada and surrealism to create Japan’s first non linear modernist film.

Kinugasa began in the cinema as an onnagata, (a male actor who plays female roles in kabuki theatre.). Signing with Nikkatsu Studio in 1917, he played in over 130 films (all of them lost) until 1922, when he left Nikkatsu in protest with all their onnagata actors when the production firm started employing actresses.

He directed his first film for Nikkatsu in 1920 (also playing the female lead). He became a director working under Shozo Makino at Makino Productions for Makino in 1923. “A Page of Madness” was his 35th film. His first independent film. He was 30.

He bought a movie camera and furnished a lab in his basement.

He collaborated with a group of avant garde writers known as the Shinkankaku school, (School of New Perceptions), or Neo-Sensationalists.

Like the Italian futurists, the Shinkankaku school focused on modern technology which was rapidly transforming Japan’s traditional life style, particularly after The Great Japan Earthquake of 1923, which destroyed the progressive port of Yokahama and 45% of Tokyo, killed over 140,000, and, perhaps lead to Japan’s new militarism. ( Some believed “God cracked down a great hammer” on the Japanese nation, as punishment for embracing European ideas.) Rebuilding Tokyo as a post-earthquake modern metropolis moved it onto the world stage.

Kinugasa asked the Shinkankaku group to write a script about mental illness. Yasunari Kawabata, the most renowned of the group, contributed a story idea and treatment. (Yasunari Kawabata became the first Japanese Nobel Prize winner in 1968.) The final screenplay was co-written by the director, Shochiku screenwriter Minoru Inuzuka, and Banko Sawada.

Another key collaborator was famous theater actor Masao Inoue (who directed films in the early 1920s). Inoue plays the male lead. He played in the film for free, and gave Kinugasa crucial support. His prestige helped Kinugasa secure a distribution contract from Shochiku, one of Japan's major studios. Shochiku offered studio facilities and financial support.

Kinugasa formed the Kinugasa Motion Picture League, an endeavor that almost bankrupted him.

The cast, all well known actors, painted sets, pushed the dolly, and made the props. Kinugasa had only eight small lights to work with; so he painted the walls of his small studio silver to reflect additional illumination. It took a month to shoot the film and, without a budget for living accommodations, the cast slept on the set or in the front office.

Kinugasa shot the film in May 1926 and had it ready for a preview screening in July.

The avant-garde film was released in cinemas specializing in foreign films, but, to everyone's shock it became a wild hit.  At the Shinjuku-Musashino-kan, (Tokyo’s premiere theatre showing Foreign film) it grossed over a thousand dollars a week, when the admission price of films had fallen to the equivalent of five cents or under. In their landmark book, “The Japanese Film: Art and Industry”, Joseph L. Anderson and Donald Richie explained that the unexpected windfall bailed out the the almost bankrupted Kinugasa, who personally moved the film from Kyoto to Tokyo, to prevent it from being seized by creditors.

Most of Japan’s early cinema was destroyed by The Great Earthquake of 1923 or by fire in World War ll, during America’s reprisal for Pearl Harbor. The negative of this film, which could have sent Japanese filmmaking down a different path, was rediscovered in Teinosuke Kinugasa’s garden shed in 1971, supposedly hidden in a rice barrel. (This may be apocryphal. Researchers suggest there were three existing prints.)

Although thematically reminiscent of “The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari, Kinogasa claimed to have never seen Robert Wiene’s film. He was influenced by Murnau's“The Last Laugh” (which was released in Japan in early 1926, months before their shoot) to eschew intertitles.

A retired sailor (Masue Inoue) works as a janitor in a lunatic asylum to be close to his wife (Yoshie Nakagawa) driven insane by drowning or attempting to drown their only son. She crouches on the floor, staring into space. Rapid intercutting, and superimpositions of her and other patients create a troubling atmosphere. POV shots of her memory, show her attempting to drown their infant son. Later flashbacks show her clutching the baby, a woman restraining her, a splash in the pool.

Strobing intercuts and distorting lenses illustrate her madness and his nightmares. Kinugasa uses expressionist lighting, dutch angles, multiple exposures, changes in focus, 360° whip pans, fast and slow motion, every experimental tool known at that time. In one abstract shot, pouring rain is superimposed over the barred windows. It appears to be raining inside. (In 1967, Haskell Wexler used a similar effect in “In Cold Blood” where the rained windows appear to be crying.)

The janitor peers at a woman sleeping in her cell, watching over her. She wakes, sees him and offers him a button. In her mind she’s offering a beautiful glass ornament. Staring at him she sees a face distorted by a funhouse mirror and laughs.

The janitor wanders the halls during the violent storm. Deranged patients lie in catatonic stupors or surge through the hallways, sometimes wildly dancing. The opening storm montage intercuts with a fantasy scene of an exotically dressed woman (Eiko Minani) dancing in an Art Deco set. She is another patient who dances night and day in her cell taunted by patients inflamed by her sensuous dance. The percussive sound track of rain and thunder and storm tossed trees, battering the windows, inflame her obsessive dancing.
 
The couple’s daughter (Ayako Iijima) visits the asylum. She wants to tell her mother about her impending marriage.  She is shocked to see her father working at the asylum, apparently blaming him for driving her mother crazy from years of neglect and abuse. Her mother doesn’t recognize her. Rapid-cut abstract flashbacks fill in the story from the daughter’s point of view.

An adolescent boy also visits them. Is her their son? Perhaps saved by their daughter? There is also a madman (Kyosuke Takamatsu) who attacks the janitor repeatedly.

The janitor’s life is nightmarish. Fearing his own insanity he urges the daughter to not marry, in case the madness is hereditary.

Entering his wife’s cell with a stolen key, he tries to convince her to escape. She cowers, not recognizing him, then collapses. He drags her outside the cell but her screams convince him to abandon his plans. She crawls back to her cell. Her terror is palpable. He locks the door and drops the key, later found by her doctor.

From a window, the janitor watches a parade on the sidewalk, then follow the passerbys to a carnival where he “wins” a fortune cookie. Alas, the single happy respite is a fantasy, as a shot of him still looking out the window reveals.

Next he struggles as flashbacks remind him of on the night the police took his wife away. He see himself battering her mercilessly. In a fit of madness he kills or beats the doctor unconscious. He wakes from this nightmare too, as imprisoned in the asylum by guilt, as his wife is by her..