Tendency Film
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is a
genre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...
of socially conscious, left-leaning films produced in
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
during the 1920s and 1930s. Tendency films reflected a perceived leftward shift in Japanese society in the aftermath of the 1927
Shōwa financial crisis The was a financial panic in 1927, during the first year of the reign of Emperor Hirohito of Japan, and was a foretaste of the Great Depression. It brought down the government of Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō and led to the domination of ...
. Japan's left-wing literary figures also influenced tendency films, with films such as ''A Living Puppet'' and ''
What Made Her Do It? ''What Made Her Do It?'' () is a 1930 Japanese silent film directed by Shigeyoshi Suzuki, based on the Shingeki play. It was the top-grossing Japanese film of the silent era. Notable as an example of a so-called "tendency film" with strong anti ...
'' being adaptations of realist ''
shingeki was a leading form of theatre in Japan that was based on modern realism. Born in the early years of the 20th century, it sought to be similar to modern Western theatre, putting on the works of the ancient Greek classics, William Shakespeare, Moli ...
'' plays. Tendency films are commercial
melodramas A modern melodrama is a dramatic work in which the plot, typically sensationalized and for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue that is often bombastic or exces ...
led by working-class or lower middle-class protagonists, in contrast to the documentaries produced by the Proletarian Film League of Japan. Daisuke Itō's ''
jidaigeki is a genre of film, television, video game, and theatre in Japan. Literally meaning "period dramas", they are most often set during the Edo period of Japanese history, from 1603 to 1868. Some, however, are set much earlier—''Portrait of Hel ...
'' films increasingly featured heroes in revolt against the social system of historical Japan, beginning with ''Servant'' (1927) and culminating with ''Man-Slashing, Horse-Piercing Sword'' (1929).
Tomu Uchida , born Tsunejirō Uchida on 26 April 1898, was a Japanese film director. The stage name "Tomu" translates to “spit out dreams”. Early career Uchida started out at the Taikatsu studio in the early 1920s, but came to prominence at Nikkatsu, ada ...
's ''A Living Puppet'' is the story of an "insincere but talented man who cannot survive within the structure of a capitalist society." ''Behold This Mother'' (1930) crossed the tendency film over with the genre of ''haha-mono'', films which promoted the role of the mother. Reviews noted the use of editing to contrast the lives of the wealthy antagonists against those of the protagonists (their social conditions portrayed in a manner comparable to
social realism Social realism is the term used for work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers and filmmakers that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structure ...
). However, because Soviet films such as ''
Battleship Potemkin '' Battleship Potemkin'' (russian: Бронено́сец «Потёмкин», ''Bronenosets Potyomkin''), sometimes rendered as ''Battleship Potyomkin'', is a 1925 Soviet silent drama film produced by Mosfilm. Directed and co-written by S ...
'' and ''Mother'' were refused entry to Japan, tendency films showed little influence from
Soviet montage Soviet montage theory is an approach to understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily upon editing ('' montage'' is French for "assembly" or "editing"). It is the principal contribution of Soviet film theorists to global cinema, and broug ...
. Due to the pre-existing
Peace Preservation Law The was a Japanese law enacted on April 22, 1925, with the aim of allowing the Special Higher Police to more effectively suppress socialists and communists. In addition to criminalizing forming an association with the aim of altering the ''kokuta ...
in Japan, tendency films were censored since the first developments of the genre. Despite winning the
Kinema Junpo , commonly called , is Japan's oldest film magazine and began publication in July 1919. It was first published three times a month, using the Japanese ''Jun'' (旬) system of dividing months into three parts, but the postwar ''Kinema Junpō'' ha ...
Best One award in 1929, Masahiro Makino's ''Street of Masterless Samurai'' was cut severely. Tomu Uchida's intended follow-up to ''A Living Puppet'', ''The Bluebird,'' was halted by censors altogether. Kenji Mizoguchi's ''Metropolitan Symphony'' won accolades abroad, but a cut version was shown in Japan: a contemporary ''Kinema Junpo'' review complained that "In the uncensored version of the film, the life of the bourgeois is shown as one of deception, corruption, and idle leisure... The contrast between the bourgeois life and proletarian life has been destroyed."
Shigeyoshi Suzuki was a Japanese football player who played for and later managed the Japan national team. Club career Suzuki was born in Fukushima Prefecture on October 13, 1902. He was a founding member of the football team at Waseda University High School in ...
's tendency film ''
What Made Her Do It? ''What Made Her Do It?'' () is a 1930 Japanese silent film directed by Shigeyoshi Suzuki, based on the Shingeki play. It was the top-grossing Japanese film of the silent era. Notable as an example of a so-called "tendency film" with strong anti ...
'' was the most financially successful of all Japanese
silent films A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, whe ...
, playing for five weeks in
Asakusa is a district in Taitō, Tokyo, Japan. It is known as the location of the Sensō-ji, a Buddhist temple dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon. There are several other temples in Asakusa, as well as various festivals, such as the . History The ...
and two months in
Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...
. The Asakusa screenings drove audiences to stamp their feet and shout political slogans in appreciation. Riots were reported by the press. The success of ''What Made Her Do It?'' prompted Japan's
Home Ministry An interior ministry (sometimes called a ministry of internal affairs or ministry of home affairs) is a government department that is responsible for internal affairs. Lists of current ministries of internal affairs Named "ministry" * Ministr ...
to increase its scrutiny of political films: a Censorship Review from June 1930 describes the art form as having "embarked on a concerted effort to influence the thinking of society in general." Kenji Mizoguchi distanced himself from the tendency film genre after the release of ''And Yet They Go On'' in 1931. Teppei Kataoka, screenwriter of ''A Living Puppet'' and ''Metropolitan Symphony'', served a two-year prison sentence and underwent ''
tenkō is a Japanese term referring to the coerced ideological conversions of Japanese socialists and communists who, between 1925 and 1945, were induced to renounce leftist ideologies and enthusiastically embrace the Emperor-centric, capitalist, and imp ...
'' (forced ideological conversion) following his arrest in 1932. Japanese film critic
Tadao Sato was a Japanese film critic, theorist and historian. His real name was . Overviews Born in Niigata, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, He published more than a hundred books on film, and was one of Japan's foremost scholars and historians addressing ...
marks the end of the tendency film genre with Sotoji Kimura's 1933 film ''Youth Across the River''. Tendency films have been criticized as a "heavily commercialized... version of cinematic leftism." ''ABC Lifeline'', a film about striking workers, was directed by the "nominally conservative" Yasujiro Shimazu. Many of the creators of tendency films "avoided overt political commitment" and created propaganda films for the Japanese Army and Navy as Japan's leftist movement declined. After Suzuki directed two propaganda documentaries in 1933, Sato wrote on ''What Made Her Do It?'':
If we accept the film as a work of genuine leftism, we can only marvel at the speed of his political conversion. But, as is more likely the case, if we see it merely as a rather extreme expression of social do-goodery, the question of political conversion is reduced to virtual irrelevance.
Kenji Mizoguchi later directed several propaganda films, as did Tomotaka Tasaka, director of ''Behold This Mother''. Sotoji Kimura would work under Colonel
Masahiko Amakasu was an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army imprisoned for his involvement in the Amakasu Incident, the extrajudicial execution of anarchists after the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, who later became head of the Manchukuo Film Association. Bio ...
at the
Manchukuo Film Association or (Chinese: 株式會社滿洲映畫協會) was a Japanese film studio in Manchukuo during the 1930s and 1940s. Background Man'ei was established by the Kwantung Army in the occupied northeast part of China in 1937. Man'ei controlled the en ...
.


References

History of film of Japan Film genres Japanese words and phrases {{japan-hist-stub