Sfilmować duszę - wstęp do historii kina japońskiego
To Film the Soul - An Introduction to the History of Japanese Cinema

Summary/Abstract: The text is a fragment of the monograph on the history of Japan’s cinematography from the first public screenings of motion pictures, with benshi (Japanese silent films narrators) participating in the early 20th century to the world re-activation of Japanese cinema in the 1990s and the huge popularity of anime films. Kletowski divides the history of Japanese cinema into seven periods. The first two ones are discussed in this text and in the article "The Classic Period - 1923-1945 (K. Mizoguchi, T. Uchida and T. Kinugasa)". Kletowski presents the original socio-artistic situation in which Japanese cinema was developing in the initial period when it was clearly placed within the receptive context of traditional Japanese arts. Kletowski highlights the basic qualities of Japanese cinema, which appeared in the early period of Japan’s cinematic art and are present in Japanese film aesthetics today (e.g. New School films: gendai-geki, contemporary films vs. Old School films: jidai-geki, historical films); also emphasized is the role of film studios in the development of cinematographic art, and the socio-political conditions of Japan’s cinematographic art till 1945 (where leftist tendencies clashed with nationalist ones). The description of the early works of such directors as Kenji Mizoguchi or Yasujiro Ozu indicates that Japanese cinema had matured artistically before sound was introduced into movies.

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