Writing in Light by Bernardi Joanne

Author:Bernardi, Joanne. [Bernardi, Joanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: INscribe Digital

6

Mayhem, Mischief, and a

Certain Esprit de Corps: Amateur Club

TODAY ALL THAT remains of the Taikatsu studio is a stone marker in a corner of Yokohama’s Motomachi Park, not far from the main commercial street that runs through the heart of the city. The location was once well known for its spring water, which was delivered to the boats in the harbor by a Frenchman who owned a tile factory on the land where the park now stands. The tiles were for the Western-style homes that once graced the neighborhood.1 The entire area, known as the Yamate Bluff, looks out over the port, and was a favorite location for the foreign residents of the city. Adjacent to the park is the Foreign Cemetery, where some of Japan’s earliest and most illustrious foreign residents are buried.

Very little of the city of Yokohama survived the Great Kanto Earthquake; much less remained after the destruction of the Second World War. It is hard to imagine what this quiet, residential neighborhood was like in March 1920 when Tanizaki first visited the Taikatsu studio. Descriptions in accounts by former employees indicate that the studio itself was in fact quite small.2 Tanizaki’s own recollection of the experience, written one year later, suggests that on that day he was drawn to the exotic, cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city, to which he moved in the following year. But even more significant to him was his arrival at Taikatsu and his exhilarated response to what he found there; his detailed description reveals a fascination with moving pictures that made the prospect of creating them irresistible. He arrived at the studio office accompanied by Kurihara:

As I recall it was last spring, sometime around March, that I had an appointment in Yokohama to meet Thomas Kurihara of the Taishō Moving Picture Studio. I left Odawara around noon and arrived at Sakuragi station a little after two o’clock. Kurihara had come to the railway station to meet me, and the two of us got in a taxi and headed for his office at 12 Yamashita Street. It was very fine weather that day, warm, glistening, and bright. As I was jostled about in the car, I gazed out the window at the city of Yokohama, where I had not been for many years, at Bashamishi Street, with its somewhat foreign character, and the manners and dress of the Chinese and Westerners passing by. We arrived at the office, a small building across the street from the old brick Japan Gazette Company building, on the street before Kaigan Road. For some reason the area reminded me of Shanghai. Kurihara opened the door of the building and led me inside. There was only an old man of about sixty, called “Jimmy,” and I couldn’t see anyone in the small room downstairs. But as soon as I entered I could detect that uniquely sweet odor of film. “The developing room must be somewhere back here,” I thought, and discarded the cigarette I was holding, putting it out with care.

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