The Shinkokugeki and the Zenshinza: Western Representational Realism and the Japanese Period Film

The function of a Japanese period piece, in print, on stage, or in film, is to discuss politically sensitive material and, at the same time, to evade government censorship. This is done, as Brandon has demonstrated, by a matching of past and present which places the current issue safely in the past.1 Between 1913 and 1939, the period piece perfected a rhetorical system matching historical periods and current-expressions of anachronistic--"anti-feudal" and "anti-militarist" sentiments derived from foreign sources. In literature, theater, and film, the modern period piece increased its reliance on modern language and foreign models of narrative and characterization, on what we can loosely call Western representational realism.