Returning to actuality: fukeiron and the landscape film

Abstract

Has Japan ever produced a body of critical writings that deserves to be called ‘theory’? The fields of Japanese film studies and film studies in general have been beset by a presumption that goes back to the inaugural work of Noël Burch, who famously claimed that ‘the very notion of theory is alien to Japan; it is considered a property of Europe and the West’.1 This tenet has been questioned in the past, yet its ghost lingers on. My essay attempts to exorcize this ghost by exploring a particular film discourse known as fûkeiron (the theory of landscape) that emerged at the end of the 1960s in Japan. Not only does this discourse demonstrate that there was indeed theoretical writing in Japan, it also shows the importance of this theoretical writing for filmmaking practice at the time. Finally, this writing and filmmaking practice is itself directed as a critique of the then dominant model of leftist documentary filmmaking, a critique that has yet to be given its due attention.

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