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The film’s treatment of Sayo is in compliance with the socialist re­ alist tradition of depicting “typical” characters that represent the nation as a whole. Through the life of his main character, Kamei attempts to address the most important moments in the history of Japan’s labor movement and mining industry. This approach could be seen as a reflection of both Gorky’s idea of documenting the history of “factories and plants”14 and the rise of “records of daily life” movement (seikatsu kiroku undo) in postwar Japan15.

From the second half of the 19th century, Russian novels de­ picting the lives of revolutionaries (including Gorky’s Mother) had traditionally ended with their heroic protagonists passing away16. Likewise, the climax of Woman Walking Alone on the Earth is the scene of Sayo’s death. Her long-lost husband comes back and Sayo passes away in peace surrounded by her entire family and close friends, knowing that she had taught her sons well. Her body is covered with the flag sent to Sayo from the repatriated Chinese workers she had once stood up for during the war. This depiction is an obvious reference to a scene in Pudovkin’s film where Nilov­ na takes the flag from the hands of a shot demonstrator. In fact,

14 The History of Factories and Plants («История фабрик и заводов», 19311936) was a big-scale literary project initiated by Gorky and aimed at document­ ing the history of every factory in the Soviet Union. Information collected by the journalists and historians as well as by the non-professional writers and workers was published in a series of books. A history of a given factory or a plant was usu­ ally aided by a personal history of one of the workers or his/her family that had worked at the same factory for several generations.

15 Seikatsu kiroku undo was a postwar literary movement undertaken by a large number of non-professional writers (clearly inspired by the aforementioned Gorky^s project) who attempted to document their personal experience of life and work. The movement gained nation-wide attention after the publication of Echo School (Yamabiko gakkd, 1951),a collection of essays written by students attend­ ing a junior high school in rural Yamagata prefecture and edited by their teacher, Muchaku Seil^o. Based on these essays, Imai Tadashi produced an independent feature film with the same title in 1952, establishing a close link between the liter­ ary “records of daily life” movement and the independent film movement under­ taken by the likes of Imai, Yamamoto, Kamei and others. For more about seikatsu kiroku movement see: Sato Izumi. Goju-nendai dokyumentarii undo (Documen­ tary Movement in the 1950s) // Showa bungaku kenkyQ. No. 44 (March 2002). P. 13-16; Toba Koji. 1950 nendai: “kiroku” no jidai (1950s: The Era of “Documents”). Tokyo: Kawade shobo shinsha, 2010.

16 Кларк К. Советский роман: история как ритуал (The Soviet Novel: His­ tory as Ritual). Екатеринбург: Изд-во Уральского ун-та, 2002. С. 62.

the obvious similarity between Nilovna and Sayo was manifested by the Soviet media as one of Kamei’s biggest achievements17.

The Japanese distributors of the film also stressed Sayo’s re­ semblance to O-Lan, a strong female character that appears in Pearl S. Buck’s novel The Good Earth (1931) depicting the pov­ erty-stricken life of Chinese peasants. The second edition of the novel reappeared in Japanese translation in 194918. Another con­ temporary novel that likely became an inspiration for Kamei’s film is American journalist and communist, Agnes Smedley’s 1934 semi-autobiographical Daughter of Earth (1929), translated to Japanese as Woman Walks Alone on the Earth19in 1934 by Ozaki Hotsumi, a journalist, communist and the informant of Richard Sorge20. Both Sorge and Hosumi were hanged in 1944 by the Jap­ anese government. After the war, however, Ozaki quickly became the symbol of wartime resistance and of noble manifestation of patriotism. His translation of Daughter of Earth was reissued in 1951, just a year prior to the making of Kamei’s film. In addition to the popularity of the aforementioned leftist works reevaluated in postwar Japan, Kamei’s film could be also perceived within the postwar Japanese trend for hahamono (mother films). In the early 1950s the Japanese screen was overabundant with melodramas depicting victimized mothers who symbolized the wartime and postwar trials and tribulations of the Japanese nation as a whole. Unlike the devastated mothers in hahamono films, however, the heroine of Woman Walking Alone on the Earth actively resists the existing political system through organized protest and is there­ fore closer to the revolutionary leftist heroines.

The story of an oppressed mother gaining class-conscious­ ness and actively participating in social struggle was not the

17 Мамонтов А. Искусство большой правды (The Art of Great Truth) // Комсомольская правда. 6 августа 1954 г.

18 Flier, Оппа hitori daichi о iku, Dir. Kamei Fumio; 1953, Makino Mamoru Collection on the History of East Asian Film; Box 151, folder 127; С. V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University.

19 The only difference between the title of Kamei’s film and the title of Ozaki’s translation is that in the former the word “alone” (hiton) is written in Chinese char­ acters kanjiy while the latter uses the Japanese alphabet hiragana.

20 It is believed that it was Smedley that introduced Ozaki to Sorge. Her semi-autobiographical novel follows a protagonist Marie Rogers from being bom to poor and uneducated parents in Missouri to becoming a journalist, socialist and an active member of Indian independence movement.

only quality of Kamei’s film that felt extremely familiar to the So­ viet audiences. Some of the body movements adopted by Kamei’s characters are in compliance with the rule of conduct propagated by the socialist realist Soviet films. The young couple, Kiyoji and Takako, who are clearly in love with each other, never share a kiss or a hug. Their t te- -t tes are always conducted in a public, open space and the only physical interaction they allow each other is a friendly handshake or a squeeze on the arm (111.1).Towards the film’s end Kiyoji and Takako share a longing glance and the view­ ers expect “the kiss” to finally happen, but the two are interrupted by the workers’ demonstration. People with red flags are singing a popular labor song Hey, youth! (Wakamono yo) and marching through the beautiful landscape of Yubari21. Kiyoji and Takako join the choir22 and wave back to the demonstrators — the end credits appear (111.2). The film’s last sequence forecasts a positive future for the Japanese working class and by doing so fulfills the main goal of socialist realism — that is, to fastforward the arrival of a bright future by visually imagining it.

It is likely that the optimistic stance adopted by Woman Walk­ ing Alone on the Earth was one of the decisive factors that led to this film being widely advertised and distributed in the postwar USSR. In 1952, two years prior to the release of Woman Walk­ ing Alone on the Earth the Soviet Union had already acquired one independent Japanese film _ Imai Tadashi’s And Yet We Live (1951). The Soviet distribution of this leftist film depicting the struggles of Japanese day laborers, however, was limited to the so-called “club screenings” private screenings organized for various unions and workers’ clubs. It is plausible that, it was not until after acquiring the film and thus23, that Soviet authorities realized that although And Yet We Live is visually realistic and

21 In the early postwar years Yubari was one of the biggest mining towns in Japan. However, the closing down of the mines and the subsequent disorderly construction ofexpensive but unprofitable tourist sites resulted in the city becom­ ing bankrupt in 2007.

22 Collective singing was another important aspect that made Kamei’s film familiar to the Soviet audiences. A song performed in Japanese by Sayo’s friends and family after her death is a Russian/Polish revolutionary song ^Varshavianka,” the lyrics of which were translated by a Japanese writer Kaji Wataru.

23 Both And Yet We Live and Woman Walks Alone on the Earth were acquired by the Soviet Ministry of Culture for 30,000 U.S. dollars each. РГАНИ, ф. 5, o n .17, д. 502, 66-67.

the chauvinist, militaristic regime, in the Japanese version he re­ fers to Kaneko as to Sayo’s husband. In the Soviet version Kaneko is just called “a coal miner.” Sayo’s female friends’ open remarks about a woman’s need “to use” her body while she is still young and attractive are removed. In a similar way, the ironic courting of a sexually outspoken elderly female character Ohana (played by Kitabayashi Tanie) and a widowed coal miner living next door is deleted.

In the first years after Stalin’s death, any image that could be interpreted as being even remotely erotic was considered im­ moral. Thus, the relatively harmless sexual references that ap­ pear in the Japanese version of Kamei’s film became the subject of deletion. In fact, asexuality could be seen as one of the most important traits that differentiates socialist realist Soviet cinema from the leftist films produced in early postwar Japan. Unlike the state-controlled, ideologically censored cinema of the socialist states, Japanese cinema was part of a market-driven popular cul­ ture. While imbuing their works with ideological meaning, Japa­ nese filmmakers also had to satisfy the demands of public taste closely tied to Japanese audiences’ cultural background. In the sexually liberating atmosphere of postwar Japan,25 a certain dose of eroticism was essential.

In the Soviet Union, the development of romantic feelings be­ tween Sayo and Kaneko was perceived as undesirable not only because it justifies marital infidelity, but even more importantly, because it violates the socially accepted norm of a mentor-student relationship. In accordance to the classical canons of socialist re­ alism the main hero matures and grows into a class conscious, exemplary individual with the help of a wise mentor, usually an experienced party worker who is presented as a sexually absti­ nent elderly male. When the young hero (student) falls in love, it is the wise party worker’s (mentor’s) job to guide him/her with thoughtful advice. Any sort of romantic interaction between the student and his/her mentor is incestuous and practically un­ thinkable26. In Kamei’s film the communist Kaneko teaches Sayo

25 For more about see: Dower J. W. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. P. 121-167.

26 Pyotr Pavlenko’s seemingly conventional socialist realist novel In the East («На востоке», 1936) became the object of severe criticism precisely because it

the importance of standing up for fellow workers and thus could be seen as her ideological mentor. However, the two also develop romantic feelings towards each other and by doing so sabotage their mentor-student relationship, violating the canons of a so­ cialist realist narrative.

Despite the Soviet censors attempts to deprive Kamei’s film of its “immoral” storyline and sexual implications, the Soviet ver­ sion of Woman Walking Alone on the Earth still contains quite a number of images that had been likely perceived as bold, reveal­ ing and therefore realistic. For instance, we see the “bad girl” Fu­ miko wearing nothing but a negligee. Another scene that must have left the Soviet audiences practically speechless was filmed in a public bath. According to Oksana Bulgakova, from the late 1930s, scenes related to the maintenance of personal hygiene in­ cluding bathing virtually disappeared from the Soviet screen27.

Woman Walking Alone on the Earth overturns this unspoken rule by showing naked male and even female bodies sitting in a bath­ tub, soaping and washing themselves. Women are all sitting with their backs facing the camera and men are covering their genitals with small towels, but the little boy standing right in front of the camera is completely naked. It is likely, that the scenes depicting Sayo and her family and Kiyoji and his coworkers sharing a meal together were also perceived as unusual since the action of con­ suming food in socialist realist Soviet cinema was also not gener­ ally associated with the depiction of positive characters. The love of food was perceived as a negative trait typical of the gluttonous bourgeoisie.

In contrast to the un-cinematic, unnatural stiffness of Soviet cinema in the early 1950s, Woman Walking Alone on the Earth utilizes the film’s intrinsic ability to render powerful emotions through the depiction of movement (motion). The tracking shot that follows Sayo racing through the shabby streets of Chitose — a city that used to host an American air force base — in search of her elder son Kiichi, is shaking as if filmed by a handheld camera. Not only does this vibration give the scene a documentary look,

violates the abstinence of a student-mentor relationship. Кларк К. Советский роман... С . 117-118.

27 Булгакова О. Фабрика жестов (The Factory of Gestures) М.: Новое лите­ ратурное обозрение, 2005. С. 221.

but it also reflects the emotional shakiness that our heroine ex­ periences out of concern for her son. The unconcealed curiosity with which American MPs, Japanese children and other pedes­ trians look into to the camera adds to the realistic quality of the sequence (111.3 and 4)28.

The posture and body movements adopted by the characters of Woman WalkingAlone on the Earth could also be seen as rather “progressive.” In the film we see coal miners working in dark, nar­ row hallways. For obvious reasons, they are unable to straighten up and instead have to constantly bend their bodies — a depiction that was long avoided by the Soviet filmmakers. From the 1930s Soviet heroes were deprived oftheir unaffected manners and body gestures. Positive characters acquire perfect posture and an ath­ letic, militaiy-like gait, their body movements become slower and less flexible. The tendency of constraining natural body move­ ments in accordance with the military norm starts to fade away only towards the late 1950s, when the Khrushchev Thaw liberates Soviet cinema, its characters and their bodies. Kamei’s Woman Walking Alone on the Earth serves as a forerunner of this impor­ tant change. It shows the positive characters as imperfect human beings not always able to control their body movements and emotions. When workers attempt to march their movements are uncoordinated and loose. When Takako reveals the truth about her fathers treachery she cries hysterically. When Sayo runs af­ ter her elder son Kiichi, she grabs him by the feet and slides over earth on her knees while he drags her through the street. Even the most lovable, positive characters of the ulm smoke and drink alcohol. The characters of Woman Walking Alone on the Barth act in ways that remind us of proletarian protagonists that occupied the Soviet screen in the 1920s. They also forebode the reappear­ ance of ambiguous Soviet protagonists in the late 1950s.

From the late 1950s, inspired by the new cinematic possibili­ ties authorized by the Thaw, Soviet filmmakers started regaining their reputation by receiving prestigious awards at international film festivals29. But before this major shift had occurred, Soviet

28 In fact, unlike the majority of the early 1950s, Soviet fiction films shot in­ side the studio, Kamei’s film was mostly shot on location and thus was successful in capturing the scenic realism of a northern mining town, Yubari.

29 Mikhail Kalatozov's The Cranes Are Flying («Летят ж^фавли», 1957) won the Palme d’Or at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival and Grigori Chukhrai’s Ballad of

filmmakers had to be notified that the times had finally changed and they are allowed now to address controversial topics and em­ ploy ambiguous depictions. This role of herald was undertaken by films like Kamei’s Woman Walking Alone on the Earth, widely advertised by the press and publicly released in theaters with So­ viet authorities’ official permission. The distribution of films that were different from the accepted Soviet norm acted as a sign that indicated what sort of depictions and cinematic techniques were now allowed to be adopted by the Soviet filmmakers. The realis­ tic depiction of people’s deplorable working and living conditions could only re-enter the Soviet theaters if they were first presented as happening outside of the USSR.

The realistic images of dirtiness, inequality and poverty had to be introduced as non-Soviet. Likewise, in order for the posi­ tive characters’ questionable behavior to reappear on the Sovi­ et screen it had to be first attributed to the non-Soviet “Other.” The racial, foreign “otherness” of the characters that appeared in Japanese films enabled them to act in an unconventional manner that could be conveniently attributed to the “uniqueness” of Jap­ anese culture. Thus, some realistic scenes that were considered too radical for the unprepared Soviet audiences were labeled by the Soviet media as a manifestation of Japan’s cultural idiosyn­ crasy. Referring to the realistic depiction of torture and the pow­ erful scene in which Sayo finds human bones and mistakes them for her lost husband’s, the article published in Izvestia maintains that “some scenes might seem too naturalistic <•••> but that is due to a Japanese artistic tradition”30. Similarly, while referring to the film’s documentarian qualities, none of the Soviet articles mentions Kamei’s experience in prewar Leningrad, let alone his style’s affinity for the Soviet documentary tradition. The realis­ tic and documentarian qualities that existed in the 1920s Soviet cinema were abandoned so long ago, that now these qualities had to be introduced to Soviet citizens as the traits characteristic of foreign cinema.

a Soldier («Баллада о солдате», 1959) received 1960 Cannes Film Festival “Special Jury Prize.”

30 Рогов В. Женщина идет по земле (Woman Walking Alone on the Earth) // Известия. 7 августа 1954 г.

Inspired by the Marxist ideal of art that both represents and educates the masses, Kamei’s Woman Walking Alone on the Earth contributed to promoting the idea of Japan as a country with a large proletarian populace that was increasingly becoming class-conscious. This was exactly the sort of image that the Soviet authorities promoted among the Soviet citizens. Before the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security was amended between the U.S. and Japan in 1960, the Soviet Union still cherished hopes for removing Japan out of the American sphere of influence. In order to prepare the Soviet citizens for a possible alignment with Japan, Soviet media had to present Japan as a country that was, in many ways, similar to the USSR. Woman Walking Alone on the Earth, produced by Kamei Fumio, who had acted as a cultural mediator between the two counties as early as the 1920s, was overabun­ dant with traits that answered this demand.

Woman Walking Alone on the Earth relied on literary schemes that were highly familiar to the Soviet audiences and propagated the same principles that were declared by the Soviet media — the importance of international cooperation, workers’ solidarity and women’s liberation, the condemnation of war, capitalism and Western culture, the predominance of the collective over the per­ sonal. At the same time, Kamei’s film also employed cinematic techniques and contained depictions that were exceedingly differ­ ent from the Soviet norm. The film’s sexual connotations, which violated the accepted social construction of a student-mentor re­ lationship, for instance, were perceived by the Soviet censors as being too radical, and were eliminated. Still, the Soviet version of Kamei’s film maintained a number of features that made it stand out from the un-cinematic mass of socialist realist Soviet cinema. The characters’ unconventional body gestures and social behav­ ior, the camera’s mobility and the depiction of nudity employed in Kamei’s film entered the Soviet theaters, and thus signaled the arrival of the new era in Soviet filmmaking. The release of Woman Walking Alone on the Earth indicated that the Soviet filmmakers are now allowed to incorporate the techniques and depictions em­ ployed in Kamei’s film to their own filmmaking practices.