How V-Cinema sparked a Japanese filmmaking… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

How V‑Cinema sparked a Japan­ese film­mak­ing revolution

26 Aug 2020

Words by James Balmont

A man in a white robe leans over another man lying on a bed.
A man in a white robe leans over another man lying on a bed.
The 90s straight-to-video boom rein­vig­o­rat­ed the indus­try and made stars of direc­tors like Takashi Miike.

The 1990s were a gold­en decade for indie film­mak­ing. In Amer­i­ca, the emer­gence of Quentin Taran­ti­no, Richard Lin­klater, Lar­ry Clark and oth­ers sig­nalled a new breed of auteur less depen­dent on big stu­dios for financ­ing, and hun­gry to offer audi­ences some­thing excit­ing and fresh.

Over in Japan, Takashi Miike’s Shin­juku Tri­ad Soci­ety rep­re­sent­ed a dif­fer­ent kind of inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma – one which, for the most part, didn’t screen in cin­e­mas at all. V‑Cinema was the train­ing ground for a new gen­er­a­tion of cre­ative tal­ent, a boom­ing straight-to-video mar­ket that gave plucky young direc­tors like Hideo Naka­ta, Shin­ji Aoya­ma and Kiyoshi Kuro­sawa a chance to hone their skills.

By the turn of the cen­tu­ry they had become the faces of Japan­ese cin­e­ma: Nakata’s box office sen­sa­tion Ringu inspired a US remake and a glob­al inter­est in J‑Horror upon release in 1998, while Aoya­ma and Kuro­sawa would bag top prizes at Cannes just a few years lat­er, for Eure­ka and Tokyo Sonata respectively.

But it’s Miike who embod­ies the spir­it of V‑Cinema more than any­one. His pro­lif­ic out­put and trans­gres­sive style, rid­dled with grit­ty yakuza vio­lence and gung-ho cam­er­a­work, was endem­ic of a brand of film­mak­ing focused more on small-screen thrills than cin­e­mat­ic prowess.

Japan’s film indus­try was on the brink of col­lapse by the time the bub­ble econ­o­my burst in 1991. With the advent of home video trans­form­ing the means of con­sump­tion, the major stu­dios found them­selves unable to recoup on big-bud­get invest­ments – the fail­ure of Aki­ra Tomono’s The Set­ting Sun forced the 80-year-old Nikkat­su stu­dio into receiver­ship, while vet­er­an direc­tor Kon Ichikawa’s jidadekei bel­ly-flop 47 Ronin ham­mered a nail into the cof­fin of the once-depend­able peri­od drama.

The stu­dios were forced to take dras­tic mea­sures to try to stim­u­late the box office. Tick­ets were block-booked and sold in advance in the hope that film bud­gets could be off­set to the pub­lic ahead of film­ing. Third-par­ty investors were brought in to reduce the cost of pro­duc­tion. And Toei even threat­ened to stop pro­duc­ing their once-pop­u­lar yakuza dra­mas in an attempt to inspire a renewed pub­lic inter­est. None of these meth­ods amount­ed to any­thing that resem­bled a reli­able success.

But away from down­town the­atre screens, Toei struck gold with a bold new ven­ture. Inspired by the explo­sive home video suc­cess of Aki­ra and oth­er OVA (orig­i­nal video ani­ma­tion) titles, the stu­dio launched its V‑Cinema imprint in March 1989 with Crime Hunter, a 60-minute video fea­ture that skimmed on dia­logue and expo­si­tion in favour of pure genre spec­ta­cle. It was an instant suc­cess on the video store shelves, and Toei’s rivals cashed in almost overnight, set­ting up their own home video labels and churn­ing out as much genre schlock as possible.

The indus­try was now rife with oppor­tu­ni­ty as big-name direc­tors were pushed aside in favour of assis­tant crew mem­bers eager to work. Shoot first, think lat­er,’ became the over­ar­ch­ing phi­los­o­phy of a new group of genre-by-num­bers film­mak­ers con­fined by low bud­gets and tight dead­lines. But it also inspired unknowns like Miike to have fun. If fans are not going to come, you might as well make some­thing inter­est­ing,” he said in 2003.

With lit­tle cen­sor­ship in place, imag­i­na­tions ran wild as log­ic, struc­ture and taste were fore­gone in favour of sex and bloody vio­lence. In 1991 Miike released his debut Eye­catch Junc­tion, a com­e­dy about leo­tard-wear­ing police­women who catch crim­i­nals using gym­nas­tics, swift­ly fol­lowed by Lady Hunter: Pre­lude to Mur­der, an action thriller star­ring a pop singer and a TV stunt­woman. As quick-prof­it yakuza yarns like Body­guard Kiba, Shin­juku Out­law and Osa­ka Tough Guys kept Miike in work in the ear­ly 90s, Toei diver­si­fied their stock. Labels like V World, V Erot­i­ca and V Amer­i­ca pro­duced such curiosi­ties as Blue Tiger, a 1994 crime thriller star­ring Vir­ginia Mad­sen and Har­ry Dean Stan­ton, and No Way Back, a 1995 FBI pro­ce­dur­al led by a then-unknown Rus­sell Crowe.

As the mar­ket became over­sat­u­rat­ed, V‑Cinema films start­ed to find them­selves pop­ping up at mid­night movie screen­ings or on lim­it­ed sin­gle-screen runs. This was not because they were nec­es­sar­i­ly of bet­ter qual­i­ty but so that the stu­dios could slap as seen in the­atres’ on the video cov­er along­side the stan­dard fare of guns and tits. Cue Shin­juku Tri­ad Soci­ety, a neon-lit tale of a Chi­nese tri­ad trad­ing human organs on Tokyo’s black mar­ket, fuelled by cess, gore and sodomy. It was Miike’s first film pro­duced inten­tion­al­ly to be released in the­atres; his V‑Cinema grad­u­a­tion project.

Like many of his V‑Cinema con­tem­po­raries, Miike’s direct-to-video years are mythol­o­gised for the careers they shaped rather than the con­tent they pro­duced. Shin­juku stars Tomorowo Tageuchi and Ren Osu­gi went on to appear in some of the most influ­en­tial films of the decade, with The Eel and Fire­works tak­ing home top hon­ours at Cannes and Venice in 1997. Actor SABU left his own mark as his 1996 V‑Cinema debut Dan­gan Run­ner influ­enced Ger­man indie smash Run Lola Run; he won the FIPRESCI Prize at Berlin just a few years lat­er for Monday.

The video indus­try was already in decline by 1995, but in Shin­juku Tri­ad Soci­ety and the 100-odd films that have fol­lowed in Miike’s pro­lif­ic career, the wild west” of Japan­ese cin­e­ma lives on. Through unprece­dent­ed free­dom of expres­sion, the V‑Cinema gen­er­a­tion embraced direc­tor­ship in a way that sim­ply hadn’t been pos­si­ble before – but they also cap­tured the minds of crit­ics the world over who were fas­ci­nat­ed by Japan’s wild-child film­mak­ing kids let loose.

No won­der Miike was so proud of those heady ear­ly days: I’m not a film indus­try per­son,’ he said in 2000, I’m in the video film industry.”

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