Modernity, Shoshimin Films, and the Proletarian-Film Movement

This chapter resituates the question of modernity in Ozu’s shoshimin eiga within the cultural and political context of proletarian-film movement in the 1930s. This chapter first focuses on the writings by leftist film critics. While, as is today, the term “shoshimin” designated the subject depicted in films, the same term was further used to underline the political attitude of the director. Consequently, “shoshimin eiga” acquired an implication quite opposite to that of today: the politically weak films taken from the shoshimin standpoint. The chapter further develops this other implication of shoshimin eiga, analyzing the film-within-film scene of I Was Born, But . . . with reference to Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera. By foregrounding the fact that Man with a Movie Camera was released in Japan in March 1932 when Ozu took I Was Born, But . . . , this chapter makes explicit the lack of the cinema politics of revolutionary awaking in Ozu’s films.