LITMIR.BIZ

      9

      THE DOCUMENTARIES

      Ise-Shima (1949), Story of a Co-op (1950)

      The events leading to Honda’s debut as a feature filmmaker in 1951 have previously been difficult to trace because of the lack of official records and the fading memories of those involved. Archival records of the national Film Classification and Rating Committee (Eiga Rinri Kanri Iinkai, or EIRIN), however, provide a clearer timeline of Honda’s career progression and help correct long-held assumptions and misinformation regarding the sequence in which certain projects were made, and even the title of one of Honda’s earliest films.¹

      Honda’s first opportunity to direct came from Toho, though not from the company’s near-moribund feature film studio but its Educational Film Division, which produced bunka eiga (cultural films). In the 1930s the Toho Educational Film Division and its subsidiary, the Toho National Policy Film Association, had made numerous war propaganda documentaries to stir the nation’s fighting spirit, a concept borrowed from the Kulturfilms produced by UFA for Nazi Germany. After the war, bunka eiga evolved into documentary short subjects about Japanese life, focusing on topics such as agriculture, sports, arts, and tourism. The films were funded by outside backers and shown mainly in schools. Toho sometimes used these productions as proving grounds for assistant directors due for promotion.

      In April 1949, Honda began shooting the documentary short film Ise-Shima, a highlight reel of the cultural attractions of Ise-Shima National Park in eastern Mie Prefecture. The park is a popular coastal sightseeing destination and home to the Ise Grand Shrine, considered the most sacred Shinto shrine in Japan; the film was commissioned by local officials shortly after the area’s designation as a national park, to promote tourism. In a span of twenty minutes, Ise-Shima gives a brief history of the shrine, the local people, and the economy. It also looks at the workings of a pearl farm, where gems are harvested from the sea in large quantities.

      Honda’s Ise-Shima is notable for Japan’s first successful attempt at underwater motion picture photography, an innovation that was a source of great pride for the new director. The region is well known for the ama, female divers who harvest pearls and abalone from the ocean; and from the moment he agreed to make the film, Honda knew he must shoot the divers in their element. Previous attempts at underwater photography were limited to pointing a camera lens into the water from a boat, or other crude methods. Honda wanted to follow the divers into the depths, moving the camera freely beneath the surface; and he spent seven to eight months developing a device to accomplish this feat.²

      Honda turned to a camera technician colleague, who designed and built an airtight, waterproof, metal-and-glass housing for a compact thirty-five-millimeter camera (possibly an Eyemo or Parvo, portable cameras then popular with newsreel photographers). Two cameramen are credited on the film, Kiyoe Kawamura and Kuniichi Ushiyama, though it is unclear who shot the underwater sequences. As a safety precaution, professional divers assisted the camera crew during the shoot.

      Honda’s original plan called for a more elaborate apparatus. Blueprints were drawn for a small, submarinelike craft enabling a cameraman to descend underwater, but that project was apparently canceled because of cost and safety concerns. In the end, the available technology was more than adequate for the task, however. An extended sequence shows the grace and beauty of the female divers as they descend, in relatively long takes, into the depths of the bay to collect noshi awabi (stretched abalone), the beautiful shells of which, according to local custom, are brought to Ise Grand Shrine each year as an offering.

      Honda greatly admired the work of trailblazing documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty, particularly Man of Aran (1934), a beautifully rugged chronicle of the lives of fishermen in the remote, dangerously primitive Aran Islands off the coast of Ireland. Flaherty’s views of craggy seaside cliffs and rocky shorelines, and his story of simple people struggling against the elements to survive, evidently influenced not only Honda’s approach to Ise-Shima but also later works such as The Blue Pearl and The Skin of the South. (Flaherty’s 1922 film Nanook of the North, about the indigenous people of northern Quebec, was also among Honda’s favorites; its influence is similarly detectable in Honda’s Half Human.) Even though Ise-Shima is a travelogue rather than the work of an embedded documentarian, it bears glimpses of Honda’s affinity for a simpler way of life. The centerpiece of Ise-Shima is a brief history of the Ise Grand Shrine. According to legend, the great sun goddess Amaterasu chose this shrine as her final resting place. During feudal times, the movements and travel of the common people were severely regulated through a system of travel permits and barriers, called sekisho; these are depicted in Kurosawa’s The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (Tora no o wo fumu otokotachi, 1945; released 1952). People who believed in the shrine’s powers would make pilgrimages from all over Japan, defying travel restrictions, just to pray there. Today, about six million Japanese visit the shrine annually. Honda’s film illustrates this history through a series of historical woodblock paintings, and also tours the grounds of the shrine, capturing the structure’s beauty.

      Though not a commercial film, Ise-Shima appears to have netted returns for Toho. Honda recalled that a European distributor had come to Japan looking for documentaries, seeking something “extraordinary.” Honda showed the man Ise-Shima, starting the projector at the scenes of divers plunging underwater. Honda would recall that the distributor was instantly hooked, and Ise-Shima was eventually exhibited in multiple European territories, though details of this are lost. The film was rarely seen again until it reappeared on Japanese cable television in 2003, paired with Japan and Her Imperial Way (Kodo Nippon, 1940), a wartime propaganda documentary glorifying the emperor, directed and shot by Eiji Tsuburaya.

      Honda had hoped the technical achievement of Ise-Shima would spark interest in underwater photography. “The fact that Ise-Shima got sold opened up my way to theatrical features. And, since we made this equipment to shoot underwater, I really wanted to use it again,” he said.³

      ———

      Honda completed Ise-Shima in July 1949, according to EIRIN records. He then pivoted back to the Film Art Association where, for the first time since the war, he would work beside Kurosawa. But if Honda had once had seniority over his good friend, now the roles were reversed. Honda was a fledgling director with one documentary short to his credit; Kurosawa was about to direct his ninth feature, Stray Dog (Nora

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