Paper short abstract:

Reconsidering the relationship between history, cinema, representation, and performance in Japanese films of the 60s and 70s.

Paper long abstract:

The new modes of representing history that emerged from the 1960s-70s Japanese avant-garde movement in film have rightly received increased attention in recent years. I wish to further these discussions by considering two interrelated ideas that developed at this time: a postmodern or relativist paradigm, and the new figuration of "performance" within the filmic medium, especially as it pertains to the depiction of history.

To frame the films as postmodern phenomena is to emphasise not only their political engagement and stylistic hybridity, but also the development of new ways of engaging with Japanese history: history figured as a technology of power, but also as an endlessly contestable terrain of relativism. Furthermore, while the general activism and political engagement in this period is often contrasted to a more apathetic acceptance of the status quo that arguably marks the present day in Japan, I suggest that a framework channeling disengagement and cynicism was already embedded in the new aesthetics of the 60s-70s, and to some extent may be considered a legacy of the avant garde.

The combination of cynical relativism and unrestrained borrowing from other genres led to a shift from a paradigm of representation to one of performance in Japanese film, concurrent with a shift from postwar humanism to historical specificity. Understanding "performance" as the enactment of a role or narrative that is by definition open to being enacted differently, we can say that "history-as-performance" appeared as a theme across a variety of different films, stemming from avant garde experimentations but seeping into the mainstream as well. In additon to stylistic influences, I intend to show how the avant garde promoted less a triumphal railing against the status quo than an image of futile protest and endless instability, or a revolution tainted with defeat and tragedy before it has even begun.