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Between the studio system's collapse and the rise of the new new wave, the late Shinji Somai was the pivotal figure. Shigehiko Hasumi explains why
Upon receiving the news of Shinji Somal's death at 53 last year, I found my thoughts turning to Ernst Lubitsch, who passed away at 55 in 1946. How did those around Lubitsch react when they heard the news of his death? Some probably mourned the fact that he didn't get to complete That Lady in Ermine. But I doubt many considered his death from a heart attack in California, far from his native Berlin, as an all-too-early demise. With over 30 brilliant films from the Hollywood phase of his career alone, he died a glorious master. Such triumph can hardly be attributed to Shinji Somai, born in the northern provinces of Japan the year after Lubitsch died and leaving Kazabana, not exactly his greatest achievement, as his final work. Instead of consigning Somai's death to his own private misfortune, I cannot help but see it as evidence of the striking changes in the relationship between filmmakers and their films in Japan over the past 50 years.
Somai's far-too-early death, the same year that 81-year-old Eric Rohmer completed his astonishing The Lady and the Duke, is conspicuously sad because he had already began distancing himself from cinema before making even half of the films he should have. Not even living to see the opening night of his stage direction debut, Lee Kalcheim's The Convenience of a Short Haired Dog, Somai left behind only 13 films. This paucity of output may be indicative of the sorry state of Japanese filmmaking in the Eighties, when he began directing. After all, Mitsuo Yanagimachi, whose 1985 film Fire Festival (Himatsuri) brought him wide acclaim, has only managed to make two films since, and the less-talented Juzo Itami (whose work gained some recognition in the West) incomprehensibly committed suicide in 1997. All three directors endured the stiflingly difficult transitional period between the collapse of the studio system, which sustained Japanese filmmaking for 70 years, and the eventual...