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This paper analyses Shimazu’s 1934 film Tonari no Yae-chan to show how the specific use of sound, music and language underlines the unevenness and incongruent nature of Japan’s modern experience as the country faced increasingly nationalist politics while urban cosmopolitanism was still flourishing.

Paper long abstract

The under-researched work of director Shimazu Yasujirō as one of the early creators of domestic dramas of the lower middle classes (shōshimin eiga) that came to define Shōchiku studio’s so-called ‘Kamata-flavour’ lends itself well to the study of the studio’s distinct cinematic negotiation of Japan’s rapid modernisation. This paper draws on Shimazu’s film 'Tonari no Yae-chan' (Our Neighbour, Miss Yae, 1934), judged by the Kinema Junpō-critic Kishi Matsuo as a successful ‘talkie-sketch’ but a failed ‘talkie-drama’, and explores its specific use of sound, music, and language. My analyses show how these elements underline the unevenness and at times incongruent nature of Japan’s experience of modernity as the country turned towards an increasingly conservative and nationalist political climate while urban cosmopolitanism was still flourishing.

Set among two adjoined family houses in the Tokyo suburbs, a staple location of Shōchiku’s shōshimin eiga, the film sketches the lives of two families and the budding romances between their children. The film’s central thematic element of traversing liminal structures and spaces is replicated on the diegetic and non-diegetic soundtrack. As the families’ children of different ages cross from childhood to youthful romance and married life with a forced return to family-dependence, they move in between the harmonious, simple life in the suburbs and the city’s nightlife replete with Western cinema and Jazz music. Differing visual and sonic references to American sports, popular culture and Japanese and German popular song as well as contrasting acting techniques and elocution-styles negotiate the differences between the young characters. The generational divide is highlighted by one family’s parents facing the reality of Japanese militarist colonialism, crossing the liminal national boundaries to work in colonised Korea, leaving their children in Tokyo with the fate of the elder daughter unclear. Developing Wada-Marciano’s analysis of the film with a focus on the use of sound, I argue that the film’s episodic structure and conflicting visual and sonic references complicate its reading as a coherent light-hearted comedy and highlight the multifarious nature of Japan’s modern experience.

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An analysis of Shimizu Hiroshi's gentle yet politically trenchant picaresque film Arigatō-san (Mr Thank-you, 1936), exploring its commentary on poverty and inequality, colonialism, technological development, and the gulf between metropolitan and rural Japan.

Paper long abstract

Although it lacks the focus on childhood experience which is the central concern of many of Shimizu Hiroshi’s films, Arigatō-san (Mr Thank-you, 1936) is in other respects exemplary of his work: in its loose, freewheeling style and episodic structure, its use of location shooting on the Izu Peninsula south of Tokyo, its focus on mobile or peripatetic characters, and its subtly expressed exploration of relevant sociopolitical issues. This presentation explores the way in which Shimizu’s gentle picaresque drama discreetly highlights the wider tumult of Japanese society at a time of economic and political anxiety.

Its breezy tone notwithstanding, Arigatō-san, which tells the stories of a bus driver (Uehara Ken) and his passengers as they travel through the mountainous hinterland of Izu, keeps the troubles of the time to the fore. The Depression, with its attendant woes of unemployment and poverty, is a frequent subject of conversation; and in a particularly trenchant illustration of the impact of rural hardship, one of the female characters is travelling to Tokyo to be sold into prostitution. Most surprisingly, for a film produced in the era of Japanese colonial expansion in Asia, Arigatō-san also offers a sympathetic portrait of the experiences of Korean migrant labourers.

Alongside these concerns, Shimizu also reflects on the impact of technological development in a rapidly but unevenly developing country. The film, as one of Shimizu’s earlier talkies (he had directed silent and saundo-ban films into the mid-1930s) self-consciously interrogates its status as a sound film. The title itself highlights the spoken word, and a playful dialogue exchange identifying the talkie as an exciting Tokyo novelty draws attention to the technological gap, and by extension the broader gulf in terms of wealth and opportunity, between the capital and the provinces. The most prominent symbol of these concerns is the bus itself and the road on which it travels. With the former facilitating the young woman’s journey towards her unhappy destiny in the capital, and with Korean colonial labour being exploited in building the latter, bus and road themselves underline the economic and political problems which the film quietly but incisively analyses.

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This paper examines three 1937 J.O. Studio films—Hanabi no matsuri, Yoru no hato, and Otoko wa dokyo—revealing how the Kyoto-based studio represented diverse modern urban spaces through innovative sound film techniques, melodramatic narratives, and "bright" visual aesthetics.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines three modern dramas produced by J.O. Studio in 1937—Ishida Tamizo's Hanabi no matsuri (Festival Fireworks) and Yoru no hato (Night Dove), and the P.C.L. co-production Otoko wa dokyo (A Man Has Courage) directed by Watanabe Kunio. These films exemplify J.O. Studio's distinctive approach to representing urban modernity across diverse Japanese cityscapes.

Established in 1935, J.O. Studio emerged alongside P.C.L. as one of Japan's most progressive sound film studios, eventually merging to form Toho in 1937. Unlike Kyoto's other production houses, which focused predominantly on period films (jidaigeki), the Kyoto-based J.O. Studio pioneered contemporary narratives, drawing on the musicality, urban spectacle, and technological innovation characteristic of P.C.L.'s Tokyo productions.

Through close textual analysis of these three films, this paper explores how J.O. Studio depicted modern transformation across different urban settings. Hanabi no matsuri is set in Meiji-era Yokohama's cosmopolitan foreign settlement, while Yoru no hato takes place in 1930s Asakusa, Tokyo's entertainment district. Otoko wa dokyo presents a contemporary urban milieu combining elements of both studios' production styles. These diverse settings—complete with cafés, dance halls, Western fashion, and electric soundscapes—reveal cinema as a medium for articulating competing visions of Japanese modernity.

The films' deployment of music, diegetic urban sounds, and sophisticated sound recording techniques demonstrates J.O. Studio's technical prowess. Hanabi no matsuri and Yoru no hato employ melodramatic structures to explore themes of social mobility, gender, and urban experience, while Otoko wa dokyo—as a P.C.L. co-production—demonstrates the close collaboration between the two studios and their shared production philosophies. All three films utilize what contemporary critics termed "bright" (akarui) visual aesthetics and modern lighting techniques that distinguished J.O.'s output from conventional Kyoto studio productions.

This analysis situates these films within broader discourses on vernacular modernism, examining how J.O. Studio's representations contributed to evolving definitions of Japanese urban identity during the tumultuous 1930s. By focusing on a studio often overshadowed in Japanese film historiography, this paper illuminates an alternative trajectory of sound film development in prewar Japan.