Japanese Film & Theater

I'm glad that we've gotten a chance to watch Kurosawa's Ran, and I'll be interested in hearing what you have to say about this amazing film on Monday. However, I realized that an entry on Japanese film and theater and therefore acting styles might be useful. Mainstream American acting styles tend to be more realistic, so some of the performances in Ran (especially Tatsuya Nakadai's portrayal of the warlord Hidetora and Mieko Harada's portrayal of the evil Lady Kaede) might have seemed unusual to you, especially since the director Akiro Kurosawa probably was not playing on cultural stereotypes the way that Peter Brook may have been in the Mahabharata. And Kurosawa was clearly operating in a different tradition from the one that Al Pacino was in Looking for Richard.

Here is an American writer's article that puts Kurosawa's work into the context of Japanese film and mainstream film. (The questions are these: did Kurosawa "sell out"? Are his films more Westernized than Japanese?).

http://www.lardbiscuit.com/lard/kurosawa.html

These two sites discuss Nakadai's performance in a little more detail.
http://www.gotterdammerung.org/film/kurosawa-akira/ran.html
http://www.criterion.com/asp/in_focus.asp?id=15

Dr. Patrick Crogan's "Translating Kurosawa" examines the director's career overall but does not discuss Ran. Nevertheless, he makes useful points:

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/00/9/kurosawa.html

For more information about contemporary Japanese film, see these sites:

http://www.csuohio.edu/history/japan/japan15.html

http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Reviews.html

http://www2.shizuokanet.ne.jp/usr/onitsuka/English%20page.html

http://www.midnighteye.com/
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/7/japanese.html

Here are sites on the history of Japanese film:

http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/reruns/rr0499/PUerr6.htm
http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/japan-60-1.jsp

More importantly, here are sites on Kabuki, a popular type of Japanese theater that may have influenced Ran. I hope that the video works! Ironically, samurai were forbidden from watching these types of plays.

http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/Japan/02/bresn/bresn.htm

http://www.us-japan.org/edomatsu/tsukiji/frame.html

http://www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/jicc/spotkabuki.htm
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6580589105119878240&q=kabuki

Other types of theater are Noh, Kyogen, and Bunraku. Noh is more tragic whereas Kyogen is comic. Bunraku is a type of puppet theater.

http://www.iijnet.or.jp/NOH-KYOGEN/english/english.html
http://www.artelino.com/articles/noh_theater.asp
http://www.hirohurl.net/kyogen.html
http://artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Archive/Articles2002/Articles1202/NohThea...
http://www.bunraku.or.jp/
http://www.sagecraft.com/puppetry/definitions/Bunraku.hist.html