Ryakushô Renzoku Shasatsuma, Fukei Cinema and the Framing of Landscape

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the cinematic use of landscape in Adachi Masao’s documentary Ryakushô Renzoku Shasatsuma (1969). The secondary aim is to examine the theory of landscape, otherwise known as fukeiron which has become synonymous with this film and further assess the application of this concept to cinema external to the fukei cinema Fukeiron was a socio-historically situated discussion of space and power that occurred amongst Tokyo based artists, writers, filmmakers and photographers during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Members of this movement used the appropriation and depiction of landscape as a metaphor for embedded state power in mundane urban spaces. This was done as a means of experimenting with alternate artistic methods of political activism. Adachi’s documentary Ryakushô Renzoku Shasatsuma is the cinematic result of this unique socio-historical convergence of politics, artistic expression and radical activism in Japan during the late 1960s. As well as providing an overview of Adachi’s life and work and the social-political context from which this specific discussion of landscape emerged I will analyse other films that are often associated with fukei eiga (Landscape films) such as Oshima Nagisa’s Tôkyô Sensô Sengo Hiwa (1970). I will refer to primary Japanese source materials in order to approach an understanding of this cinematic concept and its history as well as discussing its interpretation via the contexts of Japanese film history, pink eiga and radical Japanese cinema of the 1960s. I will argue that the depiction of landscape in Ryakushô Renzoku Shasatsuma enables a reconsideration of cinematic space in films other than those commonly associated with fukei cinema. This will be done by applying the cinematic framing and usage of space in Ryakushô Renzoku Shasatsuma as a methodology for analysis of the film Yami no Kanibaru (1982). I will also attempt to historically verify the connection between state power and urban design that has been repeatedly associated with fukeiron but insufficiently substantiated until now. This will be done by discussing the history of urban design in Japan