El tiempo deconstruido en Saraba Hakobune, la versión cinematográfica de Cien años de soledad

En este artículo analizo textualmente la adaptación cinematográfica de Cien años de soledad realizada por el director japonés Terayama Shuji que se titula Saraba Hakobune [Despedida del arca]. Más allá de que tradicionalmente se la ha considerado una adaptación libre, hasta el punto de que se piensa ―aunque no se ha confirmado― que García Márquez no habría permitido la utilización del título original, nuestra hipótesis es que vio algo que le sorprendió: una profundización radical sobre el tiempo, el deseo y el amor, deconstruyéndola y chocando, asimismo, con unas imágenes que venían a dialogar de manera muy íntima con su novela.

THE CONVERGENCE OF POETRY AND JAPANESE AVANT-GARDE CINEMA

Since poetry held a central position in the cultural life of the Japanese nation since the earliest times, the elements of poetic expression naturally grew into the spiritual space of the early Japanese films. This contribution seeks to analyse the insufficiently examined phenomenon of convergence of avant-garde poetry and "unconventional" or experimental cinema in the post-war period. Owing to, inter alia, the interdisciplinary work of the Experimental Workshop, an artistic collective inspired by European culture - active during the fifties of the past century - the poetic impulse continued to permeate the artistic climate in the next decade. Although the cinematic language of the next generation of artists owes more to the influence of American cultural models, the intertextual experiments by such avant-garde luminaries as the poet Terayama Shūji successfully transcended the limitations of particular artistic disciplines, creating an authentic expression on the intersection of literature, theater and film.

Tira los libros, sal a la calle: el concepto de taishū de Yoshimoto Takaaki y la concepción del cine de Terayama Shūji

Conocer la dimensión artística de una ideología facilita la comprensión de la dimensión teórica de la misma, y viceversa. En este sentido, este artículo pretende analizar comparativamente el cine de Terayama Shūji, en concreto su película Sho o suteyo machi e deyō (Tira los libros, sal a la calle), y la teoría de la taishū de Yoshimoto Takaaki, como componentes de la ideología de la Nueva Izquierda japonesa de finales de la década de 1960 y principios de la de 1970. Específicamente me centro en los paralelismos existentes entre el cine de Terayama y la teoría de Yoshimoto en lo que respecta a su visión de la relación entre la figura del intelectual y las masas. Desarrollo este análisis comparativo partiendo de la base de que, a pesar de la crítica de la ideología que alberga la obra tanto de Yoshimoto como de Terayama, sus planteamientos contienen una fuerte carga política.

Shuji, Terayama (1935–1983)

Terayama Shūji was an avant-garde Japanese poet, playwright (for stage and radio), filmmaker, and photographer associated with New Wave cinema and underground theatre movements such as post-shingeki. Born in Aomori Prefecture, then raised by relatives after his father died in the Pacific War and his mother moved to distant Kyushu to work, he settled in Tokyo, where he would spend the majority of his adult life. After studying literature at Waseda University, he began writing poetry, making his mark with a major prize for new tanka writers in 1954. In 1967, with his wife Kujo Kyoko, he co-founded the experimental theatre group TenjoSajiki [天井桟敷,] usually called ‘The Gallery’ in English; the title is taken from the Japanese translation of Marcel Carné’s film Les Enfants du Paradis. The same year, he founded ‘Universal Gravitation Drama Laboratory’ [Engeki-jikkenshitsu BanyuInryoku] an experimental gallery, cinema, and theatre space which later spun off the theatre group ‘A Laboratory of Play: Ban’yuInryoku.’ His films investigate the relationship between revolution, eroticism, youth culture, family psychology, and identity. Terayama’s works explore new formal and aesthetic techniques, while simultaneously forwarding and constantly questioning the radical politics of post-Second World War avant-garde arts in Japan.

Angura

Angura has been called the most effective fusion of art and politics from Japan’s turbulent years of social protest in the 1960s and 1970s. Angura is the Japanese contraction for the term ‘andaaguraundo engeki,’ or ‘underground theatre.’ Although Japan borrowed the term ‘underground’ from the counterculture movement in the U.S. and England in the 1960s and applied the word to many different aspects of evolving youth culture, the contraction angura refers only to the theatre form. Some scholars conflate ‘angura’ with ‘shōgekijō-undō’ (‘the little theatre movement’), while others argue the two are separate movements within the same stream of counterculture theatre beginning in 1960. The aesthetic genesis of angura was the growing dissatisfaction of Japan’s first post-WWII generation with shingeki. The generation that came of age in the late 1950s and 1960s was hungry for alternate forms of theatrical expression. In the political arena, that same generation was mobilized by opposition to renewals of the Japan/U.S. Security Treaty in 1960 and 1970. Although angura gave highly effective artistic voice to the politics opposing treaty renewal, the fusion of art and politics in angura covers a wide spectrum that includes apolitical authors and directors such as Betsuyaku Minoru (b. 1937) and Terayama Shūji (1935–83). Others at the heart of the angura phenomenon are Kara Jūrō (b. 1940), Suzuki Tadashi (b. 1939), Ōta Shōgo (1939–2007), and Satoh Makoto (b. 1943).

Emperor Tomato Ketchup: Some Reflections on Carnality and Politics

Terayama Shuji is one of the most prominent Japanese avant-garde artists of the 20th century. This paper explores Terayama’s experimental film Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1971), dealing with children’s rebellion against (masculine) authority. With an apparent lack of conventional narrative, this 16mm tinted black and white feature, shot in documentary style, was filmed in public without permission, demonstrating the guerilla tactics of Terayama’s experimental approach. Reflecting the turbulent times of Japan’s 1960s, when the quest for reinvention of national identity was compellingly engaged both right and left, Emperor Tomato Ketchup illustrates a dystopian Japan where the brutal revolution of ‘innocent’ and immature takes place. The focus of this paper is on the notion of carnality and politics of postwar Japan, as film’s transgressive graphic content of pre-pubescent children’s sexual encounter with women can still be perceived as radical. Article received: December 26, 2017; Article accepted: January 10, 2018; Published online: April 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper How to cite this article: Došen, Ana. "Emperor Tomato Ketchup: Some Reflections on Carnality and Politics." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 15 (2018): . doi: 10.25038/am.v0i15.230