Documentary Film Archives Series Vol.3 Sengo-shi no Setsudanmen (Images of Postwar Japan - Pollution, Youth Rebellion, and the Osaka Exhibition)

Japan has produced many documentary films to date. These range from educational and cultural films portraying people’s lives to PR films showing the development of Japan’s industries and scientific technologies. Their fields are numerous. Such documentary films (as a general term encompassing various types of short films including educational, cultural, scientific, PR, and documentary films in the narrow sense) are mirrors that reflect periods, and invaluable cultural properties that livelily transmit history to succeeding generations.
 
Nevertheless, many documentary films are now in danger of becoming scattered and lost. Most of these films are stored in environments such as room-temperature storehouses and offices, which are hardly suitable for preservation. This has been causing rapid deterioration. Furthermore, films are beginning to be disposed of and dispersed as production companies become bankrupt or dissolve. As such, invaluable records, which we cannot view once lost, are beginning to disappear.
 
Researchers, former production company members, and people from archives concerned about this situation met in 2008 and launched the Documentary Film Archive Project (joint representatives: Yoshiyuki Niwa and Shunya Yoshimi). The objective of the project was to systematically collect and preserve invaluable documentary films at risk of becoming scattered and lost, and to explore various possibilities of research and education using these films. To date, the Documentary Film Archive Project has held many symposiums and workshops, and has been met with much acclaim.
 
Following Documentary Film Archives Series Vol.1: Images of Postwar Japan: The Documentary Films of Iwanami Productions (2012) and Documentary Film Archives Series Vol.2: Images of Postwar Japan: From Reconstruction to High Growth (2014), this book is the third volume of a series that summarizes the results of the project’s activities.
 
As the concluding volume of the series, this book examines and interprets documentary films to elucidate the major turning points of postwar Japan. These turning points were environmental disasters, youth rebellions, and the Osaka Expo. Seven invaluable documentary films are included in the attached DVD for the first time. These include documentary films recording environmental disasters and the student protests; exhibition films played in pavilions of the Osaka Expo; and Dream & Melancholy, an original work tracing the history of postwar documentary films through the history of Iwanami Productions.
 
All volumes of this series come with DVDs, allowing readers to watch the documentary films as they trace the history of postwar Japan. It is our hope that this series will give impetus to further the preservation and use of invaluable documentary films. We recommend this series to anyone interested in the history of film and media, and likewise to anyone interested in archives or the history and society of postwar Japan.
 

(Written by NIWA Yoshiyuki, Associate Professor, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies / 2019)