The following is from Masayuki Takayama's serial column entitled "No anti-war is needed." It appeared in the 7/9 issue of Shukan Shincho.
The serial column of him and Ms.Yoshiko Sakurai bring the weekly Shincho to a successful conclusion.
After all, I subscribe to Weekly Shincho to read the papers of both people.
This article also proves that Masayuki Takayama is one and only journalist in the post-war world.
On a T.V. quiz show, there was a question asking which country produced the most movies in the world.
In recent years, unexpected countries have risen to the top of the movie-making world.
Nigeria has almost no movie theaters and has produced more than twice as many films as Hollywood.
China is also making a lot of propaganda-smelling films, but the correct answer to the quiz in India.
The studio is crowded together around Bombay (Mumbai) and is called "Bollywood" by its name.
They make 2,000 films a year, three times as many as Hollywood's.
In fact, Japan was a movie powerhouse that surpassed Hollywood, which was the best in the world.
There were many studios such as Toho, Toei, Nikkatsu, and others, and the annual audience was 1.1 billion people, ten times the population.
Standing room only was the norm.
Movies were the king of entertainment.
There were many heroes, and when Kurama Tengu rode his white horse, the audience applauded.
Ninkyo-mono was Koji Tsuruta on his way home from a suicide mission and Ken Takakura in a well-fitting role.
For some reason, Ken's later years were filled with depressing anti-war films, and I felt sorry for him.
Yuzo Kayama, the young general, looked good as a young officer.
Independence Regiment of Idle Fools, which took out Frankie Sakai's Eighth Route Army, was a first-rate entertainment film.
Why did such Japanese films go into decline?
One reason is the advent of television. At first, the screen size was 17 inches, and on top of that, it was black and white.
In contrast, the movies were all-natural color CinemaScope.
So Toei was releasing two films a week.
Television was not an enemy to be feared, no matter how much they stood up against it.
And in 1958, the brothel's year disappeared, the five major companies arrogantly agreed not to show Japanese films on T.V. stations.
If you want to show your movies on T.V., you should train your own actors on your own sets and shoot them.
Troubled T.V. stations brought in Rawhide, Combat, and Papa Knows Everything from the U.S.
Vic Morrow became a living room hero.
NHK also made good ratings with Ms.Toake Yukiyo from "Bus Street Back."
As T.V. became more attractive, fewer people went to the cinema.
Within a few years of the five-company agreement, audiences continued to decline, eventually dropping to one-twentieth the number.
For once, Japan should have followed the example of the United States.
Even in the United States, the three major television networks, including CBS, stood in Hollywood.
But movies were a crucial national propaganda organ.
The U.S. was a democracy and knew mercy, while Germany was portrayed as thoroughly bad.
Japan was also a villain, abusing, and killing naive Chinese people.
So it fostered public opinion that the atomic bombings were deserved.
Because it was such a valuable information and propaganda organization, Congress acted, and The "Financial Interest and Syndication Rules" was established.
In layman's terms, T.V. stations should not finance their own drama productions, but leave the output to the studios.
As a result, Hollywood prospered more and more, and the T.V. stations were able to produce good movies.
In some cases, people like Clint Eastwood rose from television to become major Hollywood stars.
Japan lacked such a vision, with half of the studios going out of business and the T.V. stations producing only half-decent dramas.
Still, the remaining studios could be saved if they made good movies, but the masochistic view of history was cut.
That's the second reason for the decline.
For example, in a scenario in which an intelligence agent infiltrates a specific country that kidnaps Japanese people, organizes terrorism, destroys nuclear facilities, and recovers hostages, it is likely to be accepted.
But it should not be used because it "provokes North Korea" (Yoshio Arita) or something like that.
Even if Hayao Miyazaki tried to portray the Zero fighter in an honest way, the anti-war activists around him wouldn't let him do so.
As a result, he can only make a film that makes a young girl die and cry.
Who would watch such a movie?
But there are some excellent stories, such as Ramo, an onslaught by the Chinese army commanded by an American officer. Five Korean comfort women are forced to hold up the white flag and say, "They will only kill Japanese people" before their deaths.
The five survived, and the Japanese soldiers were wiped out.
True story.
It tells the whole story of the last war and the Japanese people.
That's the kind of movie I want to see that isn't anti-war.
