Shōshimin-eiga (小市民 映画),[1] literally "petty bourgeois film" or "lower middle class film",[2] is agenre of Japaneserealistfilms which focus on the everyday lives of ordinary or middle class people.[3][4][5] An alternate term for theshōshimin-eiga is the pseudo-Japanese wordshomin-geki, literally "common people drama",[2] which had been invented by Western film scholars.[1] The termshōshimin-eiga as a definition of a specifically Japanese film genre presumably first appeared in 1932 in articles by critics Yoshio Ikeda and Ichiro Ueno.[6]
Film historians Joseph L. Anderson andDonald Richie define theshōshimin-eiga (addressing it asshomin-geki) as "[e]ssentially a film about proletarian or lower-middle-class life, about the sometimes humorous, sometimes bitter relations within the family, about the struggle for existence, [...] the kind of film many Japanese think of as being about 'you and me'."[7]
In her bookNippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s, Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano sees theshōshimin-eiga depicting a "newly emerging modern subject, the salaried man, and his middle-class family", which "appealed to a broad cross-section of social classes", thereby helping to create "a modern national subject". Through their portrayal of social inequalities and capitalism's extended reach on daily life in the shape of company hierarchy, these films suggested a split between Japan's call for modernisation and the longing for the "mystic cohesion" of a "traditional" past. At the same time, theshōshimin-eiga was criticised for a lack of genuine political content especially from thepolitical left.[5]
The beginnings of theshōshimin-eiga are assigned to theShochiku film studio and its directorYasujirō Shimazu in the 1920s.[7][8][9][10]Yasujirō Ozu, a former assistant of Shimazu, andMikio Naruse are two prominent directors considered to work primarily in the field of theshōshimin-eiga.[3][4] Others includeHeinosuke Gosho[3] andKeisuke Kinoshita.[11]Kenji Mizoguchi, although having repeatedly turned to modern subjects, the oppression of women under a patriarchical system in particular, is usually not assigned to the genre canon.[3]
Important early (and extant) examples of theshōshimin-eiga are Shimazu'sOur Neighbor, Miss Yae (1934),[1][7][9] Ozu'sTokyo Chorus (1931) andI Was Born, But... (1932),[1][5][9] and Gosho'sBurden of Life (1935).[1] Naruse's 1951 filmRepast is often cited as having launched a post-occupation revival of theshōshimin-eiga.[3][12] Gosho biographer Arthur Nolletti, Jr. regards the early 1960s as the end of the genre's golden age,[13] with its themes moving mainly to television.[11] Both he and film historian Catherine Russell see it sustained in works like theTora-san series.[11][14]
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