donald richie

02.02.04, 16:23
Jestem wlasnie w trakcie porzadkowania starych papierow i znalazlem wycinek z
gazety- rozmowe z Donaldem Richie z wrzesnia 2002. Wspominalem o tej postaci
i jego ksiazkach, moze ten wywiad da choc lekki posmak osobowosci i stylu
tego czlowieka.

CLOSE-UP
DONALD RICHIE
Films, Zen, Japan
Interview by ERIC PRIDEAUX, staff writer
Donald Richie is regarded as the leading Western authority on Japanese film.
He first came to Japan in 1947 as a civilian typist for the U.S. Occupational
forces
    • onsen Re: donald richie 02.02.04, 16:31
      Art nowadays is frankly hermetic. You go to the gallery and you see minimalist
      things that require an enormous amount of pre-knowledge and sophistication to
      understand, that nobody off the street could appreciate.

      It's sort of a natural reaction to when things become too popularized, too
      gross, too populist. It's a symptom of the reaction against the complete
      merchandizing of Japan. But I don't see it as being particularly efficient. It
      has no social uses.

      Are Japanese filmmakers caught in this hermetic trap?

      I think the commercialization we're seeing in all aspects of Japan has not left
      film alone. The majority of Japanese films are intended as merchandise.

      That includes films which are being hyped as art, for example the films of
      (Takeshi) Kitano. These are commercial objects to be sold at your supermarket,
      yet we find him winning prizes at Venice.

      On the other hand, you do find a handful of young directors who actually have
      their own angle on life. We have a filmmaker like Hirokazu Kore'eda, who made
      "Maboroshi," "Distance" and "After Life." Another thoughtful young director is
      Makoto Shinozaki, who did a film called "Okaeri." Both are very much influenced
      by Ozu and by such foreign directors as Robert Bresson and Michaelangelo
      Antonioni.

      But only one Japanese person in 10 goes and sees a Japanese film. All the rest
      go see "Pearl Harbor." The Japanese don't support their own serious films.

      Outside the arts, where are the vestiges of true Japanese spirituality?

      True spirituality is still shown in Japanese attitudes, particularly in
      attitudes that are unquestioned, which are really unconscious. When crowds go
      out and see the cherry blossoms when they are dead and falling, even though
      such people are doing it because their fathers' fathers did it, that doesn't
      mean the spirit is not alive.

      The spirit is a benign observation of transience. You still see this all the
      time in Japan, even now, that the transient is not opposed, that the transient
      is still allowed.

      There are people who detect another gray hair, another wrinkle, and don't rush
      to the beauty shop, but look at the remains and say things are coming along as
      they're supposed to. It's this sort of thing that shows that Japanese
      spirituality survives.

      You spent time with renowned Zen philosopher Daisetsu Suzuki. Do you think Zen
      is still a vital force?

      I think if you take it inside of yourself, yes. Zen is very existential; Zen
      holds you responsible for what you make of yourself or don't make of yourself.
      My very healthy sense of skepticism I owe largely to my Zen training. I'm sure
      Dr. Suzuki would be the first to repudiate me [laughs], but that'd be his job.

      What first inspired you to become a writer?

      First I learned to read, and when I learned to read I realized I had some
      control over my environment, over who I was and could be, simply through the
      word. This discovery was parallel to my discovery of the movies. But in
      reading, I could exercise a degree of control.

      I discovered that by writing I could have even more control. By choosing words
      and putting them in patterns, I could make people feel exactly the same way I
      was feeling. I discovered this when I was about 8 years old. From then on
      writing became what I did, what I was about. I was about the written word and I
      remain so. It is the means through which I can interpret what I experience.

      What is your daily routine?

      I have four or five works on the go at all times. I have a big book, whatever
      that is; I have smaller pieces; and then a couple of things I'm thinking about
      doing. Right now I am polishing a translation of a [Yasunari] Kawabata novel.
      That's my big book. Then I have an introduction to write for a new book about
      tattoos. Then I'm experimenting with porn. I am writing a series of erotica.
      I'm trying to use pornographic materials in a non-pornographic form. This
      morning I worked on porn. But tomorrow I have to work on Kawabata.

      How has your knowledge of various artistic forms informed your writing?

      Critics have said film has influenced my writing profoundly, as indeed it has.
      Our way of regarding reality has been commandeered by the film. When I'm
      writing, I think "Ah, this is a [Michaelangelo] Antonioni shot!" One of my
      novels, "Companions of the Holiday," now out of print, is pure Ozu
    • yawokim Re: donald richie 02.02.04, 19:38
      obejrzalbym jakis film pokazujacy bubble era...to musialy byc zlote czasy,
      wypady konkordem do paryza na weekend...;]

      duzo slysze o tym, ze japonia pada, ekonomicznie kuleje, ale jak to wlasciwie
      wyglada?
      czy to znaczy, ze zblizaja sie szybkimi krokami do poziomu wietnamu, czy
      raczej do poziomu sprzed lat 80tych?



      • onsen bubble 03.02.04, 09:47
        wprawdzie nie jestem pewien czy konkordy lataly z Tokio, ale o okresie bubble
        wciaz sie jeszcze w Japonii mowi.
        To nie sa moje japonskie czasy, przyjechalem juz po, ale wydaje sie, ze sporo w
        tym wszystkim mitologii, choc i troche prawdy na pewno tez.
        Panienki swiezo po studiach biorace premie 2xrocznie po 10 tys. dolarow, lekcje
        angielskiego udzielane w bialych limuzynach krazacych po centrum Tokio, drinki
        w barach po kilkaset dolcow, to wszystko bylo...tylko, ze realny poziom zycia,
        mimo ujemnej propagandy, wcale sie, za bardzo (jesli w ogole) nie obnizyl. Bo
        co, ze po 15 latach zapasci bezrobocie wynosi ponizej 5%, a zarobki wciaz
        naleza do najwyzszych na swiecie? Premie sa mniejsze, ale tez ceny wielu
        artykulow nieprzerwanie od lat spadaja.
        Japonska gospodarka osiagnela dojrzalosc, ale jest to dojrzalosc na bardzo
        wyskim poziomie.

        Z banka mydlana idzie chyba o to, ze przelom lat 80/90 zakonczyl okres bardzo
        szybkiego wzrostu. Gospodarka przez dziesiatki lat rosla i ludzie (czesto
        b.utytulowani) mysleli ze tak bedzie zawsze...(na pocz lat 90-tych, po
        aprecjacji jena, japonska gopodarka byla juz prawie rowna amerykanskiej, ktora
        ludnosciowo jest przeciez dwa razy wieksza).
        Ale szok byl na pewno.
        Mnie tam zupelnie obecny okres, uczacy pokory, nie przeszkadza. Tym bardziej,
        ze wtedy zaczely tu i owdzie wychylac lby demony z przeszlosci "uniklnosc
        Japonczykow, nacjonalizm etc".



        • peter2715626 Re: bubble 03.05.04, 00:32
          > Japonska gospodarka osiagnela dojrzalosc, ale jest to dojrzalosc na bardzo
          > wyskim poziomie.


          Ladnie napisane. Bylem w Tokyo w maju 2000 na spotkaniu w centrali Mitsubishi.
          Strasznie sie skarzyli na kryzys i nieuchronny upadek tej firmy. Jednak na
          ulicach widzialem zupelnie inne obrazki i zadnych oznak kryzysu. Gdy sie nadal
          dopytywalismy, gdzie ten kryzys, to pokazano nam jeden zamkniety supermarket w
          Ginza. Pierwszy w historii Japonii supermarket w tej okolicy, ktory
          zbankrutowal.





          =====================

          mordor.mds.pl/peter
    • yawokim The Image Factory: Fads and Fashions in Japan 27.04.04, 15:30
      by Donald Richie

      www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n08/haus01_.html
      www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/22836.html
      www.livejournal.com/users/thesadtropics/22072.html
      linki w temacie tej ksiazki

      • yawokim ... Other than that, I don't think you can 02.05.04, 14:40
        profitably look in the future with any degree of likelihood...




        www.midnighteye.com/interviews/donald_richie.shtml
    • yawokim Way to go keigo: a loaded language of politeness 11.08.04, 20:28


      By DONALD RICHIE

      KEIGO IN MODERN JAPAN: Polite Language From Meiji to the Present, by Patricia
      J. Wetzel. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 206 pp. with illustrations,
      2004, $45 (cloth).
      Keigo is often thought of as a separate kind of Japanese (often called "polite
      speech," "honorifics," or the like) that is used to show respect to whoever is
      being addressed. It is an entire speech style and can be complicated. One
      writer notices that there are two dozen ways of asking "Did (X) go to Tokyo
      yesterday?" depending on who is saying it to whom, in what setting and just who
      (X) is. A choice must be made as to the degree of politeness (respect) to be
      expressed.

      In any two-person interaction, the speech style is determined by the statuses
      of the speaker and the addressee, and also the degree of intimacy between them.
      In general, however, status superiority supersedes intimacy. Junior ranking
      members of a team, for example, are expected to use a polite style in
      addressing friends of even only slightly higher status.

      Some foreign commentators have seen in keigo an example of a rigidly
      hierarchical social structure. As one critic has phrased it: "By elevating the
      addressee through exalted terms and lowering the speaker through humble terms,
      a great distance is created between the two, thereby expressing deeper respect
      for the addressee."

      This, so far as it goes, is true, but (and this is the point of Patricia J.
      Wetzel's well-researched and closely reasoned study) it doesn't go far enough.
      Keigo is not just the icing on the cake of language, it is an integral part of
      Japanese culture itself. While it is a barometer of social status, it is also a
      measure of cultural identity. Indeed, Wetzel can convincingly argue that there
      is nothing in the Japanese language that is not keigo.

      Certainly the role that keigo plays is much wider than is ordinarily assumed.
      As said scholar Yasuto Kikuchi: "Japanese keigo is the Japanese heart, our way
      of thinking, our way of behaving, our way of assigning value." And the
      possibilities are rigorously assumed.

      Other languages have keigo too, of course. This is the implication of
      the "vous/tu" dichotomy in French, and the "sie/du" of German. And in English,
      all of us learn how to watch our tongues when in company that calls for their
      elevation and our diminution.

      Japan, however, has built a more much complicated system, and one that has many
      ramifications. Keigo, for example, can come packed with meaning. A scholar,
      Agnes Niyekawa, points out that the keigo phrase "John wa sensei ni hono o
      itadaita" really means "Our John received a book from the teacher." If a non-
      keigo verb had been used, the superiority of the teacher and the inferiority
      of "our John" (and consequently us) would not have been suggested.

      Indeed the uses of keigo include providing a context so secure that pronouns
      can be deleted, and routinely are. "I" and "you" are usually missing from
      polite speech because they are redundant. Verb phrases determine just who is on
      top in any given situation and humble usage ensures that persons are ascribed,
      with no recourse to pronouns at all
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