With regards to understanding the necessity of Japanese Cinema as a whole (which I consider to be the Russian Literature of Cinema - particularly the post-war period between 1950-1970), we should first consider the humanist perspective that most writers/directors embed into both their gendaigeki (contemporary) and jidaigeki (historical) films...
...
“In any era, I am critical of authoritarian power.” - Masaki Kobayashi (The Human Condition, Harakiri)
“You must put the odor of the human body into images...describe for me the implacable, the egoistic, the sensual, the cruel...there are nothing but disgusting people in this world.” - Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff)
“My mind was always on the commoners, not on the lords, politicans, or anyone of name and fame. I wanted to convey the lives of down-to-earth people who live like weeds.” - Kaneto Shindô (Kuroneko, Onibaba)
“From the youngest age, I have thought that the world we live in betrays us; this thought still remains with me.” - Mikio Naruse (When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Floating Clouds)
"All the technological progress of these last years has only taught human beings how to kill more of each other faster. It's very difficult for me to retain a sanguine outlook on life under such circumstances. My only hope lies in making my films and having as many people as possible see them." -Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai, Red Beard)
...
Secondly, we must consider a film like "The Human Condition" - Masaki Kobayashi's ten hour masterpiece.
"'It’s not my fault that I’m Japanese . . . yet it’s my worst crime that I am!' The words are those of Kaji, hero of The Human Condition, but in their anguish and existential despair, they also speak for the film’s director, Masaki Kobayashi, whose own experience closely paralleled that of his protagonist. Like Kaji, Kobayashi found himself caught up, and unwillingly implicated, in his country’s wartime aggression. The Human Condition—four years in the making—can be seen as one of the most monumental acts of personal expiation in all cinematic history...
...The dilemma of the principled dissident—how can someone who rejects the basic tenets of an unjust society remain within it and avoid being tainted, and ultimately even corrupted, by it?—informs almost all Kobayashi’s mature work from the late 1950s onward, including his two most widely acclaimed movies, the samurai films Harakiri (1962) and Samurai Rebellion (1967), whose protagonists revolt against the cruel rigidities of the feudal system." - Philip Kemp
When Japanese Cinema finally became recognized by the world in 1950, it immediately began to be translated into major works of the Western (Leone) and Science Fiction (Lucas) genres - not-to-mention stamping it's influence on art house directors from Bergman to Kubrick. Even today, our own Pixar studio derives most of it's in-depth narrative material from animation master Hayao Miyazaki ("Princess Mononoke").
Mostly, however (as I try to conclude what this post is actually about), we are quite simply confronted with the many dilemmas of being human in a way that possibly only a country like Japan could do after enduring two atomic bombs - trading in traditional imperialist values for a modern existential landscape.
...
