To the Disengaged Observer: A Reply to Peter Lehman
Author(s): Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell
Source: Journal of Film and Video , Winter 1988, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Winter 1988), pp. 63-66
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video
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To the Disengaged Observer: A Reply to Peter Lehman
Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell
There are so many distortions, muddles,
and misrepresentations in Peter Lehman's
recent critique of our work on Japanese
cinema that it would require at least as
long as his original, 'The Mysterious Ori
ent, the Crystal Clear Orient, the Non
Existent Orient: Dilemmas of Western
Scholars of Japanese Film," (in JFV 39.1)
to point out all of them. Such an exercise
would, however, not be of interest to us or
the readers of the Journal of Film and
Video. Yet, as Lehman's critique is quite
misleading on certain central points, we
feel obliged to address what we see as his
essay's most glaring problems.
Lehman's principal object of attack is an
essay we wrote, "Space and Narrative in
the Films of Ozu," in the summer of 1975
and which was published in Screen a year
later. He also has things to say about an
essay by Bord well written in 1978 and
published in 1979, 4Our Dream-Cinema:
Western Historiography and the Japanese
Film." We shall try to show that he thor
oughly misreads them, but here it is worth
noting, first, that he never refers to
Thompson's essay, "Notes on the Spatial
System of Ozu's Early Films," published
in Wide Angle in 1977, when Lehman was
editor of that journal, even though it con
tains material relevant to his argument.
Secondly, it is easy to forget that in the
mid-seventies works by Donald Richie
and Paul Schr?der were virtually the only
ones a westerner could read about Ozu.
Noel Burch's To the Distant Observer was
not published until 1979, and Sato's work
was almost completely untranslated.
Recalling this historical context already
eliminates some of the pseudo-issues Leh
man raises. For example, he chides our
article for having "little interest" in the
work of Tadao Sato. We are actually very
interested in Sato's work, a fact evidenced
by the many references to his writings in
Bordwell's forthcoming book, Ozu and
the Poetics of Cinema and Thompson's
forthcoming study, "Late Spring and
Ozu's Unreasonable Style," in Breaking
the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Anal
ysis. Sato's writings have only become
available in translation since we wrote our
1976 article. Lehman also expresses sur
prise that we did not refer to the concept
of 'Orientalism" in our 1976 article; but
of course, Edward Said's Orientalism,
from which Lehman apparently himself
picked up the term, was not published
until 1978. Similarly, he seeks to show that
we criticize Richie and Schr?der for being
"mired in Orientalism." But if we never
use the concept, we could not criticize
others in its name. In fact we criticize
them from a straightforward "Western"
perspective: that their critical method, be
ing excessively committed to thematic
meaning, does not account for the stylistic
data our research reveals. This critique
cannot, by and large, be leveled against
Lehman, since he prefers to discuss none
of Ozu's films and hence will not confront
our arguments on the grounds of evidence.
(True, a footnote mentions Floating
Weeds, but it errs in claiming that it lacks
the "spatial and editing complexity" we
attribute to Ozu. In fact, our article draws
several examples from the film.)
We do not invoke this historical context
apologetically, since we stand by virtually
everything we argued in the 1976 article
and in Thompson's 1977 sequel: about the
particular spatial devices and systems Ozu
uses, about the generally non-causal mo
JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 40.1 (Winter 1988) 63
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tivation of them, about the degree of play
fulness and stylistic foregrounding at work
in them. Subsequent research and analysis
have confirmed our belief that Ozu is
unique among not only Western but also
Japanese directors in his stylistic systems
and principles. Nowhere does Lehman
offer evidence against these conclusions.
Instead, in the guise of surveying different
approaches to Japanese films, he simply
juxtaposes other people's opinions with
our conclusions.
For instance, Lehman reproduces Joseph
Anderson's claim (originally made in an
interview with Lehman) that Ozu's style is
not unique and that indeed other Shochiku
directors, such as Shimazu, employ it.
Anderson cites no films. Lehman cites no
films. Our reply can thus be simple. We
ask Lehman to show how Shimazu's sty
listic devices and systems resemble Ozu's.
We are confident that the Shimazu films
we have seen (Our Neighbor, Miss Yae,
Okoto and Sasuke, A Brother and His
Younger Sister, and Fighting Fish) will
back up our claims that Ozu's style is
idiosyncratic.
Lehman also chastises us for too readily
inserting Ozu into the framework of West
ern film history. Yet he offers no evidence
to back up his assumption that Western
cinema is not pertinent to Ozu. Perhaps
this is the reason he ignores Thompson's
1977 article. This offers evidence that Ozu
was aware of Hollywood cinema's stylis
tic devices and deliberately swerved from
them. Lehman instead cites Willemen's
claim that Ozu is irrelevant to Western
modes. Again, we invite Lehman to pro
duce evidence that would back up Wille
men's contention.
Lehman's chief strategy should be appar
ent: citation of authority. Said, Anderson,
Willemen, Oshima, Sato?all are simply
juggled together, used to raise the possi
bilities of other readings. To write this
article, Lehman would not need to have
ever seen a Japanese film. It certainly
makes research simple to ask Anderson or
Oshima what to think about Japanese cin
ema; but without some grappling with
evidence and some sense of what one's
critical questions are, that research will
inevitably smack of dilettantism and pas
tiche. More specific to this case, it is
certainly odd to criticize 'Orientalism"
for investing authority in privileged West
erners who know the East, and then cite
as irrefutable sources Anderson and Wil
lemen.
Lehman declares that our 1976 article's
use of the term "modernism" to charac
terize Ozu was too ethnocentric in fitting
Ozu into a pantheon of directors like Tati
and Bresson. He claims that the Japanese
themselves regard Ozu as a traditionalist.
We would make two points here. First,
Ozu was not always regarded as a "tradi
tionalist." Bordwell's book shows that
this image of his work emerged only in the
forties and especially after World War II,
in a broader context of a particular ideol
ogy of "Japaneseness." Secondly, in the
1979 article, Bord well acknowledged that
some of Willemen's criticisms of the 1976
article were justified: "A split between
'classicism' (Hollywood) and 'modernism'
seems much too absolute. I also think that
the Formalist work has been too ahisto
rical (that is, not Formalist enough). . . .
The term 'modernism' has been used too
loosely in the Formalist approach" ("Our
Dream-Cinema" 54). Lehman nowhere
acknowledges this qualification. Instead,
he asserts that Bordwell uses a "sleight of
hand" to discount Willemen's critique.
This trick supposedly consists of not an
swering Willemen's and Anderson's claim
that Ozu's style might be related to tradi
tional Japanese art. But how does one
answer such a claim apart from requesting
that an actual argument, instead of a vague
possibility, be produced? Since Lehman
wants to intervene in this controversy, we
ask him to produce an argument that
historically connects the specific devices
and systems we have revealed in Ozu's
64 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 40.1 (Winter 1988)
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films with some form of traditional art.
Lehman is thereby committed, in our
view, to providing a historical mechanism
whereby Ozu could adapt these while
other directors do not do so. We caution
him in advance against vague analogies
between Ozu's work and traditional art
forms, since not only is such a tactic
inherently unhistorical; it is also a com
mon recourse of the dreaded Orientalist.
The misrepresentations go on and on.
"Bordwell and Thompson risk reducing
the text to a clear system of easily observ
able and knowable patterns which require
no special knowledge of Japanese cul
ture" (Lehman "Mysterious Orient" 12).
No, it is Lehman's reading which risks
this, since we never claimed to be analyz
ing all aspects of Ozu's work in this arti
cle. Temporal structure, Ozu's use of his
torical motifs, large-scale narrative
patterns?all these factors and more
would need to be considered. Moreover,
the stylistic operations are indeed observ
able without cultural knowledge of the
sort Lehman indicates; the issue is
whether or not they are causally explain
able without extratextual knowledge, and
this we have not asserted. (Whether they
are "easily" observable is a moot point,
since as far as we know we were the first
to point many of them out.) Finally, here
is a quotation from the 1979 article by
Bordwell, who purportedly has no interest
in film's relation to culture.
Our goal is, eventually, a totalized
view. How can we see film style, the
film industry, and the social matrix in
one complex whole? Nothing less
than a theory of art in culture is
required (58).
In our 1976 article we had argued that
thematizing interpretation is more com
fortable than an analysis that grants that
style may, if only intermittently, be seen
as independent of narrative motivation.
But Lehman accuses us of taking an
"easy" critical path by elevating the ab
stract graphic and spatial patterns in Ozu's
films to the status of a major structure.
This would be true if this were all that we
were suggesting. But this is perhaps Leh
man's most profound distortion of our
article. As the title implies, we wanted
only to look at the functions of spatial
devices in relation to the narrative. Fur
thermore, we did not suggest that viewers
should ignore the narrative aspects of the
films to revel in abstract patterns on the
screen. Far from it. We tried to show that
Ozu's films are complex and daring be
cause?unlike most classical Western and
most Japanese films?they play with nar
rative and other formal patterns simulta
neously. The results are hardly as simple
as they emerge in Lehman's account
(which in fact shows no detailed grasp of
the specific principles we outlined, such as
360-degree shooting space, dominant/
overtone interplay, graphic matching, and
so on). Our article does not support the
sort of hedonistic, conservative formalism
Lehman tries to ascribe to it. The general
point was that critics find it hard to recog
nize the possibility of a style's having
effects, and significant ones, that are not
reducible to thematic meanings. This is
well illustrated by Lehman's recent arti
cle, 'Oshima: The Avant-Garde Artist
without an Avant-Garde Style," which,
though nominally about the director's pur
ported lack of a consistent auteur style,
contains no analysis of style as such at all
(58).
To all of this Lehman could still reply that
he was simply surveying the problems of
ethnocentrism and the Japanese "other"
that haunt the field. But everybody knows
about these problems, and scholars'
awareness of them has increased over the
last decade. From our earliest articles on
Ozu right up to the present, we have
aimed at a greater sensitivity to all fac
tors?textual and critical?that make Jap
anese cinema interesting. (Indeed, Bord
well sought to raise these issues in the
1979 piece.) One cannot survey the prob
lems in a field by juxtaposing quotations
JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 40.1 (Winter 1988) 65
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torn from context, by ignoring the relevant
research literature, and by refusing to en
gage with the evidence. It is remarkable
that Lehman can chide us and others
(Stephen Heath, Edward Branigan) for
disregarding Japanese culture when his
own essay does just that.
In short, Lehman's article does not move
the field of Japanese film studies in any
useful direction. It is too outdated and
inaccurate in its discussion of other peo
ple's work to function as an adequate
outline of the historiographie and concep
tual issues at stake, and it is so ungroun
ded in evidence that it cannot constitute
the initial stage of a new research pro
gram.
Works Cited
Bordwell, David. 'Our Dream-Cinema:
Western Historiography and the Japa
nese Film/1 Film Reader 4 (1979):
45-62.
?. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema.
Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987.
Lehman, Peter. "Oshima: The Avant
Garde Artist without an Avant-Garde
Style." Wide Angle 9.2 (1978): 18
31.
?. 'The Mysterious Orient, the Crystal
Clear Orient, the Non-Existent Orient:
Dilemmas of Western Scholars of Japa
nese Film." Journal of Film and Video
39.1 (Winter 1987): 5-15.
Thompson, Kristin. "Late Spring and
Ozu's Unreasonable Style." Breaking
the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film
Analysis. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1988
forthcoming.
?. "Notes on the Spatial System of Ozu's
Early Films." Wide Angle 1.4 (1977):
8-17.
Thompson, Kristin and David Bordwell.
"Space and Narrative in the Films of
Ozu." Screen 17.2 (Summer 1976):
41-73.
66 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 40.1 (Winter 1988)
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