The Sword Swingers

On 45 sound stages around Tokyo and the shrine city of Kyoto last week, Japan's six major movie producers and some 20 independents were grinding their cameras at a record-smashing rate. Directors, outfitted in the early Hollywood tradition with dark glasses, sport shirts and berets, roamed the sets shouting such Southern California expressions as "Camera!", "Cut!" Japanese moviemakers, who were second only to the U.S. in the number of feature pictures produced last year, this year expect to complete 319 full-length films.

While most of Japan's movies are for domestic audiences, the biggest producers, lured by the success of Rashomon and Ugetsu in the U.S., were scrambling last week to release films for the American market. The export pictures are mostly "sword swingers," Oriental versions of the U.S. horse opera, in which Japan's feudal swordsmen are the heroes. Tokyo's Toho (Eastern Treasure) Co. plans to release its $350,000 Seven Samurai, which won a prize at this year's Venice Festival, early in 1955 as "a Japanese western" (33,000 extras, 2,300 horses). Next month Daiei (Great Pictures), which produced both Rashomon and Ugetsu, will release (through Sam Goldwyn) its latest sword swinger: Jigokumon (Hell's Gate), which won the Grand Prix at Cannes this year and stars Machiko Kyo, the leading lady of Rashomon and Ugetsu, and Japan's favorite male actor, Kazuo Hasegawa.

Escape from the Ruins. Japan's moviemakers have made their comeback from the bottom. In the militaristic '30s, the Home Ministry's thought police haunted Japan's moviehouses armed with tape measures. They had the power to stop any showing, measure the films to make sure that no militaristic propaganda had been clipped from them. During World War II, the only films produced were propaganda, and when SCAP censors took over at war's end, the results were little better. Despite the censorship, a horde of leftist directors, writers and actors, who had been kept out of the movies during the military dictatorship, began making films that gave credit to Japanese Reds for the emancipation of Japanese women.

If the movies were poor, the profits were good, since films offered Japanese an escape from their nation's ruins. New theaters were built and old ones renovated, and Japan now has nearly 4,000 moviehouses v. 1,100 in 1946. The occupation also brought a raft of U.S., French and Italian movies, gave Japanese producers their first look at new and modern techniques.

No Bosoms. The man who capitalized most on the foreign imports and touched off the real postwar revival in Japanese moviemaking was Masaichi Nagata, 48, boss of the Daiei studios, who was purged for his World War II propaganda films, but soon after was taken off the purge list. Nagata studied foreign imports to find out what gave them their appeal, then applied what he could to his own products. For Japanese audiences, he decided, the romance of French movies would not do, nor would the sexiness of Italian films. "Unfortunately," says Nagata, "we don't have the bosoms, and even if we did, the kimono would hide them." Nagata's formula: a typically Oriental story, plus clever camera work. Rashomon, which has so far grossed $310,000 in the U.S., was the first result; Ugetsu was the second.

Nagata believes that there should be a U.S. market for three to five topnotch Japanese films a year, and that each should gross $1,000,000. For Japanese moviemakers, this would mean big profits, since their costs are low. Top salaries for stars are about $11,000 a film, extras make 80-c- a day, and the average cost of a full-length black and white film is only around $63,000 v. $900.000 in the U.S. And, says Nagata: "By showing the Japanese countryside in all its beauty, we can attract tourists and more dollars"--as well as stimulate U.S. interest in Japanese houses, furniture, pottery, etc. But the biggest payoff would be political. The worst blight on Japan's movie industry is still the glut of pro-Communist films financed by left-wing unions, the Japanese Communist Party. Red China and Russia (which often buy them for cash in advance). Nagata thinks that if the U.S. market proves profitable, the other major studios would stop distribution of Communist films. They might even start making some with a pro-American slant.

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