Jidaigeki
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Jidaigeki (時代劇?) is a genre of film, television, and theatre in Japan. The name means "period drama," and the period is usually the Edo period of Japanese history, from 1600 to 1868. Some, however, are set much earlier — Portrait of Hell, for example, is set during the late Heian period — and the early Meiji era is also a popular setting. Jidaigeki show the lives of the samurai, farmers, craftsmen, and merchants of this time. Jidaigeki films are sometimes referred to as chambara movies, a word meaning "sword fight". They have a set of dramatic conventions including the use of makeup, language, catchphrases, and plotlines.
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[edit] Kinds of jidaigeki
Many jidaigeki take place in Edo, the military capital. Others show the adventures of people wandering from place to place. The long-running television series Zenigata Heiji and Abarenbo Shogun typify the Edo jidaigeki. Mito Kōmon, the fictitious story of the travels of the historical daimyo Tokugawa Mitsukuni, and the Zatoichi movies and television series, exemplify the travelling style.
Another way to categorize jidaigeki is according to the social status of the principal characters. The title character of Abarenbō Shogun is Tokugawa Yoshimune, the eighth Tokugawa shogun. The head of the samurai class, Yoshimune assumes the disguise of a low-ranking hatamoto, a samurai in the service of the shogun. Similarly, Mito Kōmon is the retired vice-shogun, masquerading as a merchant. In contrast, the coin-throwing Heiji of Zenigata Heiji is a commoner, working for the police, while Ichi (the title character of Zatoichi), a masseur, is an outcast. Gokenin Zankurō is a samurai, but due to his low rank and income, he has to work extra jobs that higher-ranking samurai were unaccustomed to do.
Whether the lead role is samurai or commoner, jidaigeki usually reach a climax in an immense sword fight just before the end. The title character of a series always wins, whether using a sword or a jitte (the device police used to trap, and sometimes to bend or break, an opponent's sword).
[edit] Roles in jidaigeki
Among the characters in jidaigeki are a parade of people with occupations unfamiliar to modern Japanese, and especially to foreigners. Here are a few.
[edit] Warriors
The warrior class included samurai, hereditary members in the military service of a daimyo or the shogun (themselves samurai). Ronin, samurai without masters, were also warriors, and like samurai, wore two swords; they were, however, without inherited employment or status. Bugeisha were men, or in some stories women, who aimed to perfect their martial arts, often by travelling throughout the country. Ninja were the secret service, specializing in stealth, the use of disguises, explosives, and concealed weapons.
[edit] Craftsmen
Craftsmen in jidaigeki included metalworkers (often abducted to mint counterfeit coins), bucket-makers, carpenters and plasterers, and makers of woodblock prints for art or newspapers.
[edit] Merchants
In addition to the owners of businesses large and small, the jidaigeki often portray the employees. The bantō was a high-ranking employee of a merchant, the tedai, a lower helper. Many merchants employed children, or kozō. Itinerant merchants included the organized medicine-sellers, vegetable-growers from outside the city, and peddlers at fairs outside temples and shrines. In contrast, the great brokers in rice, lumber and other commodities operated sprawling shops in the city.
[edit] Governments
In the highest ranks of the shogunate were the rojū. Below them were the wakadoshiyori, then the various bugyō or administrators, including the jisha bugyō (who administered temples and shrines), the kanjō bugyō (in charge of finances) and the two Edo machi bugyō. These last alternated by month as chief administrator of the city. Their role encompassed mayor, chief of police, and judge, and jury in criminal and civil matters.
The machi bugyō oversaw the police and fire departments. The police, or machikata, included the high-ranking yoriki and the dōshin below them; both were samurai. In jidaigeki, they often have full-time patrolmen, okappiki and shitappiki, who were commoners. (Historically, these people were irregulars, called to service only when necessary.) Zenigata Heiji is an okappiki. The police lived in barracks at Hatchōbori in Edo. They manned ban'ya, the watch-houses, throughout the metropolis. The jitte was the symbol of the police, from yoriki to shitappiki.
A separate police force handled matters involving samurai. The ōmetsuke were high-ranking officials in the shogunate; the metsuke and kachi-metsuke, lower-ranking police who could detain samurai. Yet another police force investigated arson-robberies, while Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples fell under the control of another authority. The feudal nature of Japan made these matters delicate, and jurisdictional disputes are common in jidaigeki.
Edo had three fire departments. The daimyo-bikeshi were in the service of designated daimyo; the jōbikeshi reported to the shogunate; while the machi-bikeshi, beginning under Yoshimune, were commoners under the administration of the machibugyō. Thus, even the fire companies have turf wars in the jidaigeki.
Each daimyo maintained a residence in Edo, where he lived during sankin kotai. His wife and children remained there even while he was away from Edo, and the ladies-in-waiting often feature prominently in jidaigeki. A high-ranking samurai, the Edo-garō, oversaw the affairs in the daimyo's absence. In addition to a staff of samurai, the household included ashigaru (lightly armed warrior-servants) and chūgen and yakko (servants often portrayed as flamboyant and crooked). Many daimyo employed doctors, goten'i; their counterpart in the shogun's household was the okuishi. Count on them to provide the poisons that kill and the potions that heal.
The cast of a wandering jidaigeki encountered a similar setting in each han. There, the karō were the kuni-garō and the jōdai-garō. Tensions between them have provided plots for many stories.
What would a jidaigeki be without characters to give the flavor of the times? Jugglers, pedlars, fortune-tellers, candy-sellers, rag-pickers, blind moneylenders, itinerant singer/shamisen-players, effete courtiers from the imperial capital at Kyoto, the Dutch kapitan from Nagasaki, streetwalkers and prostitutes from the licensed and unlicensed quarters, the million-dollar kabuki actor, flute-playing mendicant Buddhist priests wearing deep wicker hats, and of course geisha, provide a never-ending pageant of old Japan.
[edit] Conventions
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There are several dramatic conventions of jidaigeki:
- The heroes often wear eye makeup, and the villains often have disarranged hair.
- A contrived form of old-fashioned Japanese speech, using modern pronunciation and grammar with a high degree of formality and frequent archaisms.
- In long-running TV series, like Mito Kōmon and Zenigata Heiji, the lead and supporting actors sometimes change. This is done without any rationale for the change of appearance. The new actor simply appears in the place of the old one and the stories continue.
- In a sword fight, when a large number of villains attacks the main character, they seldom act simultaneously. Instead, the villains wait their turn to be dispatched, often standing motionless until their turn to be easily defeated arrives.
- On television, even fatal sword cuts draw little blood, and often do not even cut through clothing. Villains are chopped down with deadly, yet completely invisible, sword blows. Despite this, blood or wounding may be shown for arrow wounds or knife cuts.
- On film, most often the violence is considerably stylized, sometimes to such a degree that sword cuts cause geysers of blood from wounds. Dismemberment and decapitation are also common.
[edit] Clichés and catchphrases
Authors of jidaigeki work clichés into the dialog. Here are a few:
- Tonde hi ni iru natsu no mushi: Like bugs that fly into the fire in the summer [, they will come to their destruction]
- Shishi shinchū no mushi: A wolf in sheep's clothing (literally, a parasite in the lion's body)
- Kaji to kenka wa Edo no hana: Fires and brawls are the flower of Edo
- Ōedo happyaku yachō: "The eight hundred neighborhoods of Edo"
- Tabi wa michizure: "Travel is who you take with you"
In addition, the authors of series invent their own clichés in the kimarizerifu (catchphrases) that the protagonist says at the same point in nearly every episode. In Mito Kōmon, in which the eponymous character disguises himself as a commoner, in the final swordfight, a sidekick invariably holds up an accessory bearing the shogunal crest and shouts, Hikae! Kono mondokoro ga me ni hairan ka?: "Back! Can you not see this emblem?", revealing the identity of the hitherto unsuspected old man with a goatee beard. The villains then instantly surrender and beg forgiveness. Likewise, Tōyama no Kin-san bares his tattooed shoulder and snarls, Kono sakura fubuki o miwasureta to iwasane zo!: "I won't let you say you forgot this cherry-blossom blizzard!" After sentencing the criminals, he proclaims, Kore ni te ikken rakuchaku: "Case closed."
The kimarizerifu betrays the close connection between the jidaigeki and the comic-book superhero.
[edit] Famous jidaigeki
[edit] Films
- Aragami
- Azumi
- Azumi 2 Death or Love?
- Hanzo the Razor series
- Harakiri
- Kurama Tengu series
- Lady Snowblood
- Lone Wolf and Cub series
- Mayonaka no Yaji-san Kita-san (Yaji and Kita: The Midnight Pilgrims)
- Mibu gishi den (When the Last Sword Is Drawn)
- Princess Mononoke
- Rashomon
- Samurai Rebellion
- Samurai Trilogy
- Seven Samurai
- Shogun Assassin
- Shogun's Shadow
- Yojimbo
- Tange Sazen series
- Sanjuro
- Tasogare Seibei (Twilight Samurai)
- Yagyu Ichizoku no Imbo
- Zatoichi film series
[edit] Television series
- Abarenbo Shogun
- Ude ni Oboe ga Aru
- Edo o Kiru
- Ōedo Sōsamō
- Ōoka Echizen
- Onihei Hanka-chō
- Onmitsu Kenshi (The Samurai (TV show))
- Kage Dōshin
- Kage no Gundan
- Gokenin Zankurō
- Kenkaku Shōbai
- Zatoichi (television series)
- Tsukikage Ran
- Sambiki ga Kiru!
- Jitte-nin
- Shogun Iemitsu Shinobi Tabi
- Shinsen gumi Keppūroku
- Zenigata Heiji
- Taiga drama (NHK annual series)
- Chōshichirō Edo Nikki
- Tenamon'ya Sando-gasa
- Tenga Gomen
- Tenga Dōdō
- Tōyama no Kin-san
- Hissatsu series
- Mito Kōmon
- Moeyo Ken
- Momotarō-zamurai
[edit] Famous directors
Names are in Western order, with the surname after the given name.
- Kon Ichikawa
- Akira Kurosawa
- Masaki Kobayashi
- Shozo Makino
- Kenji Mizoguchi
- Kihachi Okamoto
- Tomu Uchida
[edit] Famous actors and actresses
Names are in Western order, with the given name, then the surname.
- Kanjūrō Arashi
- Yoshimi Ashikawa
- Shin'ichi Chiba (Sonny Chiba)
- Makoto Fujita
- Kimiko Ikegami
- Kōji Ishizaka
- Chiezō Kataoka
- Shintarō Katsu
- Morio Kazama
- Kin'ya Kitaōji
- Hitomi Kuroki
- Machiko Kyô
- Ken Matsudaira
- Hiroki Matsukata
- Keiko Matsuzaka
- Meiko Kaji
- Toshirō Mifune
- Yoshiko Mita
- Kunihiko Mitamura
- Hiroaki Murakami
- Akira Nagoya
- Tatsuya Nakadai
- Kichiemon Nakamura
- Umenosuke Nakamura
- Kō Nishimura
- Hashizō Ōkawa
- Matsunosuke Onoe
- Teruhiko Saigō
- Masato Sakai
- Hiroyuki Sanada
- Asao Sano
- Koichi Sato
- Kōtarō Satomi
- Takashi Shimura
- Ryōtarō Sugi
- Yoshie Taira
- Hideki Takahashi
- Reiko Takashima
- Masakazu, Ryō, and Takahiro Tamura (the three Tamura brothers)
- Sanae Tsuchida
- Eijirō Tōno
- Ken Watanabe
- Kinnosuke Yorozuya
- Kaoru Yumi
- Tomisaburo Wakayama
[edit] Trivia
- The term "Jedi" (as in Jedi Knight) from the Star Wars saga was derived from jidaigeki by George Lucas as he was heavily influenced by Akira Kurosawa.
[edit] External links
- A Man, a Blade, an Empty Road: Postwar Samurai Film to 1970 by Allen White on Greencine, this article discusses specific chambara films, their distinction from regular jidai-geki, and the evolution of the genre.
- Jidai Geki - Introduction a good overview of the genre with lists of the films and links through to individual reviews.
