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CHAPTER ONE WRITING A HISTORY
In order to read scenarios, I went through a lot of trouble in my youth. At the time, I was a student at a railroad engineering college in Niigata but on a couple of Saturday evenings every year I took my savings and got on a night train to Tokyo. Those were the postwar days of inconvenient transportation, so on most occasions I slept the nine hours it took, crouching on newspapers spread along the aisle. Then I walked around the whole Sunday in used book stores in the Kanda area and looked for journals and books that would contain old scenario masterpieces. Old journals and the like were cheap so I could buy a lot. Owing to this, I had no other hobbies but did not mind in the least. After stuffing the journals that I had accumulated in my rucksack, I returned to Niigata on another night train and on Monday morning went straight from the station to my classes (Satō 1975: 290)
Aside from the particular train trip, what Satō is describing was no doubt a common practice for many young people of his generation with deep interest in cinema. He adds that after reading the scenarios of celebrated prewar films no longer available for watching, he was usually convinced of their historical importance (Satō 1975: 289). Above all, this account attests to the role published scenarios played for such self-educated postwar film buffs as Satō.
Scenarios first began to appear in various periodicals in the mid-1920s, serving as a main source of learning for aspiring scriptwriters. Although by then, first manuals in Japanese already existed, the method of “observe and learn” was regarded as the most effective one for immersing oneself in the art of writing film scripts. This was a mostly utilitarian approach but by the mid-1930s, coinciding with the advent of sound cinema, calls to read scenarios as autonomous literary texts began to be heard. The publishing reached its peak in the 1950s by the appearance of scenarios in major film journals such as Kinema junpō (Motion Picture Times) and numerous book series. This interest by the general film audience was accompanied by a number of critical accounts on individual scriptwriters and attempts at writing film history from a viewpoint of scriptwriting. The amount and scope of materials available alone suggests the interest this mode of reading elicited. Curiously, the viability of published scenarios seems to have run parallel to the health of the Japanese film industry which faced the start of a stark decline by the mid-1960s.
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE WRITING A HISTORY
Film histories and scriptwriting
Exclusion from histories
Inclusion in histories
Scriptwriting in Japanese film histories
Contribution to film history
History in fragments
Iida and Kobayashi
Tanaka and Satō
A complete history of Japanese scriptwriting
Framing history
Structuring principles
Time frames personalised
CHAPTER TWO FORGING A FORMAT
Early script froms and their influences
Influenced by Hollywood
Transcriptions and translations
The formats of silent scenario
The master-scene scenario
Talkie crisis and scriptwriters
Transitional formats
The standardisation of scenarios
Materiality of the scenario
Genkō yōshi
The typed script
Hybrid modernity of scriptwriting
CHAPTER THREE SITUATING THE SCRIPTWRITER
The status of the scriptwriter
Geniuses and craftsmen
Scenario writer and scenario author
The canon of scriptwriters
The working conditions of the scriptwriter
The script department
The master-disciple system
Writing alone and together
The writing in
Gender in scriptwriting
Writer as wife
Female scriptwriters
A critique of the yoyū system
CHAPTER FOUR LOOKING FOR LITERATURE
Semi-independence of the scenario
The Scenario Literature Movement
Analogies in drama and music
Independence and intermediality
Critics and writers
Critic as catalyst
Professional divide
New talents
Scenario as alternative to film
Original scenario and bungei eiga
Anti-commercialisation of cinema
Scenario as archive
Focusing on the reader
CHAPTER FIVE READING SCENARIOS
Scenario publishing and canon
Standard and contesting formats
Journalistic resources and anthologies
Static and dynamic canon
Strategies of scenario publishing
Scenario and its readers
Between accuracy and evocativeness
From reader to writer
Examples of readers
Itami Mansaku’s scenario reviews
Reviews and their context
Examples of reviews
Itami’s achievement and influence
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
