著者

溝渕 久美子 Mizobuchi Kumiko

出版者

名古屋大学大学院文学研究科附属日本近現代文化研究センター

雑誌

JunCture : 超域的日本文化研究 (ISSN:18844766)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.3, pp.114-124, 2012-03-06

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In this article, I look into how the prizes for original stories and screenplays were established, and how the publicness of cinema was constructed under the Film Law of Japan. Since the enforcement of the Film Law in 1939, the Japanese film industry was controlled by the Japanese Government. There were not enough stories and screenplays in the film industry, because ready-made stories such as Soseki's works were difficult to fit into the requirements of wartime circumstances. So, film makers established an institute for writing and started to serialize articles titled "A Classroom for Screenplays" in a movie magazine to train writers. In addition, the Japanese government and film industry began various public offerings for original stories and screenplays in some newspapers and magazines. Unlike other jobs related to film making, writers did not need a license to work under the Film Law. This made it possible to assemble writers using public prizes. A representative example is the "Cinema and Theater Play of the Nation" prize, established in 1941. The winner "Hahakogusa (The Story of a Mother and Her Child)" written by Koito Nobu, an elementary schoolteacher, was adapted into a film by Tasaka Tomotaka and published in an anthology along with other prizewinners. People who wanted to apply need not be cultivated or rich, and their gender, job, class, education, age, or habitation did not matter. Anybody literate enough to read the application and to write stories or screenplays and agree with the purpose of the offering could apply. These prizes gave people a feeling of participation in making of national cinema for themselves. In other words, people were not only spectators who watched the films made by Japanese Government and film industry, but were also "film makers" of "National Cinema". "National Cinema" was not just films for the nation, it was also films by the nation.