**2. Semi-Documentary**

In *Kiroku eigaron* (On Documentary Film, 1940), one of the first studies on the subject in Japan, the seminal film theorist, Imamura Taihei, discusses and provides examples on how documentary style is beginning to emerge in Japanese cinema. 'What can be found ... is the stripping of the usual

fictional [*kakoteki ¯* ] elements and simple but deep-rooted yearning *towards documentary film.* (Imamura 1940, p. 43)' He singles out recent works by major directors such as Kumagai Hisatora, Shimazu Yasujiro, Shimizu Hiroshi, Tasaka Tomotaka and Uchida Tomu. Imamura pays particular attention to ¯ the latter's *A Thousand and One Nights in Tokyo* (Toky ¯ o sen'ichiya, 1938). ¯

Uchida Tomu shoots the movements of a gravel-collecting machine for an almost involuntarily long time. The actors are looking at the machine from a far-away riverbank. People looking at a machine from afar are actors who have retreated from being in front of the camera. Along with the final scene depicting gymnastics, here is clearly a strong dislike towards drama. Also, the film's plot is entirely devoid of necessity. This is an expression of resistance to story, stage drama and fiction. (Imamura 1940, p. 43, author's translation)

I have previously examined (Kitsnik 2018) how the over-long and repetitive sequences in Shindo's ¯ *The Naked Island* relate to earlier works such as Uchida's next film, *Earth* (Tsuchi, 1939), shot over a period of one year and simultaneously to *A Thousand and One Nights in Tokyo.* Shindo's first ¯ substantial assignment as a screenwriter had actually been with the elder director, although the project that included taking a trip to Manchuria and going through a number of rewrites ultimately came to nothing. However, Shindo's employment of long scenes of repeated gestures that continued ¯ to the point of meaninglessness should be considered as a defining feature of his work and this 'semi-documentary' style can be delineated to the trend Imamura is describing in prewar Japanese cinema. Perhaps the most notorious example of this approach can be encountered at the beginning of *The Naked Island* (See Figure 1), where a peasant couple (Otowa Nobuko and Tonoyama Taiji) living on a small island without a clear water source is repeatedly going through the slow and tedious process of carrying buckets up a steep slope in order to water sweet potato plants at the summit.

**Figure 1.** *The Naked Island* (Shindo Kaneto, 1960). ¯

Physical labor and its representation through the images of routinely repeated gestures can be seen in almost all of Shindo's films. In ¯ *Mother* (Haha, 1963) (See Figure 2), a middle-aged couple, once again played by Otowa and Tonoyama, runs a small printing house in Hiroshima. Their everyday chores include operating a number of machines in the shack and then delivering the product in a shabby three-wheeled van. In summer heat, their perspiring bodies are caught by the black-and-white camera as suggestively as in *The Naked Island*. In the autobiographical *Tree Without Leaves* (Rakuyoju, 1986) ¯ the whole peasant family (in contrast to *The Naked Island*, a wealthy one) is engaged in various acts of processing agricultural products (See Figure 3). Their New Year's Eve is spent preparing rice cakes

(mochi), whereby cooked rice is pounded into paste and then molded into smaller buns. This takes place in a large open space of the family house, with all members except the patriarch participating. When autumn comes, we find them sitting in the same room, peeling one basket of persimmons after another. Approaching ethnofiction, these images present both the livelihood of the family and the way community is created, while always hinting at the seasonal pattern and ritualistic character of the activities.

**Figure 2.** *Mother* (Shindo Kaneto, 1963). ¯

**Figure 3.** *Tree Without Leaves* (Shindo Kaneto, 1986). ¯

At the level of narration, this manner of presenting repeating gestures goes well beyond the length conventionally allowed for establishing shots in fiction films. In other words, what is anticipated to be an exposition instead ends up taking on something akin to the function of mise en scène. By drawing attention to the everyday activities, rather than using them for establishing characters and situations, these sequences seem to provide a statement on how the routine of labor creates meaning to the everyday lives and hardships of common people. In the last scenes of Shindo's final film, ¯ *A Postcard* (Ichimai no hagaki, 2011) (See Figure 4), another couple (otake Shinobu and Toyokawa Etsushi), ¯ much like the one in *The Naked Island*, is shown carrying water on yokes to start anew and cultivate the

land left behind by a disintegrated peasant family during the last months of the war. In this poignant allusion to what is perhaps his most enduring directorial work, Shindo reconfirms his most persistent ¯ metaphor on human existence in a characteristically self-referential manner.

Sato¯ (2006, p. 147) has pointed out that, descended from an impoverished agricultural family, Shindo maintained the mindset he inherited from there for his entire career as a filmmaker. Indeed, ¯ many of his films are directly related to depicting the plight of agricultural workers. Interestingly, the very first record of Shindo's writing, an unproduced screenplay he entered in a competition by the ¯ journal *Eiga hyoron ¯* (Film Criticism), *Farmers Who Lost Their Land* (Tsuchi o ushinatta hyakusho, 1937), ¯ tells the story of a village that is about to be flooded by land developers to make way for a new water supply for the rapidly growing city of Tokyo. It was based on the real-life case of Ogouchi Village that was gaining much attention in the press at the time. Oya S ¯ oichi, a prominent non-fiction writer, ¯ published a well-known reportage in *Chu¯ o K¯ or¯ on¯* in August 1937 and the Akutagawa prize-winning novelist Ishikawa Tatsuzo fictionalized it in ¯ *Hikage no mura* (Village Under a Shadow, 1937) (Takeda 2017, pp. 9–10). There was even a hit song, *Kotei no furusato* (Home Village at the Bottom of a Lake), performed by the popular singer Shoji Tar ¯ o. At any rate, this site caught the popular imagination, ¯ as well as that of various writers leaning towards documentary style.

**Figure 4.** *A Postcard* (Shindo Kaneto, 2011). ¯

Shindo went to Ogouchi on what he calls 'scenario hunting' as early as summer 1936. He later ¯ wrote that despite taking extensive walks there, he had no interest in finding about the real life of the village—simply seeing it was enough for him to construct drama necessary for his screenplay (Shindo 1993 ¯ , p. 73). This statement at once reveals Shindo's complex and paradoxical attitude towards ¯ documentary filmmaking. Shindo discloses his view on documentary more precisely in a short essay, ¯ 'The documenting nature of film' (Eiga no kirokusei, 1962), where he posits that the term 'non-fiction' is basically meaningless due to the involvement of the author (*sakka*), deeming any film fictional by default (Shindo 1981 ¯ , p. 47). By claiming so, Shindo underlines how the viewpoint of the author ¯ interrupts and complicates the proposed actuality of any cinematic text. In the following sections, I will examine how Shindo has woven this understanding into the film texts themselves in various ¯

ways, both by enmeshing different cinematic modes of representation and inscribing his own presence as the filmmaker.
