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The villain of the Japanese screen,
Sojin Kamiyama, in a scene with Miss
- Yoshiko Tsubonchi.
Bv Rose McKee
TOKIO.
THE Japanese motion picture in-
does not go in for things
magnificent and stupendous.
Its studios, although repre
senting an investment of 22,500,000 yen,
or about $7,(300,000, are on the dinky
side.
You get into the largest studio in
Japan, that of Shochiku at Ofuna, sim
ply by walking in through the wide,
open gate which is unguarded. You
hail a passing employe and send in
your card. You have no appointment
but in 10 minutes you are closeted with
the big shot of the lot, General Manager
Osamu Rokusha.
His office is a cubicle opening directly
onto the long, narrow hall which runs
the length of the administrative build
ing. There are no telephones in his
office. There is no outer office, no circle
of secretaries or stenographers. When
the Big Shot wants tea, he yells out the
window to a girl passing by.
In addition to his plain, inexpensive
desk, the office is furnished with one
tall, thin filing cabinet and a small table
around whiota are four chairs. The
offices of the 12 directors are similar.
One has a crude davenport. One has a
bed.
The stars lack the off-stage glamour
of their Hollywood colleagues. They
do not roll up to work in streamlined
roadsters done in two-toned yellow and
brown. Instead they come by electric
train from Tokio, an hour away, and
walk from the station to the studio.
ONLY one star, Kimuyo Tanaka, has a
dressing room to herself. It is a lit
tle Japanese room, damp and cold in
winter. Her dressing table, not as large
as an apple box, has a mirror in which
she can manage to see herself full
length if she stands just so.
Two cushions take the place of chairs.
Instead of cosmetics, her little table is
cluttered with tea cups and a toothpick
holder. When Kimuyo wants to wash,
she must put on her shoes and go out
in the hall to the general washstand.
If she wants a bath, she must go to
another building.
Six other stars share two similar
dressing rooms, three girls to a room.
All the other 250 players prepare to go
before the camera in one long, general
room. They use portable dressing
tables which they provide themselves
and which they bring with them each
day.
Two narrow benches, punctuated by
spotlights, run the length of the room.
At her place at the bench, a leading
lady opens her dressing table and be
gins her make-up, with as little elbow
room as she would have at a crowded
lunch counter.
The Japanese “Hollywood”—(be largest film studio in Japan, that of
Shochiku Films at Ofuna, a Tokio suburb.
Each star is her own beautician until
it comes to her coiffure. For that she
goes to what is euphemistically called
“the hairdressing parlor.” It is a messy
little “two-chair” room without booths.
She sits in an old, sawed-off wicker
armchair while -’an untidy “operator”
marcels her hair with irons heated over
a charcoal fire. Employes lounge about
watching the process.
Screen clothes are provided for all
the players, but a single dress is used
over and over again after slight altera
tions from a designing department
which, although it qualifies in ingenuity,
rates low in chic.
CHOCHIKU has a restaurant on the
lot, a two-story Spanish building
which offers food but no enchantment.
Employes eat on the ground floor, play
ers and guests upstairs where the eleva
tion is only a matter of height. There
is no swank, and not even a tablecloth.
As the working day frequently runs
well into the night, sleeping facilities
are provided. The "actors' bedroom,”
a raised platform covered by straw mat
ting, is bare except for a pile of bed
clothing in a corner. Each actor takes
a mattress and quilts and makes up his
own bed on the floor. There is space
for 50 men to sleep, provided they lie
side by side in one long row.
Japanese movie stars do their twin
kling for meager sums, by Hollywood
standards. The highest paid get only
1000 yen or $290 a month. Half that
pay is considered good by many who
are popular on the Tokio screen but
are frowned on by country audiences.
Many featured players trail along at
about S6O a month and are content
There is no temperament or breaking
of contracts by Japanese film luminar
ies.
The “big names” fatten their salaries
by outside work. A favorite means, as
in Hollywood, is endorsement of adver
tised products. Personal appearances
are believed to help out many purses
but Miss Masako Ohara, a Nikkatsu
star, declares that the outlay in new
clothes, which a personal appearance
necessitates, eats up all the profit.
Nor do the stars glitter wickedly In
their private lives. The "moral disci
pline” department of the studio sees to
that. This department is maintained
“to prevent loose relations between ac-
A bit of comedy in a Japanese movie.
From the left, the players are Jitsuyo
Takase, Denjiro Okochi, Yonosuke
Toba and Momonosuke Ichikawa.
tors and actresses.” The manager of
one of the studios explained that there
are few offenses “because the faces of
stars are well known to the public and
the public would know immediately if
actors and actresses were to go about
together. And the public would in
stantly disapprove.”
It isn’t done in Japan. The stars
would lose their popularity first, their •
jobs next.
The moral discipline department al
lows smoking but no drinking with the
exception of “a little” beer or sake. One
studio restaurant sells drinks to guests
but only one slim glass of beer to a
player.
The stars have no spare time to get
into mischief—a motion picture indus
try which in 1935 turned out 444 films
supplies them with plenty of work. The
subjects of their pictures are varied,,
with a tendency toward a serious view
of life.
Japanese audiences are fond of
tragedy and a Japanese motion picture
without tears is not a success. Women
feel cheated if they have not had the
opportunity to sniffle over a heart-rend
ing scene. Influenced by American
movies, comedies are coming to be ap
preciated but they do not satisfy unless
they have 30 per cent of tear-jerking
elements.
The most popular theme is that of
relations between parents and children.
Serials and silent pictures are still being
made extensively, 178 silent movies hav
ing been turned out in 1935 in com
parison with 133 talkies and 133 pio
tures with sound accompaniment.
Two hundred and fifty-seven of thesa
movies were heroic melodramas of the
feudal days in Japan, corresponding in
type to “westerns” in the United States.
Their popularity is marked for a de
cline in the cities and one studio has
already stopped making them.
American movies are supreme ha
Tokio and other large cities where they
are preferred to Japanese films which
Young Japan deems slow and stodgy.
Taste for American pictures changes
periodically but the popularity of “G-
Men” has yet to be equaled. The Jap
anese love to see federal men get tha
best of gangsters, with lots of shoot
ing, and as a result, Tokio has had a
seven-month run of pictures such as
“Mary Burns, Fugitive,” which the Jap
anese film critics promptly renamed
“G-Woman”
When box office receipts of America*
movies were compared at the end of
1936, “Follow the Fleet,” 9 Ginger Rog
ers-Fred Astaire picture, led all tha
others. For a while one had to be a
friend of the manager to buy a ticket
for the theater when this picture was
being shown.