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ABSTRACT
The 1958 film The Eternal Rainbow stands out in renowned director Kinoshita Keisuke’s oeuvre. Set entirely on location at the huge Yahata Steel Works, the film explores the lives of workers at the onset of Japan’s economic miracle before problems associated with the GDP-boosting polices appeared, when the pillars of smoke rising from the plant were still perceived as a sign of hope and prosperity. The film exposes the conflict between privileged regular employees and subcontracted workers, mirroring a basic social inequality that has resurfaced during Japan’s recent ‘lost decades’. A further theme running through the film is the existential question of the alienating effects of wage labour. In privileging problems identified with social maladies of decades to come, the film reminds us that Japan’s narrative of discontent might not be such a recent phenomenon. The film became variously praised for its ambitious approach, incorporating stylistic features borrowed from documentary film, and innovative exploration from the inside of the microcosm of a steel works; as well as criticized for its propagandistic features, and for its non-committal attitude towards the social conflict foregrounded by the film. While discussing its aesthetic and thematic features, this article explores critical responses to the film in mainstream newspapers and film publications, as well as commentary by workers in minor non-academic journals.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Mats Karlsson is a Senior Lecturer at The University of Sydney where he researches and teaches on Japanese and comparative literature, as well as Japanese cinema. He is currently working on a monograph to deal with Japanese popular film of the 1960s. For recent film related articles, see his: ‘Setsuko Hara: Japan’s eternal virgin and reluctant star of the silver screen’, in Stars in world cinema: Screen icons and star systems across cultures (2015); and ‘Shohei Imamura’s profound desire for Japan’s cultural roots: Critical approaches to Profound Desires of the Gods’, in Killers, clients and kindred spirits: The taboo cinema of Shohei Imamura (forthcoming 2019).
Notes
1 Kinoshita’s withdrawal coincided with Shōchiku’s refusal of a script dealing with his wartime experiences in China, a film to be shot on location in China, although Kinoshita (Citation1987) cites an embezzlement affair involving a studio executive who inflated the budget for Kinoshita’s films as the immediate cause in his memoirs.
2 I am grateful to the editor and referees for pointing out that the documentary sequences of Rainbow are stylistically reminiscent of contemporary industrial film (sangyō eiga) such as Sakuma Dam (Sakuma damu, Iwanami Eiga, 1954–1957), and even of wartime industrial output promotion films like Searing Wind (Neppū, Yamamoto Satsuo, 1943), also set a Yahata. Furthermore, the Yahata Steel Works was involved in promoting industrial film, sponsoring films like A Steel Works Built on the Sea (Umi ni kizuku seitetsujo, Iwanami Eiga, 1959), documenting the construction of one of the steel mills at Yahata. As such, there is thus nothing stylistically new or avant-garde about Rainbow’s incorporation of documentary footage. What is new is the way in which the film mixes drama with documentary.
3 Although the notorious Minamata disease was first discovered in 1956, it was not until around 1961 that noticeable effects of environmental pollution began to spread uncannily in Japan. Still, as administration and legislation were slow to act, since avoiding a slowdown in industrial output was the overriding priority, it was not until 1969 that the first whitepaper on pollution appeared. By the middle of the sixties, consensus about the merits of high economic growth was waning in some quarters, thanks to the initiatives of citizens’ protest movements, yet environmental pollution was largely left unregulated until the latter stage of the period of high growth. (See Mizusawa Citation1986, 79–82.) Taira (Citation1993, 170) notes,
By 1970, however, the Japanese no longer thought that GNP growth was the great thing that it had once thought it. It was increasingly clear that GNP growth was obtained at a cost to the quality of life and the environment.
4 As critics have noted, Suda’s devotion to Sagara, and his obsession with his marriage prospects, appear slightly exaggerated and unwarranted by the overall plot of the film. This feature, though – of a young character’s earnest devotion to a mentor, elder-brother type of character – is a leitmotif running through the director’s oeuvre.
5 The film was voted into 9th place (men’s division) and 5th place (women’s division) in The Movie Times’ poll (Kinema junpō, February 1959 [first issue], p. 48–49).
6 The film was originally commissioned to celebrate the centenary of the German railroad. The formally outstanding film is reminiscent of Russian constructivism in its use of a variety of stylistic elements. As the representation of the railway workers, in particular, did not correspond to National Socialist iconography, though, the film did not pass Nazi censorship and was not shown until 1954 (Source: filmportal.de). Fukuda erroneously gives the production year of 1942.
7 Komatsu (Citation1999, 220), a section chief at the plant during the fifties, has explained that the status system that discriminated between staff members and workers was abolished, after strong pressure from the union, with the introduction of the foreman system in 1958, the year that Rainbow premiered.
8 The same letter was published on the ‘Eiken dayori’ page in The Movie Times (Kinema junpō, January 1959 [first issue], p. 216) under the name of Naitō Takeshi together with other critical letters from workers at the plant. Here it becomes evident that workers had tried to arrange a meeting with Kinoshita to explain their standpoint, but that company management had refused to grant them access to the director. Another contributor, Kuroda Gen, goes as far as doubting Kinoshita’s humanism in making a film so single-mindedly devoted to company PR.
9 Even though this particular propagandistic feature of the film is quite evident, Satō (Citation1958) is the only commentator who has broached the subject when commenting that the film somewhat gives the impression of a ‘seen-with-my-own-eyes’ style of Soviet introduction film (‘kono me de mita Soren’ toka itta shiki no Soviet shōkai eiga no inshō ni chotto nite iru).
10 The problem mentioned here possibly refers to the labour–management issue raised in note 7 above.
11 The most appreciative review appeared in the weekly Amusement Yomiuri (Goraku Yomiuri), which hailed all aspects of the film. Here the reviewer even claims that the film has skilfully fused machine and man into one entity and that characters are portrayed as living beings in a balanced way, aspects that most critics otherwise find lacking in the film (Nagae Citation1958, 33).
12 On subcontracting, Taira (Citation1993, 180) notes,
The economics of the subcontracting system demonstrate how “efficient” it is for maximizing the share of the top firms and minimizing that of workers in the aggregate … . Eventually, at the bottom of the system the least advantaged workers bear the brunt of cost-cutting pressures coming down on them from all the higher levels of the system.