E. L. KATASONOVA

Doctor of Historical Sciences Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Keywords: Japanese cinema, Russian-Japanese joint films, Russian plots in Japanese cinema, film "The Sun", "About Love"

The year 2016 has been declared the Year of Cinema in Russia, and this event provides an opportunity to reflect on the state of Russian-Japanese relations in the field of cinematography. Unfortunately, this area of our cultural cooperation has already been practically reduced to zero. Suffice it to say that in 2015, only one film from Russia was released in Japan - "The Battle for Sevastopol". You can't help but remember how many good and kind films we shot together with Japan once. What about now?

This question was answered by Pavel Stepanov, General Director of Central Partnership. In an interview with a TASS correspondent, he said that already today film distribution companies from Japan are once again beginning to show interest in films from Russia and that his company has also proposed the idea of joint film production to Japanese partners and is waiting for them to respond. "This is always a very difficult question, especially when it comes to people with different values and different mentalities," he stressed.¹ Japanese director Seijiro Koyama was one of the first to address the Russian theme after the collapse of the Soviet Union in his film "Drops of the Great River" (Taigano Itteki, 2001), based on the collection of essays of the same name by Hiroyuki Itsuki, the author of the once-banned story and the movie "Goodbye, Moscow Dudes!". And in this you can see a certain symbolism of temporary changes. Now the name of the writer is already well known in our country, most of his works have been translated into Russian, and he himself has the opportunity to visit Russia again, see its new life with his own eyes and hear modern songs. After all, Russian music is still for him almost the main personification of Russia, the link between our peoples. It was the love of the Russian song that became the leitmotif of Seijiro Koyama's new tape.

NEW REALITIES AND NEW MOVIE CHARACTERS

It is interesting that Kaneto Shindo, the winner of three Moscow film festivals and a great friend of our country, also had a hand in the script development of the film. He turned Itsuki's autobiographical essays into a drama, but kept the writer's main thoughts intact. Itsuki reflects a lot in this book about himself, about his generation of children of the Second World War, about the problems of modern civilization. The writer seeks to define his attitude to the eternal themes of being, reflecting on diseases, old age, death, and simply tells stories from his life. And together we go through all his difficult life path, learning a lot of interesting details about Japanese society and its anxieties. It is symbolic that the main idea of the writer is in his verse line, anticipating the essay: "Every man is but a drop in the stream on the day when his soul drifts without cause." ²

The heroine of the film - a modern young Japanese woman named Yukiko, living in the provinces, dreams of her shop in the center of Tokyo, about the love of a beautiful and talented man, about a bright and interesting life. It seems to her that she could get all this by linking her fate with the Russian musician Nikolai (whose role is played by the famous clarinetist S. Nakoryakov). She met him in Moscow, and then they met again in Japan, where her Russian lover came in search of work in the symphony orchestra. But Yukiko also has a second suitor for her hand - a loyal childhood friend, a teacher in a provincial town. He has his own music - he conducts the school brass band. And Yukiko is faced with a difficult choice: Japanese or Russian, soloist or mastermind of marching schoolchildren?

The heroine's father, the elderly head of a small post office in Kanazawa, is ill with cancer and sincerely worries about the future of his daughter, sharing with her all her doubts. But still, his sympathies are on the side of Nikolai, a meeting with whom brings back memories of his childhood.-

the Soviet years spent in Korea, about Russian soldiers who came there on a liberation mission in 1945. In the memory of this old man, poignant episodes of his life at that time come up. He is reliving those complex feelings, full of both animal fear and genuine surprise, that he experienced when he was still a teenager, when he first communicated with Russian soldiers. The old man well remembered how his initial anxiety and apprehension of trouble soon gave way to confidence as soon as he heard the Russians singing their melodious, heartfelt songs.

These associations give rise to sincere sympathies for the Russian musician in the soul of an old, wise person with life experience. But circumstances decide everything. Nikolai is being expelled from Japan for violating the visa regime. And the heroine goes after him-to the snow-covered Moscow region. As it is not difficult to predict, here she is waiting for an unfamiliar and difficult life, complete misunderstanding on the part of the Russian environment and loneliness. As in the old Soviet-Japanese films of the 1970s, the interethnic romance does not end in a happy family union. And the image of a talented Russian musician and beautiful Russian landscapes in the film are intended, first of all, to set off the existential reflections of the heroine's father, in which the author's alter ego, i.e. the writer Hiroyuki Itsuki himself, and his view of the historical past and modern life of our peoples are easily guessed.

LOVE AND WAR

This picture, with its reminiscences and memories of the war, a story about the love and hatred of Russians and Japanese, echoes another Japanese film - "Red Moon" ("Akai Tsuki", 2004), directed by Yasuo Furuhata. Its plot takes us to the distant military past, but this time not to Korea, but to Manchuria. The Morita couple move here from Japan to establish the production of sake for the soldiers of the Kwantung Army. Without the patronage of the highest military ranks, their business would not have gone up, and the family is forced to maintain the closest relations with them. An undercover special branch agent named Himuro is a frequent visitor to their home. He quickly charms the owner, Mrs. Morita, and her growing daughter. However, the heartthrob Himuro himself is in love with the family's governess, a blue - eyed Russian beauty named Elena from Harbin. She, too, seems to reciprocate his feelings. But then Himuro learns that the girl is collecting secret information for Soviet intelligence on behalf of her father. And he, fulfilling his patriotic duty, without hesitation, kills her, personally chopping off her head with a samurai sword. For this act, he will reproach himself for the rest of his life. And it is painful to remember how, before her death, the girl swore her love for Russia and, after praying, gave her body cross to the hostess for eternal storage. Meanwhile, Soviet troops enter Manchuria, and Himuro, realizing that he will not be able to escape, comes to Elena's father to accept death from him. However, a Russian spy can't kill someone his daughter loved. He shoots the Japanese man in the leg and wounds him.

Here is a melodrama on a military theme, built on the traditional Japanese eternal conflict between feeling and duty. The film was shot entirely on Japanese material, and the shooting took place on the site of the described events - in Japan and China with the invitation of Russian artists Elena Zakharova and Valery Dolzhenkov. The Russian star spoke about this work in one of her interviews, and on her website you can get acquainted with a fragment from this picture. However, the entire film was never seen in Russia.

What is remarkable about this Japanese film? Probably, first of all, female images, or rather, their opposition. And, oddly enough, the comparison is clearly in favor of the Russian heroine. If Mrs. Morita, with her passion for entertainment and debauchery, with invincible resilience and the priority of personal happiness over the well-being of her country, embodies the Western model of female behavior, then Russian emigrant Elena is a classic Japanese model of the ideal woman. She is gentle and submissive, respectful to her father and ready to help him even in the most dangerous case, and at crucial moments is capable of self-sacrifice in the name of the motherland.

Oddly enough, the Japanese had always been very fond of creating images of Russian emigrants, especially when it came to events in Manchuria. And it all started in the midst of the war, in the conditions of the strictest state control over film production, aimed at solving exclusively propaganda tasks. But despite strict screen censorship, the first Japanese-Soviet musical film about Russian artists, My Nightingale (Watakushi no Uguisu, 1943), was being shot in the bustling multinational city of Harbin. The film, consisting mainly of concert numbers, as well as scenes from famous opera productions, almost documented the musical life of the city in the 1940s. There was also a melodramatic plot in the picture-the story of a small Japanese woman Mariko, adopted by the opera singer Panin.

The film was conceived as a propaganda story about the benefits of Japanese colonization of Manchuria, with a special emphasis on its educational and civilizing mission. Its filming was timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the formation of the puppet state of Manchukuo, which the Japanese lavishly celebrated in 1942-1943. Naturally, when showing Harbin, Japanese filmmakers could not pass by the life of the Russian emigre-

the Russian population of northeast China created a special cultural environment there. Moreover, the film, first of all, was designed specifically for Russian emigrants, whose favor in those years the Japanese were trying to win. The film was shot in Russian with the involvement of Russian actors. But by talking about Russians in exile, the filmmakers - director, producer, actress Yoshiko Yamaguchi and famous Japanese jazz composer, author of many song hits Ryoichi Hottori managed to put into their picture a feeling of great love for Russian culture, for their Russian teachers - Russian emigrants, from whom they learned their art.

Perhaps it was for these reasons that the finished film was not released on screens either in Manchuria or Japan, and after the war it was lost on the shelves and was pulled out of oblivion only in the late 1980s. And only then did a wide audience learn about it. But the professionals involved in the film recalled this picture before. Among them is the screenwriter Hideo Oguni, who worked on the first Soviet-Japanese film "The Little Fugitive"in 1966. It is probably no accident that he used musical fragments from this pre-war film as a kind of artistic metaphor, symbolizing the love of Japanese people for Russian culture.

SORGE AND HIROHITO

But let's go back to the 2000s, when the historical theme once again attracted the attention of both Russian and Japanese filmmakers. And in this connection, two historical dramas, shot in Japan and in Russia and released almost one after the other, come to mind. These are "Spy Sorge" ("Supai Dzoruge", 2003) by the oldest Japanese director Masahiro Shinoda and "The Sun" ("Taiyo", 2005) by our famous Alexander Sokurov. Both films take us back to the historical era associated with pre-war and military events in our countries. It is also noteworthy that the main characters of both films are real historical figures - absolute antipodes in their origin, social status, nationality, culture, political views, etc., but drawn into a single maelstrom of world historical events and influenced them in their own way.

Let's turn to the history of the Soviet intelligence officer, Hero of the Soviet Union Richard Sorge, about whom more than a dozen books have been written in our country to date, and probably no less in Japan, Germany, England, etc. And it all started with the release in 1961 of the film "Who are You, Dr. Sorge?", a joint work of France, Germany, Italy and Japan, shot by the French communist director Yves Ciampi. This picture was shown with great success on Soviet screens and, in fact, for the first time presented to us and the whole world the feat of this legendary man.

This time, at the end of his creative career, the famous Japanese director Masahiro Shinoda decided to present his version of famous events, who in recent years has been engaged in a detailed study of the first decades of the Showa era (1925-1989), coinciding with the early years of the reign of Emperor Hirohito. And this work, first of all, was appreciated by fans of action-packed spy thrillers thanks to its fascinating plot, full of chases, intrigues, political riddles, because the new historical film "Spy Sorge" combines elements of an action movie, a thriller and a military-historical film.

To a lesser extent, this picture was a revelation for Sorge researchers and all those who are seriously interested in the history of World War II, since its plot is based on well-known facts from the life and intelligence activities of R. Sorge in Japan. Nevertheless, the film is considered sensational, but for completely different reasons. And the main one, as Itogi magazine notes, is that " the Japanese, an extremely bashful and complex nation in terms of admitting their own mistakes, decided to publicly reveal the sins of the militaristic regime of the 30-40s in the language of the most public art. To do this, they needed the smartest outside observer, namely Sorge, through which the analysis is conducted"³. The film has other distinctive features: it was shot in English, which from the very beginning implies its international distribution, using the latest computer technologies at that time.

But for us, the Russians, are particularly sensitive should be, but at least two other point: Japan is not only ahead of Russia, which, logically, should have been ahead of others to pay tribute to the movies to his outstanding intelligence, but made this film without the participation of our country along with Germany and China. It is also noteworthy that the famous Scottish actor Ian Glen from the Royal Shakespeare Theater was invited to play Sorge. And even Russian artists who played the roles of Stalin, Beria and other Soviet political and military figures were selected by the Japanese not in Russia, but in Berlin. In addition, the views of pre-war Moscow were resurrected in the film with the help of newsreels, as well as computer modeling. And from this point of view, the Russian director Alexander Sokurov treated the shooting of his film "The Sun"with much greater historical accuracy.

Unfortunately, this film also did not become a joint film production with Japan, which, it seemed, would have been very logical. It was created by representatives of four European countries: Russia, Italy, Switzerland and France. Big

Part of the filming took place in St. Petersburg and its environs, since the action takes place mainly in an underground bunker. Viewers in other countries saw the film in Japanese with subtitles, since all the actors in the film speak Japanese and English. And the Russian version comes with the voice-over of the director himself. The fact is that Japanese actors were invited to play the role of the emperor himself, as well as his inner circle, while General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the occupation authorities, and other representatives of the United States were played by American actors. And it should be noted that Japanese actor Issei Ogata was faced with a difficult choice, agreeing to reproduce the image of Hirohito himself on the screen, which for many years there was a strict taboo in Japan. Moreover, to this day, Japan continues to maintain an unspoken ban on broad discussion of Hirohito's role in the decision to attack the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor and his position on issues of war and peace. That is why the organizers of the film's screening in Japan had to overcome serious obstacles from government officials and nationalist groups before getting permission to show it on a Japanese screen. The director himself, in an interview with the Asahi newspaper, specifically emphasized that "this is neither a documentary nor a political film, Hirohito interested me as a person." ⁴

The future director was interested in Hirohito's story while studying at the History Department of Gorky University, and he spent seven years preparing for the film itself, coming to Japan, talking with those who knew the emperor, consulting with historians, studying archives and television chronicles. And even before the release of the film "The Sun" A. Sokurov made a wonderful documentary about Japan "Oriental Elegy" (1996) - a poetic and philosophical story about this country. In it, the director "for the first time not only looks closely at the possibilities of Japanese plastic thinking, but, if you like, adapts the very principle of the Japanese approach to the world that does not need to be "conquered"at all. You need to establish a partnership with him, or even better, humble yourself before his wisdom, and he will discover his own treasures... But the main discovery is that plastic art and mythology reveal history - the concrete history of the country's post-war development. " ⁵

Sokurov spent a lot of time in Japan and thought a lot about this country, which was at a historical crossroads during the fateful war years. "The events of 1945 in Tokyo are a huge lesson for our time," says Sokurov. - How did Emperor Hirohito and General MacArthur manage to find a formula for solving the most difficult problem - saving a huge number of people?.. This is an example of how people can put their lives on the line for the sake of people's interests."⁶. Having made Hirohito the main character of his film, Sokurov does not touch on the topic of his participation in war crimes. "Hirohito attracted me not only as a person and historical figure, but also as a person who existed in special, very unusual conditions. Suddenly I saw the image of a human being, a humanist, yet directly connected with war and murder, with a brutal war, with evil. This situation resembled a mythological plot. I make films not about dictators, but about outstanding people who are different from everyone else. " ⁷

According to the authors of the film, the Japanese monarch managed to make two historic decisions in the last months of the war - to declare the surrender of Japan and to renounce his divine status. Alexander Sokurov is sure that by doing so, the emperor demonstrated the most important principle for him at a tragic moment for his country: the life of the people is above political ambitions. According to the authors of the tape, this act significantly influenced the development of further events in Japan. This is a rather non-standard director's assessment of those events, about which you can talk and argue a lot. But, unfortunately, this picture ends the era of great historical cinema in Russian-Japanese relations.

OUR JAPANESE STORIES

What happened next? Then the two-way silence resumed. Only rarely was it interrupted by the invitation of the Japanese actor Asano Tadanobu to play Genghis Khan in Sergei Bodrov Sr.'s film Mongol (2007), or by filming episodes in Vladivostok of the satirical crime thriller of the cult director Kiyoshi Kurosawa "The Seventh Code" ("Sabunshu Kodo", 2013), among the actors of which are Russian mafiosi. By chance or non-chance, representatives of the Russian and Japanese mafia also become heroes of one of the latest films on the "Japanese theme" "Priest-san. Confessions of a Samurai", which premiered in our country at the end of 2015.

The plot focuses on the fate of Takaro Nakamura, who was baptised as Father Nicholas, a priest of the Japanese Orthodox Church. People from all over the country were eager to visit his church at least once in their lives. They believed that this priest could help them in all their affairs and problems. In the past, a professional athlete, Father Nikolai is the brother of the head of one of the most influential mafia clans (Yakuza). Once he could not get past the violence and defended an ordinary girl, getting into a fight with people from a group hostile to his brother. The Yakuza clan war is inevitable. Becoming a hostage of criminal " razbo-

rock", a priest is in mortal danger, and the highest ranks send him to a Russian village. However, even here he witnesses a serious confrontation between local residents and entrepreneur Andrey Nelyubin, who, by engaging in land fraud, forces local residents to leave their native lands. Father Nicholas unites the villagers around a dilapidated church. By rebuilding the temple, they revived peace among themselves and accepted the challenge. A completely different war is beginning.

The main role of Father Nicholas was played by the popular American actor of Japanese origin Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who is well known in our country for the films "Pearl Harbor", "The Last Emperor", "Memoirs of a Geisha" and others. And not only that is significant. The role of an Orthodox priest prompted Tagav to make an important decision. After filming the film, as a result of deep spiritual reflection, he was baptized in the Sorrowful Church on Bolshaya Ordynka, taking the name Panteleimon. And then he applied for Russian citizenship. The film received good responses from viewers and the press, perhaps due to Tagawa himself, as well as the unusual plot associated with the Japanese theme, so popular in Russia. Let me remind you that the film was directed by a young cinematographer Yegor Baranov, and one of the authors of the script is the infamous Ivan Okhlobystin, who starred in the role of criminal businessman Andrey Nelyubin.

Of course, everything in the film, starting with the story of an Orthodox Japanese priest moving to Russia, hiding from the Japanese mafia, looks far-fetched and implausible. Although, who knows? The authors of the film, apparently, for the sake of sharpness of the plot, decided to add the mafia to the picture, perhaps trying to establish a typological and portrait similarity between Russian crime and Japanese Yakuza gangsters. And it is possible that this artificially created exoticism is the key to the success of the film, created exclusively for the Russian audience and hardly fully understood by the Japanese.

While the next film "About Love", which appeared on Russian screens in December 2015, will be interesting both in Russia and in Japan. By the way, this romantic comedy by Anna Melikyan already won the Grand Prix at Kinotavr in 2015, and in February 2016 it was named the best feature film of 2015 and awarded the highest cinematographic award of Russia-the Golden Eagle. The film consists of several short stories, but even before the premiere, it was not difficult to predict that the most popular story will be about a young Japanese woman who loves the Russian language and goes to our country in search of her husband. An exalted foreigner admires Russian landscapes, Russian men, Russian speech and, of course, our great poetry and prose. In search of the mysterious Russian soul, she is ready to go through any challenges.

In some ways, these moods once again refer us to the heroines of Komaki Kurihara, full of delight in getting in touch with Russian culture and meeting Russian people. But here everything looks much more prosaic and banal: there is no desperate love, no moral torment about a distant homeland, no endless devotion to art, shown in joint Soviet-Japanese paintings in the 1970s. Maybe times are different now? Or maybe the comedy genre itself dictates its own plots and characters?

Suffice it to say that the idea for this film novel was born almost by accident, largely due to a funny video with a Japanese girl singing "Hop-stop" to the guitar in Russian, which broke all records on the Internet. Moreover, Melikyan herself studied at VGIK in the same year as the Japanese Migumi, so she immediately jumped at the offer of the screenwriters to include such an entertaining story in her film. Casting was arranged in Tokyo, and the director was in Moscow, and in this remote way she chose the actors. In general, this is again entirely the work of Russian cinematographers, and the participation of the Japanese side in it is limited only to the performer of the main character Miyako Shimamura, for whom the Russian picture was her film debut.

Here, perhaps, is all that comes to mind in connection with the Year of Cinema announced last year in Russia. How this event will affect Russian-Japanese cultural contacts is still difficult to judge, although, in my opinion, there are real prerequisites to expect their activation. In any case, those responsible for this clearly state that "Russia and Japan will strengthen cooperation in the field of cinema" ⁸.

¹ Russia and Japan will strengthen cooperation in the field of cinema. We are talking about both production and distribution / / Bulletin of the film distributor www.kinometro.ru/newa/show/name/Russia_Japan_collaboration 2016

^{Hiroyuki Iiuki.} 2 Drops of the great river. Translated from Japanese by I. Melnikova. Санкт-Петербург, 2014 - www.e-reading.club/bookreader.php/1038722/cuki_-Kapli-velikoy-reki.html

^{Sulkin O.} 3 The land of the rising Sorge - www.itogi.ru/archive/2003/26/84378.html N 26/368 (01.07.03)

⁴ www.newsru.com/cinema/31jul2006/sokurov.html

^{Shemyakin A.} 5 Hieroglyph "Japan". Japanese trace in Soviet cinema from "Thaw" to Sokurov / / Kinovedcheskie zapiski. 2005, N 75. P. 12.

⁶ kinoyurco.com/ct/yur-id-59804.php

^{Paisova E.} 7 Journey inside yourself. Foreign critics about the films of Alexander Sokurov / / Iskusstvo kino, 2011. N 5 (May) kinoart.ru/archive/2011/05/n5-article 3

⁸ Film Distributor's Bulletin...

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