Hiroshi, Komatsu. "Some Characteristics of Japanese Cinema before World War I," from Noletti and Desser, eds, Reframing Japanese Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992) 229-258.

Komatsu, a native Japanese, examines the way that the Japanese mode of cinema intertwined the narration with the actual stage performance. Furthermore, Komatsu's essay covers a vast ground: Russo-Japanese War in film developing, Yoshizawa and Yokota in the film business, Geisha and Kabuki performances, and film importing. Komatsu attributes the conflict of Western and Non-Western modes in Japanese cinema as a characteristic of this Early Cinema period. He brings to the audience's attention that the representation by the actors or the stage apparatus transcended the importance of the narrative nature. Seeking to emulate the Western movies, the Japanese directors, Komatsu explains, arrange the shots and the camera position in different angles and heights creating an aesthetic effect on the audience. The depth of the scene as well as the background choices were directed associated with the director's intention. The increase in the number of shots made the stories more understandable, which exterminated the necessity of extraneous narration. The purpose of the work was to illustrate how the Japanese film industry attempted to emulate the Western industry. The work is a scholarly article that although 30 pages long represents a cohesive unit of ideas and arguments.

Although I had already read the article for the Japanese Visual Culture class, it was pleasant to go over it again and highlight the main ideas and arguments. The article is full of historical background and it often compares the Western and Non-Western industries, which gives the article more than one flat dimension. Komatsu sews the history, the nineteenth-century Japanese cinema, the documentaries, the fiction, the period after the boom of the Russo-Japanese war films, the westernization, and the 1910's all together to fit these intriguing characteristics of Japanese Cinema before World War I.

Romulo Craveiro Braga