SOURCE: "Mizoguchi and Modernism: Structure, Culture, Point of View," in Sight and Sound, Vol . 47, No . 2, Spring, 1978, pp. 110-18.

[In the following essay, Cohen discusses Mizoguchi's place in the Japanese modernist movement, stressing the necessity of critical contextualizing when analyzing the artistic efforts of other cultures.]

It is twenty-two years since Donald Richie and Joseph Anderson's first major article on Kenji Mizoguchi appeared in Sight and Sound; and twenty since Anderson stated: 'The Japanese cinema has been established as long as the cinema has existed anywhere. In the past thirty years or so it has been much in need of discovery.' In the light of recent structural criticism in Screen which claims to have found traces of modernism in the films of Ozu, there is a touch of déjà vu. Mizoguchi, like Ozu, made fully matured films before World War II , and both directors have been considered quite traditional by Japanese critics and by the majority of non-structural Western critics. The new evaluation of Ozu, therefore, seems to suggest one of three things: first, that the structuralists have been able to reinterpret what is meant by the traditional; or that they have been able to recast much of the cultural information we have had about Japan into a modernist mode; or that structural criticism has really found an authentic new substance in the work of Ozu. It is the contention of this essay, however, that recent criticism of the Japanese film has indeed jumped too far ahead in labelling Ozu a modernist precisely because it has not sufficiently made use of the Japanese context. In following its lead, we find orselves back at the stage which Anderson refers to, and the Japanese film looks merely exotic once again.

For structural criticism to be consistent and to claim the attention of the wider, non-academic film community, it must make use of culturally specific information. Certain elements of any alien culture must be understood, to be able to recognise historical details and social customs, to better understand character motivation and to appreciate subtleties of imagery and language. There is really no such thing in criticism as description apart from interpretation; and like the deciphering of a dream, the critic continually shifts back and forth between the elements of the work and the mechanism which created it. It is much like the old example of a conversation between two Japanese, where yes means no and vice versa. If one does not know the convention, or the language, one cannot describe the encounter or interpret the relationship.

In looking at the point of view structure of Mizoguchi's films, this essay is an attempt to lay a foundation on which we may eventually build a more accurate picture of Japanese modernism. It is contended that Mizoguchi, along with Ozu, Gosho, Kinugasa and Yasujiro Shimazu, helped to create a cinema of classical realism closer to the Western model than to anything which has only recently been accomplished in a cinema of modernism in Europe. The classical realism of the Japanese film is indeed a system of representation in the same way that Hollywood movies are a system: they are both essentially formal tendencies rather than hard and fast rules for the definition of space and the control of causal relationships. Japanese realism, however, differs from the Western model primarily in two ways: it employs an editing system of 90 and 180 degrees utilising a 360 degree rule rather than Hollywood's 180; and the Japanese system tends to use a moving camera with the long take to photograph dialogue scenes instead of the shot/reaction shot preferred in the West. When this system is placed within the specific context of Mizoguchi's films, we will see that it functions with great economy to create spatial and temporal coherence different from but analogous to that found in Western classical realism.

In the Screen articles on Ozu (Vol. 17, No. 2), these characteristics of Japanese film structure are corroborated. The difficulty is not so much that the critics misunderstand the Japanese system as that they impose on it too many Western assumptions. This effort would perhaps lead directly to an understanding of Japanese modernism if it were true that in Japan the 19th century European novel had determined the use of filmic codes without having been radically altered; if Renaissance perspective had been responsible for organising a humanistic subject within the structure of discourse and graphic arts; and these structural assertions would perhaps be true if Japanese linguistic and psychoanalytical structure were uniformly responsible for developing art forms which are clearly subject-centred. These ideas have become the basis for most structural studies of film; but debatable as they are even in Western criticism, there has yet to be any analysis of these concepts in Japanese terms. Conclusions, therefore, about the nature of Japanese modernism based on these tentative assumptions are without adequate foundation.

There is also a distinction to be made between the modern and the modernistic. As a modern, post-industrial society, Japan interacts with other such societies. There is an affinity with the 20th century mental attitude of the West, and in art this interrelationship is manifest in a borrowing and adaptation of cultural forms and models. The purely modern has, thus, been influential for the Japanese. For an artist, this has been both a liberation and a liability. It has meant a degree of freedom from convention and from the restrictive use of genre, while it has meant a form of personal isolation already acute for the Japanese artist.

In literature, the so-called modern novel when specifically referred to in Japanese means the shosetsu. It designates an approximation of the term 'novel' in the West, but it was a literary form adopted full blown as it were rather than a phenomenon which evolved in Japan over centuries. To be sure there were precedents in various kinds of writing, but it was not until the Meiji Restoration that a truly modern international age began. There was at the turn of the last century a great hunger for European modernistic technique; but more often than not the effects of adaptation came very close to expressing classical Japanese aesthetic ideas. As Masao Miyoshi has indicated {Accomplices of Silence: The Modern Japanese Novel), the Japanese surrealists could have found what they were looking for in the waka and haiku. Kawabata and the Neo-Perceptionists could have used these forms in their attempts to modernise written Japanese. What this indicates is that, despite talk of foreign influence by the Japanese themselves, the form in which the work finally appears must be evaluated in both its intent and its effect.

A similar point can be made about Mizoguchi's films in terms of their use of Western editing techniques. Mizoguchi was one of the first in Japan to make fully realised sound films by assimilating the Western model. His system differed in the ways already mentioned, but it came about because of his understanding of European and American Alms. It was considered progressive for a Japanese film-maker to accept foreign influence during the silent period, and Mizoguchi was a leader with the progressives. The fact remains, however, that when sound came to Europe the continuation of classical realism with further emphasis on the relative correspondence between sound and image was generally a conservative manoeuvre. It becomes clear that, depending on context, the Western codes were either progressive or conservative depending on their function, and that they were certainly modern for the Japanese. What they accomplished, however, within the system of representation already established is another story.

The term modernism itself seems to be used more by critics who understand it least. The ubiquity of the term is confirmed when we see it applied to such diverse film-makers as Godard, Resnais, Antonioni, the Straubs and Paul Sharits. But the aspect of modernism with which we will deal involves the notion of the 'deconstruction' of classical realism. The interplay between first person shots (point of view associated with a character, but not necessarily a 'subjective shot') and the third person/authorial view is said by structuralists to be the privileged form of classical realism. Since the narrative film dominates the Western feature industry, this alternation of points of view creates an imaginary time and space whose purpose it is to reinforce the illusion of the reality of the story. Modernist works subvert the 'natural' causality that such a form is made to imply. It is said to break the imaginary closed nature of realist illusionism in its refusal to resolve in its plastic form the enigma of its content. What is often called the 'invisibility' of realist editing ensures the contrary; that the illusion to which the film refers outside the film becomes more real to the audience than the screen images themselves. It is because the systematic portrayal of point of view is central to this concept of realism that it is used to discuss the modernism of Mizoguchi.

Since all films are forced to use some form of representation to record their images on celluloid, it is through the representative function that modernism arises. It has often been a structural dictum that while the realist film can question reality through representation, only the modernist text can question the very act of representation. Last Year at Marienbad is the prototype, because the juxtaposition of past and present is never resolved into one coherent imaginary whole. The expectation for precise causality is thwarted; the film therefore becomes a puzzle, and this enigma and its working out is more central and real than any imaginary referent. The danger of this conception of modernism is of course that such a host of other concerns becomes secondary that the primary theme of all modernistic works becomes the problem of representation.

Any formal element which appears not to fit within the realist system is potentially a modernistic component. These have two aspects. They can merely signify a gap in the film's design, and as Barthes has shown, these features are often key dimensions to gain us entry into the illusionism of a fictional work. The second possibility is that the element will signify a break with the realist conception, and in this case other components will be sought to verify the assertion. When a consistent structural arrangement is found that does seem to de-emphasise the causal connections between images, then we may have a case for a complete modernist film. In both cases, however, intelligibility depends on an awareness of the conventions which are being contradicted and on the analysis of the film on a proper conceptual level.

It is on the question of levels and the notion of convention that the Japanese film is most problematic. A situation exists analogous to one found in Japanese literature. The poetic tradition in Japan has been dominated for almost a thousand years by the lyric form, and elements of lyricism inform the Japanese novel in a much stronger, more direct way than was the case in Europe, where the antecedent would perhaps be the epic poem. It is possible, therefore, that in the Japanese novel the creation of atmosphere or a rather disjointed stream of thoughts and digressions will take precedence over the creation of a flesh and blood character. It is equally the case that a book with more than a minimum of emphasis on action will merely juxtapose events of secondary importance and leave out the primary action (Nagai Kafu's Geisha in Rivalry, for example). It is partly a consequence of knowing convention and partly having expectations at all which gears the reader towards his own level of interest. It is also a question of finding consistency on any level which offers a work its overall intelligibility. If we, therefore, apply Western notions of narrative to Japanese films, we most likely will find appropriate gaps; but for those elements to subvert illusionism (i.e. to hint at or reflect a different world from that created on the screen), they must do so in terms of the Japanese system itself.

There is a tendency of film structuralism to isolate specific cinematic figures—the shot/reaction shot, for example—and attribute to them one particular function without considering the range of possible identities they may have for an audience. Terms like modernism and realism, therefore, are often solely derived from what Georges Poulet calls 'the exclusive interdependence of the objective elements' (The Structuralist Controversy, 'Criticism and the Experience of Interiority'). This objectification of form has often meant that the range of subjective responses one has in any one film are considered secondary. We know there are as many reasons for identifying with a film as there are people, and that every film offers a special case. Systematising special structures of identification, however, seems to lead to acute problems when we consider films from alien cultures.

Japanese films use forms of catharsis, as do most Western films, but in doing this they exhibit a causal structure quite different from Hollywood. They also employ a system of characterisation which produces strong protagonists but not as complete individuals; a lack of psychological depth is compensated for in the pathos of a character's actions. There is self-consciousness in Japanese art, and there are forms of self-reflexivity in literature and film. There is a precedent for the multiview rather than perspective, and this too throws into question the idea of subjective identification.

All this is not to say that in the uniqueness of Japan we are able to see objective structures based on acceptance of a clear, unproblematic classical realism; but that the Japanese system itself exhibits analogous tensions to those of Hollywood realism when we try to affix a label to any element, whether the reaction shot or the long take. This essay only aspires to highlight a number of areas previously taken for granted.

Point of view, besides being a series of precise visual strategies, is also a product of a certain orientation towards subject matter. The most consistent themes which we find in nearly all Mizoguchi's surviving films (thirty-two out of an estimated eighty) are those associated with women. Before 1936 and the start of his successful collaboration with the screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda, Mizoguchi made a number of films based on stories by Izumi Kyoka. These stories, written as romantic treatments of troubled domesticity, seem to be the first major source for Mizoguchi's preoccupation with women. Izumi was extremely popular, and some of Mizoguchi's adaptations were no doubt true to the spirit of the author in being over-sentimental. But a few serious literary critics recognised Izumi's perception of a number of real certainties within male/female relationships as they were perceived just after 1900. The central one was the fact that Japanese women were continually called on to sacrifice themselves and their own needs for their lovers; according to Tadao Sato, these stories usually centred on the husband's career taking precedence over the wife. An equally common Izumi situation found an older woman involved with a student, usually as lover and patroness. This is the background of two of Mizoguchi's earliest surviving films, White Threads of the Waterfall (1933) and The Downfall (1935).

This theme of woman as sacrificial lamb expanded throughout Mizoguchi's career to attack misogyny in general. Because we must begin looking at his films of the 1930s without the luxury of seeing his earlier development, it appears that he very quickly broke with Izumi's romantic mould and entered into a mode of realism. In describing Sisters of the Gion (1936), Richie and Anderson see that the film poses a question of choice for the Japanese audience: the film condemns both sisters for their actions, but is more sympathetic to the traditional older sister. That it at least presents two sides of an issue separates the film from earlier notions of the romantic.

It is less important to decide whether these early films or the later ones meet all the requisites for the realist label. There are enough indications that the setting up of a thematic duality in their subject matter tends to confirm the Japanese notion of a general style of realism. A series of issues are opposed to each other, and at least part of the resolution of a Mizoguchi film is left up to the audience. For point of view in general, this means that the narrator, the author of the film, will have an equalising influence on the perspectives of the characters. Rather than have characters function in opposition, in these films we find parallelism. This is a rhetorical device found obviously in other cultures, but in Mizoguchi's films the characters are so often identified with obverse aspects of a common series of themes that they almost appear as doubles.

We find some version of the parallel in almost all the films. The varied lives of prostitutes is a particularly clear picture of the parallel as microcosm in Women of the Night (1948) and Street of Shame (1956). The most frequent parallel involves two women embodying complementary or conflicting characteristics, or one showing a later stage towards which the other is headed. Fifteen films make obvious use of this device, from the good girl devotion versus bad girl status and money parallel of Hometown (1930), to the older/ younger geisha conflict of Gion Festival Music (1953); the mother/daughter in A Woman of Rumour (1954), and the famous Miyagi/Wakasa, wife versus vampire, structure of Ugetsu (1953). Parallelism is not confined to women. There is the student versus non-student form in Song of a Hometown (1925); the rival tenors in Hometown and the clan rivalries in The 47 Ronin (1941 and 1942); Oharu's series of lovers in The Life of Oharu (1952), and the contrasting patrons of the women in Street of Shame. This type of parallelism does not set up polar opposites; and in these contrasts, the characters usually have more in common than they have differences.

Parallelism provides that there will be at least two central character points of view. These are ideal forms of identification. There is also an element of choice, which is of course gratuitous because the audience is given only very special information. We note that these general tendencies of Mizoguchi's films are perhaps no more than tendencies. These features—the use of two strong central characters, the two points of view and the elements of gratuitous choice—can be found in films from any number of cultures. It is only when they combine in a specific way and for a specific reason that they create a unique something which we call a film by Mizoguchi; therefore, in conjunction with the above characteristics, we find another figure, that of a detached observer. In virtually every film there are characters, some important and others merely peripheral, who see the action as it unfolds; and the audience sees these characters as they watch.

The function of these observing figures is naturally determined by the film itself. Often they are in the scene from the beginning, but equally camera movement reveals them after some particularly dramatic moment, or they walk before the camera at the exit of some more central character. This adds a possible third point of view to the action, and we can often draw an analogy between these people and the audience in relation to the screen. If the audience watches a series of actions, and simultaneously sees another character in frame observing the same activity, there is a tendency to believe the truth of the action. This is also the case when either by eyeline or physical proximity an observer is implied even though not actually visible on the screen. This is most important, because in Mizoguchi's films characters have only a limited number of choices for their action. Their behaviour is conventional, and in Japan especially that means there are very few possibilities.

As already stated, Mizoguchi's visual style is characterised by the infrequent use of the one-shot, shot/ reaction shot in dialogue scenes. There is a preference for the two-shot, or shots in which all the protagonists appear together in frame. If one character is framed by himself, this is followed more often by a pan or track than by a cut; or if there is a cut, then it is followed by a pan or track to more dialogue involving the same or different characters. This procedure reinforces the objectifying function of the observer, and gives most action its communal character. Action appears as a shared experience when the audience is generally given an additional view which seems to match its own.

This objectivity is itself an illusion, the Bazinian ideal, but it is a specific formal arrangement distinct from the general classical realism of the West. Even directors like Wyler, who match the long take, deep-focus model, still regularly use close-ups and first person point of view shots. Mizoguchi uses these devices, but not as regular units of his 'most typical' style. His later films often look more Western in using tighter character framing, but they still rely on the pan and track instead of cutting during dialogue. They create an overriding third person perspective like that of Hollywood, but it is accomplished by a different technique. The objective illusion is taken to more of an extreme in Mizoguchi's films precisely because of the observer. Space is defined with few first person shots and with a moving camera combined in extreme cases either with no cutting in the scenes composed with one shot (more consistent in the 40s) or with one 180 degree cut (the technique dominant in the 30s). In most films, all sides of any room in which dialogue occurs are shown either quickly through cutting when one first sees the area or later after considerable action has taken place. Scenes of the first type occur during the opening dialogue between the policeman and the madam in Street of Shame (a series of cuts) and in the watermelon cutting scene in the kitchen during the 1939 Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (one 180 degree cut). The latter definition of space is used with the sisters' home in Sisters of the Gion and the Western-style apartment in Osaka Elegy (1936). The observers who look on during these scenes or who are present in these rooms at other times testify to the concreteness of the setting and help to create an objectified illusion of continuity.

Seeing all sides of any spatial area raises the question of the camera position, and in Mizoguchi's films there is a continuous series of so-called 'impossible shots'. We see areas of walls or objects positioned in the same places where the camera must also be. Sometimes this is obvious, as in the kitchen scene from Chrysanthemums or the shot between two mirrors in Sisters of the Gion. Generally, however, the impossible shot occurs as in Western films when there is a high or low angle, and we accept the fact that a directorial presence is 'naturally' in evidence. These devices create continuity for cinematic fiction when they do not call attention to themselves; and because we accept convention, we rarely notice the impossibilities. It is not quite the same for Mizoguchi, because on the way towards continuity there are usually a number of temporary spatial uncertainties. In the young woman's apartment n Osaka Elegy, it takes repeated viewings to put the floor plan together because there are so many scenes which take place in smaller areas. (This apartment must be one of the oddest ever created, a Japanese art deco version perhaps of something Mizoguchi saw in a European film.) Mizoguchi uses a number of devices to create intermittent spatial ambiguity (offscreen space and sound being primary); but because these are always resolved, they seem to be more classical than modern.

There is a final aspect to the general consideration of point of view. This is the use of motifs organised around moments of ritualised observation. These moments include the many uses of the theatrical experience; references to particular spatial possibilities of the kabuki theatre; references to performances of various kinds, from the musical recital to the duel; and the uses of seppuku or ritual suicide. In all these, diere is a clear distinction between performing and observation, and the event itself at the centre is socially defined. It has specific dramatic functions in its varied contexts, but it also reinforces the general impetus we find in Mizoguchi's films towards objectifying the action. The performance as socially defined is generally a time of repose, in which interaction between observer and performer is abstract but direct. The reality of the performance is absolutely objective in the sense that it happens for so many people; but during these moments, the subjectivity of the events becomes more important. These moments are therefore privileged, because they both heighten and subdue all the various points of view which converge in any one Mizoguchi film.

These motifs range from the uses of the world of the theatre itself in The Straits of Love and Hate (1937), Late Chrysanthemums, White Threads of the Waterfall and The Love of the Actress Sumako (1947), to the use of theatregoing to create a particularly dramatic climax in A Woman of Rumour. In Osaka Elegy, the public nature of attending the theatre provides a dramatic turn in which being seen is as important as seeing; and in The 47 Ronin (both parts) the noh performance creates historical authenticity and metaphoric intensity. Other moments in which observation is formalised include the final river parade in Chrysanthemums and the challenge sword fight in Musashi Myamoto (1944); the courtroom scenes in White Threads and The Victory of Women (1946); the election rally in My Love Has Been Burning (1949); the classroom scenes in Song of a Hometown, The Poppy (1935) an The Lady from Musashino (1951); and the musical performances in Hometown, The Empress Yang Kwei-Fei (1955), Ugetsu and Miss Oyu (1951). In these examples, the process of seeing and being seen produces certain individual thematic patterns and provides a number of moments when various points of view (not the least important being that of the audience) seem to merge into one.

The other prominent motif of ritualised observation is seppuku, and this is the most important because of its implications. This form of suicide was the favoured way of death for the samurai (second only to dying in battle) because it preserves the honour there is in paying for the death of one to whom one has been in debt, or in regaining the honour that one has lost. To accomplish seppuku, one follows a number of very precise steps, from assuming the proper position, to cutting open one's stomach with a particular blade, to the cutting off of the head by a second. The procedure is very slow, and it is perhaps one of the most painful ways one could die. Seppuku today is generally reserved for fanatics (like Yukio Mishima) and for history.

There are no graphic portrayals of the act of seppuku in Mizoguchi's films; nothing of the irony in a film like Kobayashi's Harakiri. Even though ritual suicide in its historical form appears only in The 47 Ronin, it has important consequences in the many other suicides in Mizoguchi's films. The common element is the observing figures. The second whose function it is to sever the head is also responsible for seeing that the suicide itself is carried out correctly. In part II of The 47 Ronin, Lord Hosokawa and his men are responsible for the ceremony, and they oversee each of the deaths of Oishi and his men. They are the seconds, the observers and the upholders of the shogun's law. In Part I, however, Lord Asano's suicide is supervised by another lord, and even though Asano's men take no legal responsibility for his original act of violence, they are denied the privilege of watching the ceremony.

The scene of Asano's walk to his death is one of the most striking in either part. The camera dollies back as a retainer walks with Asano, then cranes up as Asano enters the ceremonial yard. The retainer is left outside, and the high angle shot places Asano in the interior with the retainer separated from him by the courtyard wall. The shot is held as the retainer collapses and Asano disappears at the top of the frame. (The use of off-screen space at the top and bottom of the frame is a frequent Mizoguchi device.) In this scene, the denial of observation is paradoxically tragic and at the same time a form of self-preservation. The retainer knows it is his duty both to avenge his lord's death and to kill himself in return. He is denied the privilege of seeing Asano die, but he is also spared the resultant agony. Much like the ritual of communion, seppuku for the observer celebrates both a triumph over one's own immediate death (one's sins are relieved by the death of another), and one feels remorse over not having been able to spare the other's life in the first place. When the retainer is kept from being a direct observer, the pathos of his predicament is that much more intense.

There are other forms of suicide in Mizoguchi's films, and although most involve drowning, they also make use of observing figures. In Portrait of Madame Yuki (1950) and in Sansho the Bailiff (1954), women drown them-selves in a lake; in the former the death is an act of weakness, while the latter is a show of strength. Madame Yuki's death shows Hama how false her illusions have been. Her final words to the dead woman are, 'Yo u coward!' and it is fairly certain that Hama has finally come out from under the older woman's influence. In Sansho, the old woman says nothing after Anju sacrifices herself so that her brother can escape from Sansho's bondage. It is as much sorrow at the girl's fate as joy in her final release from the misery of slavery that the old woman must feel. In both instances there is a palpable sense of ambivalence towards death. This combination of antithetical attitudes is at the core of the seppuku tradition; and in both cases there is more than a little resemblance to the Freudian interpretation of the ritual of mourning.

These examples, ranging from parallel construction to the observer and then to forms of ritual, are general patterns which tend to provide in turn general contexts which determine point of view. Point of view itself, of course, has a dual nature: it includes both what characters see and how the narrator/author presents them and the action. There is a bridge, however, in Mizoguchi's films which narrows this potential distance. This is accomplished not by alternating first and third person shots, but by generally alternating (if there is any cutting at all) the third person view. Even with the implied continuity of scenes done in one shot, Mizoguchi still seeks to deny all potential discontinuity. This is a direct result of the use of recurrent motifs which involve seeing and observation.

When we discuss specific points of view, we find there are a number of shots which do correspond to a character's subjective viewpoint. In The Downfall (1935) and in The Noted Sword (1945), there are super-impositions which reflect character subjectivity, but these are not rendered through the eyes of the character in the form which shows us exactly what he or she sees. These scenes include both the characters and what they see within the same shot. Only in The Life of Oharu is there a precise subjective superimposition, when Oharu sees her former lover's face in place of a Buddhist statue. In a film like Oyuki, the Virgin (1935), there is crosscutting of first person shots in a dialogue, but they only occur once in a scene of particularly charged emotion. The same is true in Yang Kwei-Fei, but it is generally used only for effect. It is present in the coach scene in the opening flashback of White Threads, but the rest of the film eschews its use. There is another formal pattern, however, which seems problematic, and is the closest example which on the surface may suggest a modernist label. In White Threads, The Downfall, Sisters of the Gion and Ugetsu, there are specific shots which are first presented as subjective, first person character views, but which eventually include within the shot (by camera movement) the characters whose view we have ostensibly been given.

This apparent mixing of points of view defies the clarity and obviousness of Western realism because it blurs the distinction between first and third person perspectives. As we have said, the interplay between these viewpoints has been considered the privileged structural feature of the classical model. With this type of device, one shot includes both a third and a first person view. In realist films (as defined by structuralists), a first person shot can approximate a third person shot and vice versa; but one can not be graphically shown to be simultaneously both. There can be overlapping, but it must be accomplished by implication. We also often find in realism a cut from a first or third person point of view to a similar shot closer to the action. Even when we see that the relationship between characters is unchanged, we accept the cut as an element of a director's personal style, or as some formal way of intensifying the action. In either case, there is usually no contradiction posed in terms of the individual shot. The one-shot contradiction must, therefore, either be considered a mistake or one must search for its function in thematic or generic terms.

In considering specific structural arrangements in Mizoguchi's pre-war films, one must be specially careful because of the fact that others have re-edited some of these features, and 'complete' versions of some prints circulated in the West only remain in a single Japanese copy. (The suicide of the heroine in White Threads exists only in one print held in Kyoto.) There is the additional possibility that some sequences were put together rather arbitrarily, as the seemingly illogical editing of the long bridge scene in White Threads. Yoshikata Yoda's explanation for this scene is that its apparent monotony forced Mizoguchi to change camera positions as a concession to the viewer. Be that as it may, there is still in the early films a general consistency in creating unambiguous spatial relationships; and Yoda's explanation remains merely a warning to those over-zealous for great paradoxes. The opening sequence of The Downfall at the stormy railway station is meticulous in placing the major characters on the platform in an unambiguous relationship to each other. They are directly linked by camera movement and eyeline matching. The contradictory shot appears in the first flashback sequence as does the same device in White Threads, and, therefore, the contrast is striking. There are other matching problems in The Downfall, however, and because of the film's age, it is difficult to find a function for these devices which is not in some sense still unclear.

In White Threads, the heroine in her flashback sees herself in the coach which is being driven by the young man who has subsequently become her lover. There is a medium shot of the woman, Taki, as she sits motionless inside the coach and gazes forward and down to screen left. There is a cut which because of her glance implies that the next shot will be her point of view. The shot is a tight medium shot of the driver as he bends over to fix the wheel. The camera tilts up and we see Taki in the background looking forward at him. The sequence in The Downfall is much the same. In the flashback the heroine, Osen, is shown in a tight medium shot at night in the yard of a shrine. She is looking for the hero, Sokichi, and she looks down and to screen left. She squats and her gaze is directed back into the frame and to the left. There is a cut to a close-up of Sokichi's sandals, and the camera tilts up to reveal Osen squatting in the background.

Because both these examples occur in flashback when subjectivity is crucial, there is some truth to the assertion that this contradictory device is a 'structural principle … of the fantastic genre' (Mark Nash, Screen, Vol. 17, No. 3). There is further evidence of this in its use in Ugetsu; but Nash concludes his study of Dreyer's Vampyr with the following: 'The fantastic text is not modernist in the sense of say Robbe-Grillet's L'Immortelle … but it is progressive in that in it the category of the real is at least under scrutiny.' In this context, reality refers to two things: the first is the expectation for classical continuity in which first and third person views are intercut but remain separate. The interruption of this convention by a director as conscious of form as Dreyer indicates some kind of explicit interpretation; structure will become a direct indicator of meaning. Secondly, reality is the knowledge of fantastic genres, either of other vampire movies or of extra-filmic elements such as the fantastic archetypes in literature or the science and folklore of vampires themselves. In the specific mode of the fantastic (as defined by Tzvetan Todorov), the reality of a central action cannot be determined by any one explanation; and therefore a formal point of view device which does not clearly indicate whose perspective is shown does produce an unresolvable dilemma. It is of course possible that when Mizoguchi includes these sequences within flashbacks, he is negating completely the point of view question. Still in The Downfall the lead-in shot to one flashback is from one character, and the return shot focuses on the other. There is an indication that this is therefore a shared flashback, and once again ambiguity enters. This is even intensified when action occurs in Sokichi's flashback which he could not have known.

It is ridiculous to call any of Mizoguchi's films discussed so far fantastic. To be more than arbitrary, the label must take note of a significant number of other features. Nash and others have no doubt isolated crucial patterns of editing and camera movement which have great influence over determining the relationship between style and content. The structuralist label for any element, however, does not mean that the feature cannot be found in other contexts and with additional functions. In Nash's analysis of Vampyr, the indeterminate viewpoint (or rather the confusion of a consistent view) near the opening of the film (in which an apparent point of view shot from Gray of the weathervane then reveals Gray in the shot) becomes primary only after it relates to other points of view later on. The fantastic label for the film is possible only after this connection. Likewise, the same problem in The Downfall and White Threads can only be put into perspective after it is given its proper place within the entire film. When these comparisons are made, we find ourselves not simply with an empirical method of analysis, but within the more speculative process of interpretation. A procedure is what it is only because it does what it does. Being conservative at this point, we can say that Mizoguchi was very conscious of the need for a consistent point of view, and he knew the means which were available to manipulate it.

When Nash brings in information outside the film itself to explain the film's formal arrangement, he is explaining how certain themes are worked out in terms of structure. The crucial point of view which is made ambiguous calls attention to itself as a theme. Since we know from fantastic literature that seeing is a central problem, the obfuscation of point of view fits well into showing how Vampyr works as a fantastic work. The fact that seeing is the key to the believability of the fantastic means that the act of representing what one sees, or what the director wishes the audience to see, becomes integral to the film and to the genre. It could be argued that the fantastic is the only genre (if that is what it is) which has the same general preoccupation as the larger question of modernism itself. This is one of the reasons Nash does not call Vampyr a modernist work. It is possible, therefore, that certain of Mizoguchi's films also make use of the themes of seeing but only for specific effect. This is indicated by the overall point of view structure we have already discussed in terms of the observer and ritualised observation.

One sequence in Ugetsu is a particularly clear example of Mizoguchi's control over point of view, and it illustrates the viability of considering this device as an economic means of creating significant themes. The film divides in half rather neatly with the first part dealing with the potter and his wife, Miyagi; the second shows his infatuation and subsequent terror in his confrontation with the ghost, Wakasa. The scene of a contradictory point of view occurs conveniently between the two halves. If we accept this division, we note that in all the scenes in each half between the potter, Genjuro, and both women, spatial continuity is maintained, and the reality of the women in each of their domains is created with conventional imagery. Miyagi is associated of course with the home, family and security. Even the lake scene in the first part, while ghostly because of being dark and unpredictable, is still a metaphor of foreboding within the story. There is talk of spirits and supernatural danger, but there are no formal devices which key us to the fact that anything will occur which is perhaps beyond imagination. Lady Wakasa also appears at first without fanfare, and her non-human form is only hinted at by use of shadows and imagery associated with neglect and decay. The entire second half in fact can be explained as either pole which circumscribes the fantastic (either the 'marvellous' or the 'uncanny'), but there are no internal structural elements which undercut the fact that the actions could have happened if only in Genjuro's mind.

After the initial impersonal exchange at the marketplace between Genjuro and Lady Wakasa, the potter ventures for the first time in search of the woman. Immediately preceding their reunion, and before the three (Genjuro, Wakasa and the old nurse) approach the family mansion, Genjuro stops at a kimono shop. In the first shot the camera is at the back of the shop, and Genjuro is seen in a long shot as he walks forward toward the camera and the proprietor, who is seated on screen left. The potter looks up and forward at the hanging kimono material, and the camera cuts 180 degrees to Genjuro's point of view. The camera pans from right to left, but we see neither the shop owner nor the material previously seen at the front of the store. There is a cut to a two-shot of the owner and Genjuro, the camera again at the back of the shop. Cut to a medium close-up of Genjuro, then to a medium shot of kimonos from his point of view; cut back to a one-shot of the potter; then as he looks forward at kimonos, harp music begins and there is another cut back to his p.o.v. [point of view]. From the left back-ground enters Miyagi carrying a tray of pottery. She stops and looks at the material, puts down the tray, and walks forward to admire the kimonos. She glances at the camera, and then a dolly out reveals Genjuro in the shot as he stares at his wife with his back to the camera. As she recedes out of sight, there is a cut to a medium shot of Genjuro entranced; he shakes his head as if he cannot believe what he has seen. He hears a voice calling him; he looks off-screen right; cut to a full shot of Wakasa and the nurse.

The point of view contradiction of this scene (the potter brought into his own subjectivity) is marked off by several keys. We are led into it by the first subjective shot which does not include the proprietor, and by the harp music which seems to match Genjuro's evident reverie just before he sees Miyagi. His wife disappears from the frame as if she were only going to reappear any moment trying on another kimono. When there is a cut back to the last reaction shot of the potter, he blinks as if he also is not sure whether she will return or not. He hears a voice off-screen, and for a moment he is further confused. The potter looks screen right, and the cut to Wakasa and the nurse reinforces the 'realistic' associations attached to a reaction shot motivated by the preceding directional glance. The two figures that Genjuro sees are, therefore, more real in this sequence than Miyagi even though we know (or will realise shortly) that they are apparitions. By following this editing pattern, we see how subtly and carefully the points of view are creating a crisis within the potter's perception and at the same time within the viewer's.

This sequence is so carefully detailed that the dolly back to include Genjuro is merely one signpost in calling attention to the precarious nature of Genjuro's perception of his exploits. The point of view of the film, therefore, revolves around Genjuro. Lady Wakasa is never shown apart from him, and thus exists only for him. Miyagi on the other hand is shown in her death, and the entire Tobei/Ohama relationship is also shown apart from Genjuro (another parallel). In this way, the realness of the people in the potter's family (Tobei is Genjuro's brother) is affirmed over Wakasa's dependence for her existence on Genjuro being with her. In one scene the apparent reality of Wakasa is emphasised when we see her rise while Genjuro is still asleep. This is a third person viewpoint, and it makes Wakasa seem to exist apart from Genjuro's observation. Mizoguchi avoids in the second half of the film the direct trickery of the distorted first person shot; and therefore, when we hear that Wakasa is a ghost, we are somewhat less prepared for the shock. The mysterious mansion with its torn paper walls on the outside and its mended interior causes a sense of foreboding, but only the voice of the old patriarch really denotes the super-natural. Even the noh inspired architecture (the exterior-like stage with the surrounding pine trees) only reinforces the antique quality of the scenes in the mansion. It does not specifically challenge the reality of the episode.

There are actually no ways of explaining the contradictory point of view shot; it does combine a first person view with a third. There are, however, within the context of the film, many explanations for the sequence in terms of seeing and perception. Ugetsu was taken from two stories of the supernatural by Akinari Ueda, and we can quite legitimately talk of certain fantastic impulses within the work. In using the point of view device Mizoguchi is totally aware of what he is doing; but the film as a whole does not remain an enigma, nor is there a real crisis in its overall formal design.

The modernist notions we have been using would require that the entire film be recast in the mould of its enigma. The contradiction of Ugetsu, however, is reinforced only on a thematic level and not by further formal arrangements of the contradiction. It is used for an effect—to throw into obscurity the authenticity of Genjuro's view—but it does not force us to re-evaluate all Genjuro's relationships. His sojourn with Wakasa can even be considered a dream, but it does not negate either the fact of Miyagi or the entire enterprise of his life. The contradictory points of view occurring in one shot can indeed be the 'structural principle of the fantastic', but it is also a device which can be used in other contexts to undercut character believability. Because it subverts our expectations for absolute causality, it shares a modernist pale, but it is not inexorably modernistic.

The closeness between Ugetsu and fantastic stories is primarily due to Mizoguchi's handling of Ueda's original tales. While this genre is particularly close to the problems of seeing and memory, there are other examples in Mizoguchi's films where a similar form suggests analogous crises. One of the opening sequences of The Portrait of Madame Yuki is perhaps the most audacious use of the obfuscation of time and space within a quite conventional modern Japanese melodrama. The fact that Madame Yuki preceded Ugetsu shows also how Mizoguchi was perhaps working toward the perfection of the later film. Both share common elements, the largest being the disillusionment of both central characters, and the difficulty portrayed of reconciling past and present.

After her initial arrival at Madame Yuki' s home in Atami, the young girl, Hama, is framed in a tight medium shot as she takes a bath. She gazes screen right, and the camera pans in this direction, taking her out of frame and settling on a close-up of water overflowing the side of the tub. (Water imagery abounds in Mizoguchi, particularly associated with sexuality in Madame Yuki and in Ugetsu.) Hama's voice-over begins recounting her earliest memories of what she has been told about Madame Yuki, and there is a cut to a panning shot from left to right. We see a Japanese room with curtains, an open shoji, a small table before the tokanoma (an inset portion of the traditional room where flower arrangements and calligraphy are displayed), and there is a lap dissolve to another panning shot in the same direction. This is another room with trees visible outside, and as the narration continues we see a woman's dressing area. The pan stops on a mirror in long shot with the words, 'that face', and a male voice interrupts saying that this is Yuki' s room. There is a cut, and Hama and the boy Seitaro are shown seated in the room from which the pan has just come.

The voice-over in this sequence, which marks temporal continuity, is contradicted by having the narration interrupted and then showing Hama in a different place and with an obvious time lapse from when it began. Not only is this interval unaccounted for, but the two pans in Yuki's rooms are of unknown areas until we are later told what they are. The ambiguity is of course heightened by the contrast of Mizoguchi's maintaining the left to right movement originally motivated by Hama's look. He is playing on spatial and temporal conventions to posit a crisis in Hama's point of view. Through the rest of the action, Hama is the primary observer of Yuki's weaknesses and her desire for suicide; and Hama is continually confronted with the falsity of her first romantic ideals. This particular device, therefore, posits the contradiction in a way that is specifically thematic. Hama's voice-over describes what she has been told in the past, while the images we see can be either past, present or future.

These brief words of explanation do not explain away this device, and it remains an explicit contradiction in the structure of the film. It is there for a purpose, however, and like the potter's return home in Ugetsu, where the house is first empty and then Miyagi appears by a fire, it is here a type of trick for producing an effect. It has the immediate function of opening up the film for a variety of readings. It brings forward Hama's subjectivity to a prominent position, and intimates that her point of view will be central. As with Ugetsu, the contradictory device is modern, but it does not throw into question perception or reality. Hama comes to grips with her ruined expectations, and because she is so compassionate over Yuki's senseless suicide, she is a strong progressive character.

The last example of a contradictory point of view occurs in Sisters of the Gion. Near the beginning of the film, the bankrupt merchant, Furusawa, visits his mistress, the older sister, Umekichi. As she hustles him on his way to the bath, Omocha, the younger sister, watches the couple while brushing her teeth. There is a one-shot, medium shot of her looking toward screen right which is followed by a cut to Umekichi and Furusawa by the doorway. In this shot, the camera is placed where Omocha stands, and we are therefore in a position to see her point of view. As Furusawa leaves, the camera pans right with Umekichi as she re-enters the outer room and frames her as she meets Omocha there; the younger girl has changed positions unbeknownst to the viewer.

In this example and in Madame Yuki, the movement of the characters reveals a temporal ellipsis. The extreme continuity of the action in Sisters, however, seems to make this ambiguity almost nebulous. In Madame Yuki, as we have seen, it is an aural device primarily which is responsible for the contradiction. The device is not one which obscures the relationship between characters, but only the relation between the narrator and the characters. Because this occurs in Mizoguchi's films in a variety of contexts, it is not a device we can associate specifically with any one genre over another. It occurs in Sisters in the historical present, in The Downfall and White Threads in flashback, in Madame Yuki as a bridge between present and future and in Ugetsu as a moment of fantasy within what seems to be the present. There is thus a decided link between point of view and time; and this distinction is the most general mark of a narrator's imprint on any fictional work.

In Mizoguchi's use of the contradictory point of view, we can see illusion being undercut—the illusion of an absolute separation between narrator and character point of view. In the West, first and third person shots often overlap, but they do not as a rule appear openly contradictory. In Japan, however, the fictional narrator is built into most modern works by a process of self-effacement. This is only secondarily a result of modern convention and the illusionism of classical realism. Its centre expresses the closeness in Japan between the subject and object. Every allusion to the subject whether as subject of discourse or of the text or of speech is suspect because it asserts the independence of the self. The fact that in both Japan and the West there are forms of illusionism does not mean that they were created by the same means and for the same reasons. In Western realism, the nature of the configuration, post hoc ergo propter hoc does as much to affirm the individual as it does to mask a guiding intelligence. The same is perhaps true in Japan, except that the Japanese have continually tried to break down this distinction between subject and object, self and other, while the West has attempted to conceal it. Neither enterprise has been successful, and the points at which both intersect are those filled with the most ambiguity.

What has seemed like an obvious incompatibility in these contradictory point of view structures seems actually in the Japanese context to suggest a negation of difference. These formal relationships are much like the simple first person shots which if held for a considerable time begin to appear like objective, third person views. In The Life of Oharu, fully three-quarters of the film occurs in flash-back from Oharu's point of view; at the end of her recollection, however, the opening shots are repeated. Oharu's rendition of her past is thus objectified, and her perspective is made to correspond with the author's in a manner which is conspicuous. This circularity is true in a sense to the original (Saikaku's The Life of an Amorous Woman), in that it too is told by a narrator but through the woman's own words. Once he disappears, he never returns, and her comments merge with his in an implied agreement. We ultimately cannot tell who is telling the story, and this is also true of Mizoguchi's film.

It is true that the contradictory point of view occurs in-frequently if we can only find five instances in thirty-two films. It is, therefore, quite narrow to suppose that in uncovering some common ground between the films in which the devices occur, we have 'explained' Mizoguchi. It is also true, however, that a film which blurs a consistent point of view can be modernist in one context and classical in another. This possibility is certainly a problem in Japanese literature, when the 20th century novel often has more in common with the nouveau roman than with Hemingway or George Eliot. Does this mean that Japanese writers have assimilated the 19th century novel to such an extent that they can reject it by creating new evolutionary forms? Or is there something within the Japanese understanding of the novel in general which allows them to create something new but based on their own theories of aesthetics? Is this modernism or neoclassicism?

In Japan it is most likely that critics will not notice these contradictions in Mizoguchi, or if they do, they are not very concerned with them. This does not mean that film-makers themselves are unaware of them, or that the more modest, audience-pleasing directors will not carefully avoid contradictions and potential ambiguity. Still, there is some phenomenon in Japanese culture that makes both these observations true; and it seems important to understand what this is so that we can discuss point of view with some kind of authority.

Part of the solution lies in Mizoguchi's iconoclasm. It is reported how he argued with Shochiku that in the interest of realism he would be obliged actually to kill the actors in The 47 Ronin. His persuasion was in part responsible for his using a recent kabuki version of the story in which there were none of the usual expansive action sequences. Of course many of his films were among the most popular of their day, but a number were evidently hard for audiences to follow. He is now considered an 'art' director, and this means in Japan approximately what it does in the West.

The greater part of explaining Mizoguchi's use of contradiction is perhaps better seen as expressing the conciliatory function of the Japanese artist. Whether this is looked on as a reconciliation between nature and culture or some other such abstraction, it does denote a particular mediating function of artists in Japan. (The distinction between serious and popular is often meaningless for the creator of Japanese fiction.) Similarly, in most of Mizoguchi's films, there are characters who function as go-betweens within the stories. They either mediate between other characters or manipulate the action by themselves. This figure has a real counterpart in Japanese society (formalised in arranged marriages or informal industrial mediation) and it is a permanent fixture of consensus democracy. It is therefore possible to see Mizoguchi's presence as narrator marked into a few of his films by the contradictory device. He organises film continuity in a way which is similar to the manner in which his characters attempt to manipulate their realities.

This analogy is different from a non-Japanese equivalent because of the emphasis placed in Japan on formalism. This leads to further speculation that only by calling attention to form can art in Japan really be separated from life. If Mizoguchi did perceive point of view to be the essential construction of film, then his making it into a contradiction is a form of his self-consciousness. It makes his films more real than reality by seeming less autonomous and less illusory; however, the myth of no illusion can be just as binding as the myth of total illusion.