A Hundred Years Of Japanese Film A Concise History With A Selective Guide To Dvds And Videos 2 Rev Upd Donald Richie

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Revised
ond
Updoted
"What Boswell was to Johnson, what Gibbon was to ancient Rome,
Donald Richie is to the Japanese cinema."

A HUNDRED YEARS OF
A ESE
A Concise History, with a Selective Cuide
to DVDs and Videos
DONALD RICHIE
Foreword by Paul Schr ader
KODNSHA INTERNATIONAT
Tokyo . New York . London

Dedicated to the memory of
Kawakita Kashiko
(1gos-rgg3)
Nors: Penonal names re rcmanizedin their original order: family names fint.
Still captions list actors left to right.
Distributed in the United States by Kodansha America, Inc., and in the United Kingdom
and continental Europe by Kodansha Europe Ltd.
Published by Kodansha Intemationalltd., 17-14 Otowa l-chome, Bunlryo-ku, Tokyo 112-8652,
and Kodansha America, Inc.
Copyright @ 2001 and2005 by Donald Richie. All rights reserved. Printed inJapan.
ISBN- I 3 : 97 *77 0v2995-9
ISBN-l0: L7700-29954
Fint edition, 2001
Revised edition, 2005
05 06 07 08 og 10 tr12 10 g s 7 65 432r
Lib rary of Con gress C atalo gin g- i n- Publication D ata av ailable.
w w w . ko dan s ha- intl. c o m

CONTENTS
Foreword by Paul Schrader 7
Introduction 9
I
-A CONCTSE HISTORY OF IAPANESE FTLM
tr Beginnings and the Benshi 17
Film, Theater , andActors 22
Realism and Reality 25
Western Influences 27
Shingeki andNew Narrative Tactics 29
The Gmdnigeki 32
H Taisho Democr acy andshochiku 43
The New Gmdnigeki: Shimazu, Gosho, Shimrzu,Ozu,andNaruse 46
The New Jidaigeki: Itami, Inagal<t, Ito, andYamanakasadao 64
Nik'katsu and the Shimpa: Mizoguchi Kenji 77
Expressionism, Kinugasa Teinosuke, and the Leftist Film 84
Criticism andCrackdown: World War II 96
E The Occupation of Japan 107
Postwar Developments 1 15
Ozu and Naruse 119
Mizoguchi and the Period-Film 129
New Means:Jun-bungaku,, Comedy, and Social Issues L34

tr The Advent of Television and the Film's Defenses: Suzuki, Nak ahta,Kawashima,
and Imamura 177
The Early Independents: Hani and Teshigahara I92
The "New Wave": 0shima, Yoshi da, andshinoda 196
After the Wave 208
tr Making Audiences 213
The New Independents 216
Documentary and Anime 247
Conclusion 259
II-A SELECTIVE GUIDE TO DVDS AND VIDEOS
Introduction 263
Listings 265
Japanese Historical Periods 293
Notes 294
Glossary 300
Bibliography 303
Index 306

D
o
(/
o
ver the last forf,v years Donald Richie has
written and rewritten not only the history of Japanese filn but also a history of critical
methodology. Whatever we in the West know about Japanese film, and how we latow it, we
rnost likely owe to Donald Richie.
He arrived in Japan in January I)47 as a civilian staff writer for the Pactfic Stars ar'td
Stripes. His initial motivation was "more to get out of Lima lOhio] than to go to Tokyo," but
he was s00n gravitating towardJapanese cultuls-si11ema in particular-and writing film
reviews for the PJ5'. It was an extraordinary time to be an funerican civilian inJapan Richie
made the most of it, and it made the most of Donald Richie.
His studies of Japanese filrn began in 1959 with The Japa?xese Film; Art and Industry,
which he coauthored with Joseph fuiderson. For me, a film student, it was a seminal instruc-
tive work. As with Borde and Chaumeton's Panorama du Fi,lm IVoir Americafl, & door
opened to aworld of fascinating roours. Richie's first history used a humanistic model: the
filrl director struggling to be an individual while, at the sane tine, moving toward what was
presutlted to be the realistic norm. ("Realistic" or "representational," as opposed to "presen-
tational"-vcritical distinction centraltoJapanese aesthetics as well as to Richie's writing.)
Tlre arn azing-absolutely uniqus-n2[ure of Richie's accornplishrnent is that he has
not simply updated his history (like most other film historians) by appending new chapters
every decade 0r s0. Instead, in every later work he has chosen to approach his subject frorn
another angle, rescreening the filrns and rethinking his assumptions, acknowledging that as
history evolves so does the historian and his methodologies.
Riclrie, writing alone, published his second history, Japanese Cinema; Film Stltle ancl
IVational Charactcr, in 1971. This volume emphasized a cultural point of view: the struggle
of Japanese fihnmakers to be Japanese in a non-indigenous medium, It also subscribed to
the critical Zeitgeist of the time-2x[gurism, the notion that the director is responsible for

everything that appears 0n screeu. Nso, at this time, Richie wrote the initi al andstill defini-
tive book on Kurosawa and Ozu.
The third of his histories, Japanese Cinenta; An Introductiort (1990), turned its atten-
tion to how filrns were actually made: the rnultitude of practical considerations that define a
single filrn and its contemporaries: politics, economics, morality, intermedia competitiol,
teclrnological advances, persolt ality conflicts. To achieve this , A?'t Introcluction ernphas ized
reporting over theory.
In this new book, A Hundred Years ofJapanese Ff,lm, Richie relies even less on theory.
He has refined atrd amplified the approach of the 1990 volume, retained his sensitivity to the
actual circumstances of fihn production (something filmrnakeffi consider important but his-
torians often overlook), renounced his previous methodologies and proposed a new or're, one
whiclr seeks to oppose then reconcile the unclnsidered assumption of a native Japanese
accent and the demands of a cinematic lingu a ftanca. He desires to show the interweave of
fihlmaking (the contributions of directors, writen, cinematographers, actors, composers, art
directors, as well as financiers). Decline -and-fall modalities are found too sirnplistic, as is the
infancy-maturity rnodel. Film's unspoken asslunptions, the hows and whys of fihnmaking,
the laws of supply and demand-these are now central concems.
Fascinating issues arise: Japanese assulnptions abor-rt "realisrn," the growing respecta-
bility of the "representational," the merging of high and low cnltures, the evolution of the
getlre, as well as the demise of the period-film and the emergence of the dominant contem-
porary theme, in Ozu as elsewhere, of the failing family.
Stepping ashore in 1947, Donald Richie, the Cornrnodore Perry of Japanese filrl history,
was given a unique opportunity. Still in Tokyo more than half a century later, he has-in
response as it were-given film historians a rlodel of the modern critic: a llan of restless,
evolving intellect.
Pcrul Schradu

N
o
U
D
C
N C
I r 1895, when film was first seen in Ja;tan,
a
fifff-year-old member of this initial rnovie audience would have been boru into a feudal
world where the shogun, dairnyo, and samurai ruled. He could not have left his archipelago
or, if he did, he could not have returned upon pain of death. His manner of dress and way of
speech were regulated by his status, and his ignorance of the outside world was general. It
was still the epoch of the Tokugawa clan which ruled Japan from 1500 through 1867,
encompassing much of what we now know as the Edo period.
During the ensuing period, the Meij t era (1868-1912), this kimono -clad viewer would
not only have seen the Meiji Restoration (when the sixteen-year-old ernperor was brought
from Kyoto to Edo-now Tolryo-to become the nominal head of the new government),
but also the Meiji "Enlightenrnent."
Here, under the slogan "A Rich Country and a Strong Military" (Fukoku lg,ohei), he
would have seen the abolition of the feudal socioeconomic system under which he had
grown up, the adoption of rnodern (Western) production methods, and universal conscrip-
tion. Under another of the many colorful slogans of the period, "Civthzation and Enlighten-
ment" (Bommei lhika), he would have experienced the official urging of Western clothes
and nreat eating, the abolition of sword carrying and chommage (topknots), and eventually
the disbanding of the samurai themselves.
Tlris hypothetical fifty-year-old would have also witnessed the forced adoption of the
Western (Gregorian) calendar, the emergence of a nationwide public school system, the
inauguration of telephone and postal seruices, and the construction of railways.
fuid through it all, he-now perhaps in a three-piece suit and wearing a bowler hat-
would have been told to somehow hold on to his Japaneseness. Yet another slogan indicated
the way: "Japanese Spirit and Westem Culture" (Wa,kon Yosai)-in that order. The national
ineffables of Japan were to illuminate Western materialism. In this nanner, it was hoped,

Japan might avail itself of the ways of the moderu West and, at the same time, retain its
"national entity." It was a difficult task, one whichJapan is still trying to carry out.
When filn cane to Japan, the country had only allowed foreign irnports for a few
decades. The nation's culture-which neans its way of accounting for, of constructing, of
assuming-was still its own. Whatever early debts were owed to China and Korea, they had
long been canceled by an appropriation which rendered their influence "Ja;tanese." The
nontraditional, the nodern, the Western, wffi not even half a century old. The traditional,
though eroding swiftly, was still centuries deep.
Irr Japan, fihn arrived as acomnercial product. Though it might eventually be illuminated
by native ineffables, proving that fihn was a uniquely nation aI art was not aJapanese issue.
Norwas there a need to discoverparudigms-to trace apathfrom simple to complex, fronr
infancy to maturity and beyond. Indeed, it was not necessary to treat film history as destined
to fill any of the various categories of an aesthetic system.
In time, however, a need to account for a ceftainJapanese tradition in Japanese films
developed, a need which still remains. And though "Japaneseness" is not a concept which
ever much interested the Japanese filmmaker (though it has occasionally fascinated the
Japanese politician), filmmakers remain Japanese, and the international language of fihn is
even now locally spoken with anat:e accent. As director Ozu Yasujiro once put it: "We are
Japanese, so we should makeJapanese things."
Histories of the Japanese film (both in Western langllages and in Japanese itselfl have
most often chosen a t,olksgeist theory where the culturally specific can be used as a vehicle
for histo rical reorienting and aesthetic inquiry, and where the uniqueness of the Japanese
filnr may be insisted upon. In actuality, however, therearcmore similarities than differences
among the fihns of Europe and America, and those of Japan Though each country creates
a natronal cinem a (and hence a nattonal cinematic style), it is only through the most
common, pragm atic, and universal of means. A film history is a search for a way through
wlrich narrative can be presented more efficiently.
Conventionally, the histornn is given several choices. He or she can arrange the ntaterial
to fornr a kind of narrative, one which stretches from primitive beginnings toward sornething
like present perfection. 0r, another ploy, the events can be arcanged to assume a familiar
pattern-birth, maturity, decline. 0r, again, the historian nay postulate as prinary acoun-
try's culture and character. The rnethod adopted here is more eclectic and less concerned
with any single theory. It follows the rnechanics of cause and effect and it believes, along
10

witlr Alexis de Tocqueville, that "history is a gallery of pictures in which there are few
originals and nany copies."
Further, this narrative insists upon the importance of irnportation. While all countries
incorporate culture from elsewhere-the process is called "progrest"-Japan does so with a
certain finality. Any definition of Japarrese style has to face the fact that rnost Japanes e are
usually unable to lrandle anything without swiftly nationalizingit. 0r, perhaps better put,
the Japanese have a particular genius for assimilation and incorporation. Thus any influ-
ence-be it gagaku, court dancing from medieval Korea, punk rock from modern fuirerica,
the narrative patternings of European sophisticate Ernst Lubitsch, or the made-in-U.S.A. atti-
tudes of QuentinTarantino-is swallowed, digested, and turned into somethillg sometimes
riclr, often strange, and always "Japanese." Nl of these choices, moreover, are purposeful:
identity is, in the process, more constructed than discovered.
In Japanese cinema, there was thus no Japanese essence awaiting liberation by a few
individual directors. Nor was astorytelling narrative there frorn the first. This rose from the
rreeds, often commercial, to regulanzeproduction. The storytelling cinema was not so muclr
the result of cinernatic discoveries as that of aconsolidation of techniques, nany of thern
old, some of them new, all of them depending upon circumstances. Narrative rose from regu-
Iarization ; style from standard ization.
The enormous if rapidly shrinking weight of the traditional certainly infonls Japanese
culture, but so does the mass of all its imports. Balancing all this, not succumbing entirely to
uolksgezsl theory 0n one hand, nor, on the other, completely subscribing to the effects of
foreign influences, is the task of the historian.
One of the ways in which l have attempted to identify the demands of an assumed native cul-
ture is by presupposing a polarity between what I identify as apresentational ethos, which I
find more in Asia than in the West, and a representational ethos, which I find more in the
West than in Asia.
The representational intends to do just that, represent: It is realist and assumes that
"reality" itself is being shown. The presentational, on the other hand, presents. This it does
through various sfi/izations, with no assumption that raw realiry is being displayed. The
West is farniliar with some of these stylizations (irnpressionisrn/expressionisrn), and the
Japanese cinema will introduce us to more. Film "realisn" is itself, to be sure, just one sfyli-
zation among nany, but its position is in the West privileged. It is not so traditionally privi-
leged in the East. fuid, though l believe my gene ralization is largely true, we can still think of

presentational European and American films, and representationalJapanese ones.
My use of this presentational-representational axis is not original. It is a concept familiar
to rnany historians of the Japanese film. I am, however, perhaps alone in so stressing it.
Though it remains a scherna, it is a powerful one, because through it one can discover a
basic assumption governing the shape of the Japanese fihn. It provides a base upon which to
build
The idea of presentation also welcomes an expanding tradition. Japanese tradition now
includes much that was originally foreign. Ozu made )nr Gang his 0m, and group-
nrinded Japanese descendants have become the attractive gangs of rascals in the fihns of
Kitano "Beat" Takeshi and others of his generation. At the sane time, presentation as a
dominant assumption makes possible the creation of individual directorial styles. This is true
in all cinema; the gestural canlera in Mizoguchi Kenji and Max Ophtils, the precision of
detail in Kuros awa and Hitchcock, the narrowly selective realisn of Ozu and Robert Bresson.
One night say that a rcpresentational ethos results rn aless individual style.
This said, one must also add that commercial film is a collective effort, and tracing
responsibilities is not all that easy. The auteur theory conventionally assigns such responsi-
bility to the director himself, under the assumption that the captain is respottsible for the
slrip. However, contributions to afinished film arevanous, perhaps particularly in Japan,
wlrere harmonious contribution is encou raged and single-minded determittation is uot. In
this work I may not have entirely solved the many problems of attribution but, at least, I
have indicated some of those-producers, writen, photographen, art directors, actors-who
have contributed. In so doing, I hope to have ernphasizedsomething about the nature of this
joint product.
fuiyone attempting a history of.Japanese film is at something of a disadvanlage in that so
little Japanese film is left. Even in a world medium where two-thirds of all silent cinena is
lost and perhaps a quarter of all sound films as well, the destruction of the Japanese cinema
is extraordinary. Except for a few known titles, there is little ftrlly extant from the period of
I89l to 1917 andonly sornewhat rnore from 1918 to 1945. The 1923 earthquake, tl-rc 1945
fire-bombing of the rnajor cities, the poslwar Allied Occupation torching of banned films,
and the later indifference of the industry itself have meant the destruction of ninety percent
of allJapanese films made before 1945. I lrave noted such missing films in the text with the
designation "n.s." (not surviving) .
Tlrere is now a large amount of scholarly work on the Japauese film. Since one of nty
aims in writing this llew account is to acconmodate film students, I have puryosely availed
myself of it, calling attention in the bibliography to its availability, For the same reason I
have cornpiled a guide to English-subtitled film on DVD and videocassette to assist both
teacher and student, as well as the interested reader.
t2

Finally, in writing this book I am grateful, as always, to the KawalttaFoundation, the
JapanFoundation, and the National Film Center, and to their generosity in allowing screen-
ings and lending stills. I want to acknowledge my debt to the ate Earle Ernst who first intro-
duced me to the presentationaVrcpresentationalparadigm which has become central to this
book. I am as well indebted to David Borwell, Arthur Nolletti, Keiko McDonald, and Mark
Schilling, aII of whom took time to read the manuscript andmake suggestions; to the input
of Aaron Gerow; to Paul Schrader, who not only read the manuscript but wrote the foreword;
and to my Kodansha editon, Barry Lancet, UchiyamaMichiko , andCathy Layne.
Donald Richie
i t l 13

"One need only compare American, French, and German films
to see how greatly nuances of shading and coloration c nvary
in motion pictures. In the photographic image itself, to say
nothing of the acting and the script, there somehow emerge
differences in natio nal character. "
TanizahJun'ichiro , In Praise of Shadnus (1933) Qn'ei rAisAn,
translated by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker,
rg77)

BECINNINCS AND THE BENSHI
f ilm began in Japan, as in most countries, during the last few years of the nineteenth cen-
I tury. The Cin lmatographe Lumidre made its Osaka debut in 1897. Within weels, Thomas
Edison's Vitascope was also seen there and, shortly afterthat, in Tokyo as well. In the same
yeff tlre fint motion-picture camerawas imported by photographer Asano Shiro of the Koni-
shi Camera Shop, and he was shortly shooting street scenes around the capital. At nearly the
same time the Mitsukoshi Department Store formed a photography department and its
cameranen, Shibata Tsunekichi and Shirai Kanzo, began taking shots of the Ginza and of
geisha.
By early 1899, Asano had turned to geisha as well, capturing a series of dances. Komada
Koyo, also originally with the Konishi Carnera Shop and soon to be one of the leading bmshi
(silent-film narrators) ,later remembered the trouble they hadwith the focus andwith keep-
ing the dancers within the sight-lines they had drawn 0n the floor. Nonetheless, after much
struggle, they finally produce d aJapanese motion picture.
Geisha were chosen as subjects not because they were quintessentially Japanese but
because their appealwas s0 strong. Asano and Kornadahadboth noticed that among the
various popular photographic postcards their stores sold, those of geisha outsold any other.
Geisha were therefore a commodity popular enough to wanant the necessary cinematic
outlay.
By the rniddle of 1899, Komada had acquired enough capital to leave the camera store
and form the ksociation of Japanese Motion Pictures. This organrzation now sponsore d an
entire program of such geisha dances, all newly filmed, all in focus, at the Tokyo Kabut-za,
and the event was well attended even at the inflated admission prices common to that venue.
Thus inspired, other camera-wielding businessmen began producing their own programs.
Slribata, at the request of a local dramalic troupe, filmed a scene from one of its plays,
Armed Robber: Shimizu Sadakichi (Pisutoru Goto Shimizu Sadakichi, 1899, n.s.) , and
17

later in the year he approached kabuki itself and fihned excerpts frorn Maple Vieuling
(Monrij tgan, 1899) and IVinin Dojoji (Two People at Dojo Temple, n.s.). The latter was
tinted (anotherJapanfirst) by the Yoshizawa Company, later one of the first fihn production
companies.
Maple Viewing, 1 899, Shibata
Tsunekichi, with 0noe Kiku-
goro V, lchikawa Danjuro lX
Originally, the leading kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjuro IX was ag inst the idea of rnotion
pictures, dismissing them as (apparently unlike kabuki) merely vulgar Amllselnent. In f.act,
kabuki 26[e6-though not Danjuro hirnself-had already appeared before the Lumidre
caneranen when they visited Japan, but this apparent contradiction was acceptable since
those performances were for export. However, Danjuro was eventually won over by the argLl-
nrent that his appe arance would be a gift for posterity.
Consequently, joined by Onoe Kikugoro V, Danjuro went through three short scenes for
the camera. Shibata had decided to shoot rn asrnall outdoor stage reserved for tea parties
behind the Kabul<t-za, but that morning there was astrong wind. Stagehands had to hold the
backdrop, and the wind carried away one of the fans Danjuro was tossing. Reshooting was
out of the question, and so the mistake stayed in the picture. Later, Shibata remembered that
some viewers remarked that the accident gave the piece acertain charm. As one of the earli-
est Japanese fihns to survive , Maple Vieu,ing can still be appreciated today, with the "flying
f.an" scene intact.
In the same year, the active Komada appeared at the Kinkikafr, zsrnall theater in Tokyo's
Kanda district where Vitascope prerniered. Dressed in formal evening wear and carrying a
silver-headed cane, he greeted his guests and began explaining what they were seeing-in
tlris case, a series of funertcanVitascope shorts.
Although this benshi lecturer-commentator had his counteryarts in most early cinemas,
the role was retained longer inJapanthan elsewhere. The need for alive narrator had faded
in the United States by 1910, but inJapan the benshi survived well into the era of sound, and
ltl

was not really challenged until 1932. Eventually, the profession was done in by the enormous
popular success ofJosef von Sternberg's early talkie, Morocco (1930).
The reasons for the long life of the benshi were various. Since Japan had only some forty
years before been "opened up to the West" (a phrase invented in the West), ignorance of
much of the outside world was conrnon. The benshi filled in the gaps of knowledge Western
viewers hadacquired long before. They were "a reassuring native presence with a presumed
acquaintance of the foreign object," a necessity which might even now "explain theJapanese
affection for teachers, tour guides, sommeliers, and other conduits for the acquisition of new
experience."l
In addition to his educ ational role, the benshi was essential to the film-viewing experi-
ence. In part, this was because the early cinem a of Japan wff, as elsewhere, a cinem a of
slrort, often unrelated clips-initially fihns from abroad: in the Lumidre collection, orle saw
babies being fed, gardeners being squirted, and s0 0n. A commentary connecting these clips
not only made a short progran longer but more coherent. Later, when longer programs
becanre available, story links were created by the benshi. Still later came the illusion of a
self-contained story-world. Until then, the benshi was all that these little glirnpses had in
colnlnolt.
The benshi was also required to fill the time. This he accomplished in various ways.
Besides talking, he sometimes lengthened the viewing tirne. Many films were quite short, and
s0 a number were shown 0n a single bill. Sometimes, as was common in early showings in
Frartce and the tinited States, films were repeated. Since the audience had not yet developed
wlrat lras been called a"linear response," n0 one minded a second viewing as it gave olte a
chance to catch new things the second time around.
In recalling the films he had seen around 1898, as achild of about ten, novelist Tanizaki
Jun'ichiro said: "The ends of the reel would be joined together so that the same scene could
be projected over and over,l can still remember, endlessly repeated, high waves rolling in on
a shore somewhere, breaking and then rcceding, and a lone dog playing there, now pursu-
ing, now being pursued by the retreating and advancing waters." l
Another example of the need for length occurred during the initialJapanese showing 0f
tlre Edison film, The Maj, Irutin]ohn Rice Kiss (1895). Though the film was seen by Western
spectaton but once, inJapan, with the ends joined together,John approached May and kissed
her some dozen times. This repetition had consequences. Suspicious police appeared, but the
quick-minded conmentator-one Ueda Hoteikan- expl ained thatWesterners custom ari ly
greeted each other with a ftrll-rnouth kiss and that the ladies and gentlemen of the audience
ought to be edified by this docume ntary footage of what in Arnerica was an everyday courtesy.
The technique of repetition has aproperJapanese name, tasuke (continuous loop), and
its use remains common 0n Japanese television and in the movie theaters, where advertising
(l
I
-r-
-L-'
I9

clips are repeated several times. The aim now is not to make a short program longer, but the
argument holds that anything short rray be twice savored. After all, repetition seemingly for
its own sake is so accepted an element inJapanese drantaturgy that its cinematic equivalent
seenrs quite uatural. Perhaps those Western viewers who, even during aMizoguchi Kenji or
an Ozu Yasujiro film, sigh and hope the director will soon get on with it are responding to
this tradition of repetition.
The benshi mostly filled in the time with lengthy explanations, l time-consurning
rhetoric, and drawn-out, often moralizing conclusions. It was the benshi who created the
narrative for the audience to follow, and even today, wheu the narrator's performance has
been reduced to a more or less scholarly reconstruction, a plethora of explanations, repeti-
tions of information, and voice-overs remains in Japanese commercial film. This was what
the uninformed audieuce required and conseqLlently wartted. "What to filmgoers in the West
nriglrt seem an overdetermined, annoying repetition was for Japanese audiences constitutive
of meaning." i
From the Western perspective, it could be said that the benshi delayed the cinerttatic
development of narrativeinJapan. However, this line of thought is valid only if one believes
that tlre development of narrative was a "natural" development of the film and that there
were no otheL alternatives. Actually , uJapanese film itself indicates, there were.
In the West, cinema was evolving into a self-sufficient narcative. It seemed the rlost prac-
tical and efficient way to entertain increasingly sophisticated audiences. A series of short clips
gave way to lengthier, lltore coherent stories. The audience's involvement iu more detailed
stories increased attend ance.lt was thus possible to find in the narrative film the tnost suit-
able cinerratic form if the industry required films to be quickty and che aply made.
In Japan, however, the perception of narrative was different. It was the benshi and not
any self-contained cinematic narrative which made sense to the audiettce. He not only
explained what was being shown on the screen but also was there "to reinforce, interpret,
counterpoint, and in any case to intercede." *
The role of the benshi was avery traditional one. From the earliest times, Japanese drama
lrad required an informing voice. The chorus in noh drarna, thejoruri chanter in bunraku
puppet drama, the gidrtl'Lt, naffator itt kabuki-all premodern Japanese theater is a pictor-
ial expansion of verbal storytelling. Joseph fuiderson has indeed defined theJapanese drama
as apresentation "in which actors do not autonomously enactevents for spectators; dialogue
spoken by actors is not the primary speech mod ality; and basic plot structure is not based on
conflict, crisis, climax, r'esolution, and dramatic unity." 5
Rather than being presented as an occurrence, drama is presented as a recoultted occur-
rence. Although many national dramas have entertained like assumptiotts, the Japanese
theater (and its descendents, movies and television) has remained remarkably faithful to the
20

authoritativevoice. As one early critic expressed it, the fihn itself was like the bunraku puppet
and the benshi was the gidayu reciter.
Initially, the benshi merely told the story before the performance-the setsurnei (surn-
ming Llp), 0r an explanation provided before the fact. Soon, however, he was telling the story
during the screening itself. In those fiLst yeaffi, the irnages had been sornetimes accompanied
by the actors (if available) who voiced their lines behind the screen. Hence the narne of
this teclrnique-tr agezerifu ("shadow dialogue"). Such presentations were somewhat like
anotlrer early cinematic fonn called rmsageki (joined drama), where scenes from aplay
witlr real actors were interspersed with filmed scenes, the actors stationed behind the screen
to voice their roles. Eventually, the benshi assumed all the lines. To do so, he often resorted
to using avariety of voices. This technique, which was an earlier method taken over from the
puppet dranta, was called koutairo ("voice coloring").
A suliving outline of atypical stage-inspired film, The Golden Demon (Konjiki yasha,
1912, n.s.), suggests how this worked. This fihn version of the stage adaptation of }zaki
Koyo's popular novel became a vehicle for Tsuchiya Shoju, a benshi noted for his mastery of
"seven separate and distinct voices." This scene of an argument requires three voices:
Koutairo (for the heroine, Omiya):
Koutairo (for the hero, Kanichi):
IVaruator (the benshi voice):
If I nrarry Torniya,what will you say?
Tlren you're all set to marry him! What a fickle flirt
you are!
Kanichi, overcome with :'age, kicls the fragile
0miya
The rnany-voiced benshi also developed avocabulary of styles. The historical film was
tlrouglrt to demand an inflated, somewhat nual delivery; fihns about nodern life were more
colloquial, and the tone for foreign films was sententious and didactic.
When the vocal demands were too great, benshi often shared films, just as bunraku
sometimes switches gidayu narrators in mid-play. There were also benshi "contests," which
drew spectaton attracted to particular benshi rather than to the film itself. Benshi even made
recordings, which sold well and were listeneC to without the accompaniment of fihn. One of
the later benshi constantly rendered his big hit, Robert Wiene'sThe Cabinet of Doctor Cali-
gari (1919), on the stage, butwithout the film; he even made a 78-rpm recording 0f part of
it that sold quite well.
The benshi were employed in many other ways. One of their nurnber, for exarnple, solved
a serious censorship problem. This concernedaFrench Path6, feature, La Fin du Rdgne de
Louis Xyl-Rduolution Frangaise (ca. 1907, n.s.), a film considered incendiary sinceJapan
had proclaimed its own ruler to be of divine descent. "0n the day before it was to be shown,
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tlre French film was withdrawn as arnenace to public peace." In its place appearcd another
film, TIte Cat,e Kng: A Curions Storl, of IVorth Americcr (Hokubei kiden: Gankutsuo, 1!08,
n.s.). This was in fact the same film, only now Louis XVI was the "leader of a robber barld,"
and tlre rabble storming the Bastille became "abandof citizens loyally joining the police to
suppress the outlaws, all this action takingplace in the Rocky Mountains."T
The benshi affected the growth and development of theJapanese cinemain other ways.
His preference tended toward simple stories-the better to exhibit his 0m talents. No narra-
tive function other than his own was welcomed. Given his skills, he also preferred that each
scene be alittle drama, amise-sn-scdne. With the benshi present, there was n0 need to con-
struct the illusion of a scene-to-scene development, since he himself provided the necessary
narrative. He was in this way much like his theatrical predecessors.
The influence of the benshi continues even today. Joseph fuiderson renenbers listening
to a modern Japanese television soap opera from another r00m in the house and discovering
that "voice-over narration not only recaps previous episodes but every so often talks about
tlrings that are happening right now on the tube. I don't have to look at this television
drana.l hear it."8
FILM, THEATER, AND ACTORS
Th, Japanese audience perceived film as a new form of theater and not (as in, say, the
I United States) a new form of photography. It is not surprising then that nearly all of the
earlyJapanese story films were in some manner or other taken from the stage. Though this is
no longer true, theJapanese film audience still behaves much as it does at the theater. Like
tlre audience of the latter, the moviegoer takes his seat at the beginning of the session. Film-
viewing is not seen as acircular entertainment that one rray enter and leave at will. Rather,
it has its own narrative rules, and these are to be respected. Mernbers of the Japanese audi-
ence rarely leave the theater during the projection and often remain seated until all the
credits have been viewed and the lights g0 up. For whatever reason, the film is watched in
silence, in marked contrast to film-viewing habits elsewhere, but much in keeping with Westem
theater- goin g behavior.
The subjects of the early Japanese cinema were equally theatrical-scenes from kabuki
classics or sections of shimpn These two genres were thought of as separate. Kabuki was "old
school" (kyuha) and shimpa (which had fint appeared around 1890) was the "new" (shin)
"school" (ha).
This atter drama was originally designed as a lypically Meiji-era compromise. It was
written for a rapidly modernizing Japanwhich had thrown off feudal rule. The language was
colloquial, the topic was largely concerned with the contemporary scene , and the perfor-
22

mance was
^cted
out not through the strictly stylized rnovements of kabuki but through
movement thought closer to life itself. Still, shimpa retained many kabuki accoutemrents,
including males in female roles.
It was this distinction between old and new school that shaped the forms taken by the
nascent cinema: kabuki-based films became jidaigeki (more common|y, jiclnimono) , a
rubric which now defines all period-filrns; and the shirnpa-based pictures were the begin-
nings of gmdnigeki, or contenporary films.
Kabuki-based movies continued to be constructed of various snippef5-5gsnes abstracted
from popular stories long part of the collective consciousness-but adaptations from the
nore dranatic shirlpa provided astronger narrative and thus generated longer fihns. Yet both
kyuha and shimpa were constructed, photographed, and presented in much the same way.
Not only was the nanator present, but there were also lyama (male actresses) in place of
wornen, and the film itself was usually cornprised of ftrll-frontal, long-running stagelike shots.
Wlren Konishi Ryo shot the first film version of the kabuki classic Chushingura (The
Loyal Forty-Seven Ronin, 1907, n.s.)-an extrernely popular subject, with over eighty-five
film versions to date-the camera was fixed at aspot about thirty feet away and, since the
filnrwasintendedtobe justlike apay,theviewwasstrictlyfrontal.Thenwasevenacurtain
between scenes.
The film frame was commonly considered the equivalent of the theatrical proscenium.
Regarding his My Sin (Onoga tsumi, aka One's Own Sin, 190!, n,s.), the first shirnpa scrcen
adaptatiou, carnerarnan-director Chiba Kichizo recalled that he erected poles on the beach
and strungacurtain between them. The curtain could be raised to reveal the dramataking
place. This dramaturgy "indicated the direction earlyJapanese cinema took it captured stage
action as apicture, rather than as amoving image."e
Though many films from other countries were still constructed of extended long-shots,
early Westem directors were finding new ways to direct the viewer's attention within this
frame. They integrated shorter scenes with the camera set closer to delineate the action, and
close-ups to call attention to characters. None of this occurred inJapan, however, because of
tlre pervasive theatrical infl uence.
Early Japanese filmmakers clung to the idea of the film frame as stage. 0n the stage
itself, audience attention was directed by the dialogue, a convention which continued with
benshi-dominated cinema. But as the benshi's voice was divorced from the actor on the
screen, it was sometimes difficult to see just whom among those distant flickering figures was
doing the talking.
One neans of effectively directing attention was to focus on aprivileged person: the hero
or heroine. Spectators could follow a story shot at a considerable distance if they had some-
one to follow about. Stars became necessary, andwere s00ll created.
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Among the earliest stars was aprovincial actor,Onoe Matsunosuke. He was discovered by
Makino Shozo, a former kabuki-troupe m n ger and, it was later said, the first person to
deserve the title of director in the Western sense of the word. 0n0e, who had met Yokota
Einosuke (head of the company which later became the Nikkatsu motion picture company),
began acting in kyuha films featurin g tachimautari (kabuki-style sword-fighting). Makino,
impressed by 0n0e's ability to handle the physical rigors of his trade, made the actor the star
of Goban Tadanobu (1909, n.s.). 0noe becarne s0 popular that by the time he died in
1926 he had made hundreds of films, many based on kabuki stories, such as lris popr-rlar
Sukwoku (1914, n.s.).
Sukeroku,1914, Makino Shozo, with Onoe Matsunosuke
Despite the competition of the new shimpa product, these kabuki-based kyuha rernained
popular for decades to come: nearly six thousand jidaigeki were made between 1908 and
1945, andtheir descendants still grace the tube. The audience for asword-wielding starwas
large. It is said that during 0n0e's period of greatest fame, when Japanese schoolboys were
asked to name the greatest man in Japan, they always named hirn second. (The emperor
wffi, of course, first; third was one of the reigning benshi.)
Onoe has said that during this period of early filmrnaking, neither actors nor directors
used a script. Instead, Makino carried the plot in his head and caIed out the lines for the
actors while they were 0n camera, just like the joruri chanter in bunraku. Onoe also recalled
what hard work it was. He was required to make nine 0r more features a month, which
meant that he was working on three separate features at any one time. Sometimes, he said,
he was so exhausted thathe mixed up his parts. And, indeed, overworked, he died on the set.
Seen today, these Makino-Onoe films indicate how necessary such acentral figure was to
the audience's understanding. Even in an inferior print (and by any standard , al extant
24 ii i: l i

prints are inferior), the star is always plainly visible. So, t00, even when the film is projectedat
the wrong speed (nost of 0noe's films were undercranked in order to save on film), his ath-
letic vitaliff is apparent. He alone comprised the narrative upou which the benshi commented.
At the same time that Makino's films werc beconing star-based attractiolts, solnething
similar was occurring in the West, though for different reasons. In an effort to create stars (in
tlris case, to win respectability and raise ticket prices), both the Fren ch film d'art (Sarah
Bernhardt, among others, like kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjuro before her, having been
induced to allow selected stage scenes to be filmed for posterity) and, in Anerica, Adolph
Zukor's self-explanatory "Famous Players in Famous Plays" were introduced.
These static stage presentations, one scene sedately followittg another, may have brought
a better class of people into the theaters in the West, but Japan did not have to worry about
respectability. Film was by now an artpopular with all classes, n0 matter what their income.
Indeed, the Crown Prince was induced to attend an early film showing andlater the Entperor
Meiji hirnself was sat down and shown one.
One of the results of the Western films fl'n1[-r67ith all their scenes from famous plays
passing before the viewer-was that they prepared audiences for longer films. By 1910, the
filrn d'art, as well as the Italian epics and some of the longer fuierican movies, set a prece-
dent for length. Longer running tirnes, in turn, required detailed and developed scripts.
ht the West, the energence of scripts led to scenic construction, to early expository inter-
titles, and to greater visual connllnication.Laler, the intertitles werc more commonly devoted
to dialogue, and these eventually evolved into a screenplay, which attempted to sltow as
much as it told.
None of this, however, initially occurred in Japan. Nor was there any reason for it to.
Onoe bounced from scene to scene capturing attention, while the consequences of the slender
narrative were still assumed by the benshi. Whereas the Western script incorporated more
complex stories plus innovations in shooting and editing, theJapanese benshi had no use for
any of this.
Nor need the benshi concern himself with an assumed fidelity to what in the West was
becoming known as cinem atic "rcalism." In Europe and Am enc , this child of photography
was expected to obey the laws of appearance. And since realisrn was aphotographic virtue,
the film became a document. This did not occu r inJapan-for a number of reasons.
REALISM AND REALITY
.fo most Japanese, the Western ideaof "realisrl," particularly in its naturalistic phase, was
I something truly new. All early Japanes e dramatic forrns had assumed the necessity of a
structure created through mediation. The same was true for Japanese culture in general: the
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wilderness was natural only after it had been shaped and presented in apalpable form, as in
theJapanese garden, or flowers were considered living (ikebana) only after having been cut
and arranged for viewing. Life was thus drarnatically lifelike only after having been ex-
plained and cornmented upon. Art and entertainment alike were presentational, that is,
tlrey rendered aysarticular reality by way of an authoritative voice (be it the noh chorus or
the benshi). This approach stood in marked contrast to the representational style of the West
in which one assumed the realiW of what was being shown.
Irrdeed, Japan had no tradition of the common style known as realisrn, the style that
Susan Sontag has defined as "that reductive approach to realiff which is considered realis-
tic."r0 Though Hokusai's sparrows are thought realistic in Japarr, this kind of realism is seen
u partial when contrasted with the clairls of "cinerratic realism" in the West. Thus, what
passes for realistic in Japan, elsewhere is thought highly stylized. These inherent differences
nay also explain why the Japanese were puzzled over what Degas and Monet could have
found so special in ordinary Japanese prints.
The national inclination toward the presentational did not mean that certain realistic
aspects of the moving picture were neglected. It was rather that they were not insisted upon
and that, when included, they appeffed cornprornised (to Western eyes) by a stagey artifi-
ciality. The documentary, with its almost ostentatious lack of presentation and its tacit assump-
tions of representation, became influential in Japan much later than it had in other
countries. Indeed, it was not until the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 that newsreels of an
event showed arge audiences docurnentary footage, thereby preparing the way for a wider
reception of a more representational and less presentational cinema.
Even early newsreels retained an unusual amount of presentation. A tlteater showing
such newsreels had Japanese flags, aband, and a benshi. Komada Koyo's wartime offerings
in Tokyo's Asakusa district in 1905 included high claims of authenticity-every foot of film,
he said, had been shot right where Japanese blood had sanctified the soil. And, in truth, solne
of it was. Yoshizawa Shokai had dispatchedacan"rcra crew to capture sone scenes. Shibata
Tsunekichi and another early cameruman, Fujiwara Kozaburo, were sent to the front.
Authentic material shot by Path6 and the Charles Urban Company was also included.
Still (as was common in the newsreel footage of sone other countries as well), there was
much fake footage added. Though this fakery was detected and reports of derision from the
audience did surface, the Japanese, as a rule, aclarowledged, even enjoyed, the charm and
entertainment value of the falsified newsreels. As has been wisely said: "Originality was never
a ptimary value in Japan. " I I
In the West, on the contrary, faked newsreels caused concern. fui funerican attempt to
cash in on the San Francisco earthquake of 1905 was sternly refused distribution in that
country. This regard for realisn was to lead to acinematic style that was almost ostenta-
26

tiously representational .InJapan, one might say that newsreels were expected to be "fake,"
that is, as presentational as anything else. If early Western newsreels defined, and to an extent
created, narrativefilm in the West, nothing of the sort occurred inJapan until much laher,
Wlren Japan'sfirst war drama,The ChuUt Blossoms ofJapan (Yanato zakura, tt.s.), wA
finally filned in 1909, realism was not among its values: Ridge 203 in Port futhur was obvi-
ously the studio lot, and firecrackem were used-kabuki-like-to create the bursts of sntoke
from fired rifles. The realisrn of newsreels was thus turned into nonrealistic theatricality.
In Japanese film, as on tl-rc Japanese stage, actuality was one thing; theatricality was
anotlrer . Armed Robber, based on a scene taken frorn a play which in itself is based 0n "a
real-life happening," was using a standard ploy of the topical bunraku and kabr-rki vehicles
of such early Edo playwrights as Chikamatsu Monzaemon and Tsuruya Namboku. The actu-
aliry of the event might be aselling point, but theatricality, not fidelity, was the goal. Though
a robbery rnay have occurred last month, the scenery, acting style, and lighting would have
come from a century before.
Realisrn as a style concerned with apperances was nevertheless slowly influencing the
enrergin g Japanese film. Wartime newsreels were, in part, responsible for this, as was the
growing importation of Western films. A third reason for change was a new form of theater,
shingeki (literally, "new dtanta"), which was also foreign, consisting as it did of aJapanese
version of Western proscenium theater.
The Japanese audience was now ready for sonething besides shimpa melodrama and
0n0e's kabuki-like cavortings. What in ten years had become the "traditional" Japanese fihn
was losing its audience. Sato Tadao has said thatatthattime, around 1910, itwas "comrnon
knowledge that Japanese films were rubbish compared to foreign films. People who went to
Japanese films were snotty-nosed little kids."rr While the audiences may have included a
grown-up 0r two, the narrative means of these early films were juvenile, or what the foreign
critic would call primitive. Early Japanese fihn thus contained a paradox: It was a new
means of expression, but what it expressed was old.
WESTERN IN FLU ENCES
ft orp ared to the perceived staleness of the Japanese fihn, new films from the West were
Vfreshlless itself. Imported in numbers after IgI5,foreign cinema offered rlew perspectives
to the Japanese moviegoer. Initially, in the 1890s, these films were seen as educational. When
tlre early Japanese audience watched the waves at Deauville rolling toward them, they were
enjoying their first glimpse of the outside world, a thrilling experience to a people for cen-
turies isolated from the world atlarge.
As might be expected, given the audience, the appeal of these early films was at least
ti
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partially didactic: the audience went to be educated as well as entertained. Since Japan,like the
rest of ,{sia, lacks entirely the antipathy for being taught that is so cornmon in the West, these
early films found a ready and enthusiastic following, for whom learning what the French
cavalry looked like and how Fatirna danced were matters of the most lively interest. }zu
Yasujiro recollects how "the [fapanese] rnovies at that time did nothing more than follow the
plot. . . but when an fulerican film, Cit,ilizatiort [1916] by Thomas Ince, was showll . . .
that was when I decided I wanted to be a film director."rl
Though he was speaking of a slightly later period , }zu was obviously impressed by a nar
rative intricacy different from that of the simple, staticJapanese film. When fuirerican movies
began appearing in greater numbers, ruanyJapanese would have agreed with Ozu, who con-
fessed, "film had a magical hold 0u rne." Now films were not only educative, they also
offered a rrew way of looking at the world.
After Llniversal Pictures opened a Tokyo branch, among the first films to enterJapan was
a rnodest group of hour-long program pictures called Bluebird Photoplays. The series had no
influence 0n filmmaking in the United States, but it certainly left its rnark in Japan. Oue
critic remarked that when a Bluebird film was courpared to aJapanese fihn it was like sud-
denly moving from the early playwrights of the Edo period to the literature of the modern
n atu ral i sts (S h i r nazaki Toson, T ay ana Katai ) .
These "photoplays" had shots of nAture, detemined young heroines, and a dose of senti-
mentality. Though the settings were mainly rural, much of the story found the young people
coping with new urban ways, just like yourlg folk in Japan. In addition, there was a novel
kind of narrative: scenes were not only shorter but shot from various angles, and the cameru
moved in closer. The audience was actually shown what it was expected to see.
In the face of this fresh approach, the benshi changed their habits. For the Bluebird films,
they dropped their didactic ways and turned lyrical. A benshi "script" for the conclusion of a
Bluebird film called Southern Justlce (1917) ends with: "Sta$ strewn across the sky, blossoms
falling like snow on the green eafth. It is Spring-romance is in the South. Spring, ah, Spriug!"
Western fihns were warmly welcomed. In his autobiography, Kurosawa Akira drew up a
list of over one hundred foreign films he had seen between I9I9 (when he was nine) and
1929. Many were Anerican. At the age of eleven, the future director saw Charlie Chaplin's
The Kd (1921); at twelve, D. W. Griffith's )rphans of the Storm (1922); and at thirteen,
Chaplin'sA Womnn of Pari,s (192r. He had begun watching serials even earlier. Favorites
irrcluded William S. Hart inTlte Tiger Mnn (1918). Remembering how impressed he was as
a child, Kurosawa wrote: "What remains in my heart is that reliable manly spirit and the
smell of male sweat,"'a qualities which he was later to reproduce in his own work.
Foreign film was popular not only with the audiences but also with those in the industry
itself. The 1919 showing of D. W. Griffith's Intoluance (1916) was asensation, and many of
28

tlrose who Iater became directors, scripfwriters, 0r cameramen remember attending and
being impressed by this and other foreign-film showings-impressed, often to the point of
imitation. Sato Tadao has listed some later funerican films which have been "repeatedly imi-
tated": Ernst Lubitsch'sThe Marriage Ci,rcle (1924), F. W. Murnau'sSu,nrise (1927), Frank
Borzage's Se?tsnth Heattm (1927), and Frank Capra's Lafit for a Da1, 0933).'5
Among those many professionals attending showings of new foreign films was Makino
Shozo, who had by then discovered there were better ways of making fihns than shouting
directions at Onoe. Indeed, he was the first Japanese director to reahze the importance of
having a scenario.
The first two decades of Japanese fihl history had already passed before scenarios were
used: Makino's original The Lo1t577 Forty-Serten Ronin (1912, n.s.) was shot from a mere
outline, a simple list of the forty-five scenes held in the hand of the director. Now this sarne
director saw that this was not sufficient. His production philosophy, when he got around to
plrrasing it, was: first, the story; second , a clear picture; third, action. This differs from the
director's previous stance, in which getting a picture focused and lit was as important as hav-
ing something to film. The story had not been the first priority. Makino's next version of The
Lo1t677 Fortj,-Seuen Ronin (1917, n.s.), by contrast, had aproper script, matching cuts, and
reframing pans, along with other indications of advanced planning.
Earlier films had often been a procession of postcardlike scenes, 0r an assemblage of bits
from kabuki or shimpa, their continuity assured not by the fihnmaker's skill but by the audi-
ences' familiarity with the basi c narrative. What story there had been was rigidly formed to fit
into the requirements of the benshi. Now, however, something more cornplicated was about
to be discovered. This was a more revealing and hence engaging kind of storytelling, an
ordering which would nake ernotior-r more palpable. Rather than a simple assemblage of
separate scenes, there would be a series of linked scenes- each of which commented on the
otlrer, fonvarded the story, and reve aled cause and effect. In short, this was finally narration
since (in Sontag's words, applicable everywhere) "only that which narrates can tnake us
undemta116l." l6
SHINCEK/ AND NEW NARRATIVE TACTICS
I
ust as the shimpa had made possible the beginnings of a more complic ated kind of cine-
Ll nrattcnarrative, so it was that a newer form of.Japanese drama, shingeki-along with
contemporary Western fihns-enabled tl'rcJapanese cinema to further evolve.
Like shirnpa, shingeki, the Japanese version of Western realist theater, was regarded
as reformative. The narratives were those of Ibsen, Chekhov, Gorky , and 0'Neill, and the
rhetoric was that of the European (particularly Russian) proscenium theater, or what was
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understood of it. ffshingeki later became as standardized as shimpa, initially-from 1909
on-it had a greatreforming influence.
Looking at the popularity of the new shingeki on the stage, those in the film industry
decided that a motion picture with a self-contained story along more realistic lines would
win back the former audiences who had been supplanted by "snotty-nosed little kids." One of
the first shingeki adaptations indeed proved popular. Resurrection (Kachusha, 1914, n.s.)
was Hosoyama Kiyomatsu's filming of aportion of a shingeki dramatization of the Tolstoy
story. Itwas "realistig"-2.fleast to the extent thatit used "authentic" Russian costumes-
and, though it used oyama instead of actresses and stuck to other stagey conventions, it
nonetheless impressed many moviegoers. Playwright Akimoto Matsuyo described the picture
as magnificent, adding that he had truly felt whatever it was thal, so agitated the heroine
Katsush a, an emotional response presumably not afforded by priorJapanese films.
Resu rrecti on, 1914, Hosoya ma
Kiyomatsu, with Tachibana Sadajiro,
Sekine Tappatsu
Hosoyama's success encouraged others. Since audiences flocked to both the "foreign"
shingeki as well as Amerrcan and European films, producers were s00n drawing up lists of
popular foreign techniques: short scenes, closer shots, a more thorough narrative, and an
editing process more complic ated than that of pasting one tableau to the next.
A favorite foreign film of the period, the Germ an Gendarme Mdbiu& becam e The Lieu-
tmant's Daughter (Taii n0 musume, I9I7, n.s.) in Inoue Masao's adaptation, which was
quite "Western" in its use of flashbacls and close-ups. Large close-ups were also employed in
the director's Poisoned Hubs (Dokuso, 1917, n.s.), but since these shots were of oyama
rather than actual female actresses, the producers decided that in the future female imper-
sonators would be best appreciated aI a distance.
In all of these experiments, enlarging the audience was a major concern. The nascent
Japanese industry was also looking to export its work. Japan had been the only country to
tlrus far successfully resist the Amencan cinematic invasion. (lndia's film industry had not
30

yet begun, while in France and Italy, production was suffering.) Though foreign influence
was everywhere and its products were well regarded, the Japanese industry itself was slowly
expanding. With a finn home audience that would support a local product if it were suffi-
ciently updated, the Japanese industry saw no reason why it, in turn, could not push into for-
eign markets. This was the idea behind the encouragenent of some of the early conpanies to
produce "Western-style" films.
Such tactics were s0 sllccessftrl that by 1914 the movies had becone a big business in
Japan. As early as 1908, the means to insure steady profits had already been sought. Kawaura
Kenichi of Yoshizawa Shokai (provider of the 1904 footage of the Russo-Japanese War and
the first production company to have an in-house "story departrnent") returned in 190S
fron afact-fiLrding world tour and proceeded to construct in To$o's Meguro Ward a studio
like Edison had in the Bronx and, behind it, a villa like Georges Mdlids's in Paris, an indica-
tion of big-business intentions.
In the same year, Urneya Shokichi decided that exploitation was one of the ways to make
money. fui indication of this surfaced when he forrned his M. Path6 Shokai, borrowing both
name and reputation without Pathd's knowledge 0r permission. In the appellation, Shokichi
also chose to flagrantly ignore the fact that rival Yokota Einosuke's company, the original
irnporter of Cindmatographe Lumidre, wffi the actual importer of Pathd fihns into Japan.
Slrokichi's originality confined itself to the addition of the "M," which he later claimed was
for "distinction. "
The director-producer's costurne spectacular The DAu;rt of the Soga Brothers' Hunlin,q
Grounh (Soga kyodai kariba no akebono, 1908, n.s.) was designed to showcase the attrac-
tiorts of both East and West. The Soga brothers themselves were a staple in kabuki repertoire,
and the fihn starred an unprecedented all-girl kabuki troupe, apparentlv put together for the
occasion. Added, too, were dialogue titles, attempted speech synchronization 0n discs, anda
kind of wide-screeu process. To top things off, the film was shown in alarge theater usually
used for drama, with attractive usherettes, a higher admission price, and all the hype that
such a venture usually demands.
Though the film appears to have been financially successful, there were technical dif-
ficulties as well as the jealous ire of the benshi to contend with. Nso, competition was in-
creasing. There were now four motion picture manufacturers, all trying to turn a profit.
Having heard that similar circumstances of overcrowding had led to the creation of the
Motion Picture Patents Company in the United States-seven companies that formed a ca:
tel and monopolized the entire industry-shokichi now approached his Japanese rivals with
anattractive offer. The resultwas the creation, in 1910, of the GreaterJapanFilm Machinery
Manufacturing Company, Limited, though all such rnachinery was actually being imported
from abroad. Yokota became the director of the new caftel, KobayashiKizaburo became the
f"'t
_f:
*t---
31

head of the business department, and Yoshizawa backed out and sold his shares. Nl told, the
new company owned three studios, including the former Yokota studio in Kyoto, and seventy
pernanent theaters.
In 1912,having rnade his profits, Umeya decided to leave as well, and the larye cartel
changed its unwieldy and inaccurate nalne to Nippon Katsudo Shashin Kabushiki Kaisha
(Japan Cinematograph Company), which was in turn s00ll shortened to Xikkatsu. The three
srraller studios were sold, andalarge llew studio was built in Mukojirna, 0n the east side of
Tokyo. By 1914, the company was producing fourteen fihns a month.
The Mukojima studio initially turned out the expected shirlpa product-one of the resi-
dent oyanawas Kinugasa Teinosuke, later director of both A Pnge )ut of Orderp (Kurutta
ichipej r, aka ACrazy Page/A Page of Madness, 1925) andThe Gate of Hell (Jigoku mon,
I95r.By 1915, the average Nikkatsu fihn was rapidly changing: itwas about forty minutes
long and comprised fifteen to thirty caneruset-ups.
Tenkatsu (Tennenshoku Katsudo; Natural Color Motion Picture Company), a nonmem-
ber film company, run by Kobayashi Kizaburo, was rnaking fihns of the sane length with
some fifry to seventy camera set-ups, some of which utilized Charles Urban's Kinemacolor,
whose rights Kobayashi had acquired. His were, it was thought, the more "lroderu" product.
Nikkatsu and Tenkatsu thus largely controlled the creation and exhibition of Japanese
motion pictures. In 1917 , they overtook foreign companies as the maiu source of income for
al Japanese screens. By I)21, Nikkatsu alone owned over half of the six hundred motion
picture theaters in Japan.
Despite novelties from Tenkatsu and othen, Nikkatsu continued to control most of the nar-
ket, For one thing, the theater ownen were satisfied with Nikkatsu's contracts (double bills: one
l+rha fihn, one shirnpa) and, for another, the largerJapanese audience was not all that certain
that it really liked what it had glimpsed of further cinematic innovations in foreign films.
Though this sarne audience had originally embraced the novelty of movies with even
more enthusiasm than that of some other nations, they werc now in phase two of what is per-
haps a peculiarly Japanese pattern of behavior: first an indiscriminate acceptance of a new
idea, then a period of reacti on against it, and finally its complete assimilation, whereby the
idea is transformed and tailored to Japanese tastes.
THE CENDAICEKI
I
n t 9l7 , Tenkatsu hired Kaeriyama Norim asa, a man who was to have a decisive influence
I orr tlre development of theJapanese film. In lg13,KaeriyamabeganJapan's first fihn mag-
azirrc. Tlrree years later, he wrote The Production and Photography of Mouing Pictnre
Drama, (Katsudo shashingeki no sosaku to satsueiho), abook in which he roundlycriticized
.12 :

the product of that tirne. Since filrl was a silent medium, he argued, a narration was neces-
sary in order to make the result comprehensible. Yet, if a script could be designed for a purely
cinematic presentation (that is, without benshi) and titles were inserted only where lleces-
szry, fihns would be widely understood by everyone. In his opinion, films that needed off-
screen narration were devoid of any value, nor was the capturing of stage dramas from an
unmoving frontal position what he considered cinema.
In line with his more elevated estirnation of the motion picture, Kaeriyama changed his
terminology. Ihtsudo shashin, which rneans "rnoving photographs" (as in the company's
original name), had already taken on the nuance of "the"flickers." T0 counter this anti-
quated irnage, Kaeriyarna introduced the rnodern term eiga,which is still used today. Itwas
contemp orury sounding and could mean (depending r-rpon how it was read) "descriptive
pictures," "reproduced pictures," "projected pictures," even "atfiaclive pictures."
Believing, like Makino Shozo, in the necessity of a script, he wrote that the scenario was
the foundation of the motion-picture dranta, and tltat the value of this drama depended on
the script. The director would use it to decide the actions of the actors and all other aspects of
tlre film. This made the scenario very different from the text for astage dranta.
Kaeriyarna's dissatisfaction with Japanese film was echoed by Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, al-
ready a well-larown writer, who said, as though in answer, that not only did he enjoy nothing
more than going to see Western films, but that he believed the difference between them and
0troe Matsunosuke's fihns was the difference between the West andJapan.
The Living Corpse,1917 , Tanaka Eizo, with Yamamoto Kaichi, Kinugasa Teinosuke
33

Tantzalt andKaerryama also believed that not only would a good script produce a good
nodern fihn-a gendaigeki which could compete with rivals and thus win a laryer audi-
ence-but that such a product, being self-explanatory, would elirninate the need for benshi.
The idea of winning larger audiences appealed to the producers. Thus, the twenty-four
year-old Kaefiyana convinced Tenkatsu that he and his associates-actor Murata Minoru
and slringeki dranatist Osanai Kaoru---<ould come up with a product that would win audi-
ences both in Japan and abroad. Besides, Nikkatsu-the competition-h ad aheady profi-
tably allowed Tanaka Eizo to make a "Westem-style" picture, Ihe Liuing Corpse (lkeru
slrikabane, 1!17, n.s.), which containedalarger number of shots, some dialogue titles, and
realistic costumes. At the same time, reassuringly, there were oyan)a in the cast (Kinugasa
played the heroine), the benshi talked through the dialogue titles, and shimpa was imposed
over Tolstoy's storyline. It was awinning combination of elernents: a tried-and-true shimpa
formula plus lashings of novelty from abroad.
Kaeriyama's first film wu The Glory of Ltfe (Sei no kagayakr, aka The Glow of Life, n.s.),
released in 1919. It was the story of a country girl (HanayagtHarumi) who falls in love with an
urbatr arrstocrat (Murata Minoru). In a playful rnoment, the girl asks hirn the meaning of
life. He lightly responds that it is to do whatever one likes. When he does just that and aban-
dons her, she attempts to drown herself but is saved. The aristocrat reappears, repents, and
the films ends with the sober statement "Life Is Effort," sllperimposed upou a shot of the dawn
of a new day.
One critic called the novie shirnpa with irnitation Western titles. With its desertions and
beffayals, it was indeed quite shirnpa-like. Still, there was much that was new . Kaefiyama, like
everyone else, had studied the Bluebird Photoplays with their simple, undemtandable struc-
tures. He had his heroine read Ivan Turgenev, while her little brother imitates Charlie Chaplin.
In addition, the whole picture was tinted in the manner of the fashionable Italian product.
Kaeriyam a and his associates added s0 nany new touches that the company became slls-
piciotrs during the shooting. In his defense, Kaeriyarna clanned the pictlrre was something
like an experiment and that he therefore needed room to be creative. Further, he argued, as
he was actually making the picture for export, he needed to cater to the foreign audience's
appreciation for things like editing, short shots, and close-nps. As final justification,
Kaeriyam a explained that he intended to make a statement with the work, which he de-
scribed as"an ambitious attempt to unravel the meaning of life in four t€els."17
The cornpany accepted the argument that the requirements of an overseas audience were
distinct. Then, as now, products made for the foreign market were conceived differently from
products made for local consumption. Kaeriyama's film was thus shown rn atheater special-
izing in foreign pictures, where it experienced a modest success. More importantly, it proved
inspirational to other filmmakers. Yarnamoto Kajiro, later himself a film director (and
34

mentor of Kuros awaAkira), saw it when he was a student. The picture's hyperbolic advertise-
ment had caught his eye: "the first filmlike film made inJapan " Since he had, in fact, never
seen aJapanese film, he decided that this would be a double first. Yamamoto was favorably
impressed. He later wrote: "Japanese dialogue, titles of a modern design; close-ups and nov-
ing carnera work; the actors' faces untouched by elaborute stage make-up; the plain, un-
affected presence of a real woman; and the slightly awkward yet straightforward and sincere
acting-this was a genuine film."r8
The Glory of Life, despite its failure to draw alarye audience, was considered successful
enough that the indr-rstry as a whole, scenting future profit, grew more reform-minded. Even
conservative Nikkatsu, which had by then absorbed Tenkatsu, allowed TanakaF,izo to make
The l9,sy6 Collar Shop (Kyoya eri rlise , 1922, n.s.), which, though traditional in content
and structure, contained some innovation. Reassuringly and decidedly traditional was the
picture's shimpa story: the proprietor of an old business marries his favorite geisha, only to
have his children leave him, while his new wife continues to see a younger lover; in the end,
the old rnan's shop is destroyed by fire. The film was among the last to use oyama in all the
female roles. (Later that year there was a mass walk-out of all the female irnpersonators,
frustrated over the fact that the new directors were not using them,)
The Kyoya Collar Shop, 1922, Tanaka Eizo, with Azuma Takeo, Miyajima Kenichi,
Fujino Hideo, Koizumi Kasuke.
Other traditional elements included a four-part structure that emphasized the seasons
(with titles indicating Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter-somewhat haiku-like seasonal
references) and a melodrun'ntic finale (during the fire, the distraught merchant grabs the
geisha's hair, is next shown carrying a bloody swath of it, and then stabs her in the stomach
J--'-
35

with a butcher's larife). Shindo Kaneto, later a director hirlself, long remembered the "sinis-
ter smile fixed on his [the rnerchant's] face."re
fulong the innovations was the attention paid to set design. Kamehara Yoshiaki, the first
real art director in Japanese cinemA, pr'ovided LlnLlsually detailed sets. The entire shop, for
exantple, wffi constructed in the Mukojirna studio, with walls that could be removed to
accommodate the camera. The assistants (including young Mizoguchi Kenji) were all famil-
iar with the latest Western products. Their knowledge combined with the director's sensibili-
ties resulted in a cinematic experience apparently traditional and yet conternporary/ enough
to please all audiences.
In the meantime, some companies had again gone foraging in the West in order to
return with modern methods and people familiar with Hollyvood know-how. Taikatsu hired
"Tlrornas" Kurihara, then just twenty-five years old, and an actor, part of the entourage of
tlre popular matinee idol ,Hayakawa Sessue. With hirn returned "Henry" Kotani and"Jackie"
Abe (later better known as Abe Yutaka), as well as young Tokunaga Bunroku, who had
changed his given nane t0 "Frank."
Taguchi Oson, another Japanese who had studied abroad, returned with rnany ideas for
wlrat lre called rnodern methods. He introducedasystem whereby allJapanese scripts were to
be phonetically transcribed into the Western alphabet, thus rendering them foreign looking.
Tlre actors were never to be shown the script, nor allowed to develop a character-this was
the iob of the director. They were rnerely told to laugh or to cry without being given any hint
of motivation. In addition, what instruction they received was to be indirect. Hertry Kotani,
orre of this group, is famous for having attempted to create f,ear by announcing that a lion
was preparing to pounce, though there was nothing about any such anirlal in the script.
Though anecdotes such as these may indicate cultural rnisapprehension, some of the
methods matched Japanese examples. Except for the biggest nanes, actors are often treated
in just such au Lursympathetic manner. Some of the finest perforrnances in Japanese cinema
were given by the actors working for Ozu Yasujiro, a director who famously used the
Taguchi-Kotani approach. When the actress Sugimura Haruko, weary of endless takes, asked
wlrat lrer motivation was for playing her role in Tokl,o Storl, (195r, the director is supposed
to lrave answered: money-you are getting paid for it.
Taikatsu went on to rnake a number of rlew films, of which nothing remains but a few
stills. One of these filrns, Arncttetn' Club (furachua kurabu, 1920, n.s.), an Auerican-style
cornedy written by the newly appointedTanizakiJnn'ichiro and directed by returnee Tltomas
Kurihara, was about a bunch of young enthusiasts trying to stage a kabuki play by the sea-
side furother wu The Lnsci't,iousness of the liper (Jasei u0 in, aka The Lust of the White
Seqrent, 1921, n.s.), a Kurihara film, based on the tiedaAkinari story, in which KaeriyamA's
concepts were first seeu in a historical setting. Playing one of the extras was future director
36

Amateur Club,1920, Thomas Kurihara, with Kamiyama Sango (left)
The Lasciviousness of the Viper, 1921, Thomas Kurihara, with Okada Tokihiko (left), Benizawa
Yoko (right)
Uchida Tomu. The sarne story was later used as the basis for Mizoguchi's better known
Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari, 1953)
Despite or because of these innovations, Taikatsu ran into such financial difficulties that
only a few years later it merged with the Shochiku Cinema Company, a new conceln which
lrad been organizedby Shirai Matsujiro and Otani Takejiro. Both of these entrepreneurs had
started their careers as peanut vendors (nowadays it would be the popcorn franchise).
37

Slrochiku, akeady an entertainment entity, had its owr kabuki and shimpa troupes, but both
Inelt were eager to enter the film industry. Shirai had returned from a successful overseas
fact-finding trip, and Otani, who had stayed in Japan,watched httolerattce playing to packed
houses at ticket prices higher than those of the bestJapaltese dranta.
The ffio men saw that the old-style Japanese rlovie was probably on its way out and that
sontething new was perhaps coming in. Consequently, the new cinerna anrl of Shochiku
built its own studio. Looking for a place a bit like Southern Califomia, rtsettled on Kanata
in the southern suburbs of Tolryo and adjacent to the Pacific, or at least to Tolqro Bay.
Since the company had to train all of its employees, a Shochiku Cinema Institute was
irtaugurated, and 0sanai Kaoru, one the founders of shingeki, was put in charge. Osanai had
worked with stage director Max Reinhardt and had introduced the Stanislavsky acting
rnetlrod into Ja;;an. His Jiyu Gekijo (Free Theater), named after the ThdAtre Libre and
founded in 1909, lrad staged some critically successful productions but had failed financially,
and its founder was now grateful for movie work.
Cast complete, Shochiku releasedamanifesto which read in part: "The main puryose of
this cornpany will be the production of artistic films resembling the latest and rnost flourish-
ing styles of the Occidental cinema;itwill distribute these both at home andabroad; it will
introduce the true state of our national life to foreign countries. ." r0
Critics corlplained of a perceived Americanization, but such complaints ceased when it
became apparent that Japanese cinern a, far from being assimilated, had itself assimilated a
studio system not only very like that of Hollywood, but also prornising to be just as successful.
fui early Shochiku picture-one of the fewprewarJapanese films thatcan still be seen-
was Souls on the Roal (Rojo no reikon, I)21). Its reconstructing from various prints, fol-
lowirrg World War II, was the work of Ushih araYttyohiko, who not only helped write the script
but also played the comic butler. He later became one of Japan's most popular directors.
(furother future director of note, Shirnazu Yasujiro, was listed as lighting director.) The
direction of the picture itself is credited to Murata Minoru, though Osanai (who plays the
uncornpromising father in the picture and is also billed as executive producer) certainly had
a hand in its making. It was he who sometimes spoke of this fihr as the first "realist" picture
in Japan.
As is often the case with such ideas, the concept of filrn realism has evolved over time. In
any event, there is also the peculiarity of what various cultures call "realistic." Today, of
course, the film does not strike the viewer as "realist," but then few 1921 films, regardless of
origin, would. What strikes the contemporary viewer is the eclecticism of influences on the
film and the emotional power which, despite or because of these, the fihn retains.
Souls on the Road was originally viewed as apicture "in the foreign manner," and one
sees why. It is composed of a number of stories, taken from foreign sources, which are then
3t

-l
dr
Sou/s on the Boad, 1921 , Murata Minoru, with Minami Komei, Tsutami Takeo.
reconbined in a style sirnilar to that of profitable Intoluance. The main story, two ex-cons
on tlre road, was culled from the shingeki adaptation of Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths;
the wastrel son who returns home with wife and child is from a story called "Children of the
Streets" by aonce-popular Gerrnan author named Wilhelm Schmidtbaum; and the pastoral
romance between the daughter of the house and a working-class youth owes much to the
Bluebird Photoplays.
The title that opens and closes the picture is a pious quotation from the Gorky drama:
"W€, as human beings, must have pity for those about us. Christ had this quality and we also
must cultivate it. There is a time for us to express this-this we must watch for." There are
other titles as well: 127 of thern in what was originally a ninety-one-minute film-an
extremely high averugq much more in line with the funerrcan than theJapanese pictures of
the time.
The fihn's other influences from abroad include an enactment of that exotic holiday,
Christrnas; the conscious decision to have the daughter (played by the actress Sawamura
Haruko instead of an oyama) dressed to look like, and apparently instructed to act like, Mary
Pickford; plus a plethoruof optical effects, including wipes, fades, dissolves, and irises. There
are also panoramic shots (the camera swiveling), dolly shots (the c meru on wheels), close-
ups, flashbacla, and moments of parallel editing. In its use of these innovations, however,
the film's discourse reveals its local accent.
Earlier films had given many indications that Japan's use of Western techniques was
going to be different. Japan's fint pan shot, said to have occurred in the previously men-
tioned The Golden Demon of 1912,wu filmed during the beach scene when the brutal
(i
r
-U
.39

Kanichi kicks the fragile 0rniya. The director, it is clairled, noticed the peaceful mountain
range across the bay and (having an articulated head on his tripod) decided to film it first,
only then panning the camera to the principles. Ordinarily, pan shots in early Western films
were rnore uarrative in intent: two acting areas were connected, making for a tighter and
lltore "realistic" story. In Japanese films, as one rnight expect, the focus was initiallv aes-
thetic. Thus, in The Golden Dernon, the director called attention to the beautiful mountains
simply because they were beautiful. There is also a kind of narrative connection: drarratic
coutrast-the mountains are peaceful, the kick on the beach is not. The assumption that
character can be defined by sirnilarities or contrasts to the physical surroundings is likewise
an oldJapanese narrative technique seen in rnany a scroll and screen. In all, the pan was uot
initially used to the sane effect as it was in the West.
The close-Llp, which had gained a prominent role early on in Western cinema, was also
applied differently in Japan.ln the West, the close-up brought the audience neArer to the face
of the protagonist so that moneuts of high emotion could be observed. The theory was that
this created empathy, enabling the viewer t0 "feel" more. Yet the first Japanese close-up
(there are several contenders for the honor) was not used in this lnanner at al.It-Resur-
rectiort (1914) being a typical exarnple-merely permitted a closer view of a character who
was doing a bit 0f business that would cornplicate appreciation of the anecdote unless closely
observed.
Even now, close-ups are not nearly as common in Japanese films as in Western pictures,
and some directors (notably, Mizoguchi) employed a scarcity of close-ups as a part of their
rrrattrre styles. Indeed, the Japanese audience was very late in accepting the assurrptions of
tlre teclrnique. There is some evidence that the close-LUls in Henry Kotani's Islancl Wonten
(Slrirna n0 onna,1920, n.s.) actually provoked laughter in Japan.
Irr the same way, the initialJapanese flashback-usually ascribed to a 1909 M. Pathd
filnr called The Cuckoo; A Neru Version (Shin hototogisu, u.s.)-was used not so much to
explain as to decorate the storyline. In The Cuckoo, the viewer need not know that the hero-
ine had been previously victimizedby a nan. The flashback is not ernployed to elucidate the
present by reference to the past but rather, as inJapanese poetT, to suggest a;sarallel.
Similarly, in Souls on the Road the flashbacks explain nothing at all, nor are they
irrterrded to. In general, the editing in the film insists Llpon an aestheticization of tirne and
space. Each of the several stories stops after a certarn portion is viewed. When we return to it
we find it just where it was when last we saw it. There is no elapsed time in this universe, just
as tlrere is none in traditionalJapanese dranaturgy.
The editing is unusual as well. Those who complained they could not follow the single
simple flashback in The Cuckoo would have been truly confused by Sotils on the RoarJ.
Tlrere is, however, n0 record that anyone actually wff, and this fact is sometimes used to
40

sllggest that Ushihara, when he put together the single 84-minute print we now have, was to
a degree influenced by all the pictures he had seen between I92I and 1951, ittcluding not
only those by Griffith but also some by Sergei Eisenstein as well.
A nore likely explanation for the "erratic" editing pattems in manyJapanese films of this
period is provided by David Bordwell in his discussion of "decorative tendencies." The critic
speaks of "flashy transitions" and maintains that the Japanese filmrnaker is more likely to
take the transition as apretext for stylistic embroidery."rr Bordwell's example is the dissolve
(one irnage appearing over another): in the West it suggests the passing of time, while in
Japan it is simply decoration. Through the dissolve, the filmmaker-intentionally or psf-
insists on the theatricalify that remains so much an aim in anyJapanese entertaiument.
The editing in Souls on the Road is certainly not put to any of the putative uses 0f "real-
isrn." A particularly "Llnrealistic" use is seen in the final sequence of the film. A title
auuounces, "lf he [the father] hadn't forgiven them; if he had forgiveu them," and we see
what would have perhaps happened had things been otheruise. Unlike a similar constructiorr
in tlre double ending of F. W. Murnau's The Lnst Luugh (1924), this decorative flourish
proceeds froru nothing inherent in the film itself. It is used for its own innocent sake.
ht Souls on the Rood, as in many other films of this and later periods, one is struck by
tlre free use of what in the West would be considered advanced, even avarft-garde techniques.
This held true for the ruost conmercial of Japanese films as well. One reason, undoubtedly,
was that the presence of any kind of narrative (in the Western sense) was an irnported idea.
fuld while Japanese have always discriminated anong imports as to their usefulness, there
are often no other criteria for their use.
Even in today's media this phenomenoll can be observed. fui FM radio program of
Western music is likely to contain fuiton von Webem alongside Leroy fuiderson. The
reasoning is not that one is avant-garde and one is not, or that one is serious and one isn't,
but simply that both are Westem.
Thus, even routine Japanese program-pictnres of the twenties and thirties contained shots
0r sequences which the West associated with only the rnost advanced art films. Usually, how-
ever, such techniques were used solely for effect and played a negligible part in the structure
of the picture. The combination of traditional (East) and modern (West) forrned the patterns
tlrat gave the prewarJapanese film both its traditional base and its nodernistpatina.
That such a n-EIartge of influences as those creating Sotils on the Road should have pro-
duced a film still enjoyable after eighty years indicates something about the Japanese aes-
thetic and its universalify. What one sees and retains in Souls on the Road are pffiallels, not
conflicts. This is true not only of the characters and their problems but also of their very
position within the cinematic world they inhabit. The interest is in the emotional overtones
of a situation, one which creates an overall mood or atmosplrere.
J
41

Other documents randomly have
different content

his soul and with the unseen powers which control his destiny.”
Music, in fact, “is coextensive with tribal life,” and “every public
ceremony as well as each important act in the career of an
individual has its accompaniment of song.” Moreover, “The music
of each ceremony has its peculiar rhythm, so also have the
classes of songs which pertain to individual acts: fasting and
prayer, setting of traps, hunting, courtship, playing of games,
facing and defying death.” In structure the Indian song “follows
the outline of the form which obtains in our own music,” and
“the compass of songs varies from 1 to 3 octaves.” Among some
of the tribes with highly developed ceremonial observances
“men and women, having clear resonant voices and good
musical intonation, compose the choirs which lead the singing in
ceremonies and are paid for the services.” A peculiar
development of music among the Eskimo is seen in the “nith-
songs,” by which controversies are settled, the parties to the
dispute “singing at” each other till the public laughter, &c.,
proclaim one the victor. Among the American Indians songs
belonging to individuals, societies, clans, &c., are met with,
which have to be purchased by others from the owners, and
even slight mistakes in the rendition of singing, dancing, &c., are
heavily penalized. Musical contests were also known (e.g.
among the Indians of the Pacific coast). The development of the
“tribal song” among the Iroquoian peoples is seen in Hale’s
Iroquois Book of Rites (1881). Songs having no words, but
merely changeless vocables, are common. As Dr Boas has
pointed out, the genius of the American Indian has been
devoted more to the production of songs than to the invention
of musical instruments. The musical instruments known to the
aborigines north of Mexico, before contact with the whites,

Culture of
Indians
essentially
indigenous.
according to Miss Fletcher (Handb. of Amer. Inds., 1907, pt. i. p.
960), were drums of great variety in size and form, from the
plank or box of some of the tribes of the North Pacific coast to
the shaman’s drums of the Algonkian and Iroquoian peoples;
whistles of bone, wood, pottery, &c. (often employed in
ceremonies to imitate the voices of birds, animals and spirits);
flageolet or flute (widely distributed and used by young men in
courtship among the Siouan tribes); the musical bow (found
among the Maidu of California and important in religion and
sorcery). Rattles of gourd, skin, shell, wood, &., are universal,
and among some of the tribes of the south-west “notched sticks
are rasped together or on gourds, bones or baskets to
accentuate rhythm.” From the rattle in the Pueblos region
developed a sort of ball of clay or metal.
So far as is known, the primitive culture of the aborigines of North
America is fundamentally indigenous, being the reactions of the
Indian to his environment, added to whatever rude equipment of
body and of mind was possessed by the human
beings who at some remote epoch reached the
new world from the old, if, indeed, America was
not, as Ameghino, on the basis of the discoveries
of fossil anthropoids and fossil man in southern
South America, maintains, the scene of origin of
man himself.
Professor A. H. Keane (Internat. Monthly, vol. v., 1902, pp. 338-
357), Stewart Culin (Proc. Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci. vol. lii., 1903, pp.
495-500) and Dr Richard Andree (Stzgsb. d. anthrop. Ges. in Wien,
1906, pp. 87-98) all agree as to the general autochthony of
aboriginal American culture. The day of the argument for borrowing

on the ground of mere resemblances in beliefs, institutions,
implements, inventions, &c., is past. An admirable instance of the
results of exact scientific research in this respect is to be found in Dr
Franz Boas’s discussion (Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1908, pp. 321-344) of
the needle-cases of the Alaskan Eskimo, which were at first
supposed to be of foreign (Polynesian) origin. Other examples occur
in Mr Culin’s study of American Indian games, where, for the first
time, the relation of certain of them in their origin and development,
and sometimes also in their degeneration and decay, is made clear.
The independent origin in America of many things which other races
have again and again invented and re-invented in other parts of the
world must now be conceded.
The extreme north-western region of North America has
recently been shown to be of great importance to the
ethnologists. The investigations in this part of America and
among the more or less primitive peoples of north-eastern Asia,
carried on by the Jesup North Pacific expedition in 1897-1902,
have resulted in showing that within what may be called the
“Bering Sea culture-area” transmissions of culture have taken
place from north-eastern Siberia to north-western America and
vice versa. The only known example, however, of the migration
of any people one way or the other is the case of the Asiatic
Eskimo, who are undoubtedly of American origin, and it seems
probable, in the language of Dr Boas, the organizer of the Jesup
expedition and the editor of its publications, that “the Chukchee,
Koryak, Kamchadal and Yukaghir must be classed with the
American race rather than with the Asiatic race,” and possibly
also some of the other isolated Siberian tribes; also that, “in a
broad classification of languages, the languages of north-eastern
Siberia should be classed with the languages of America” (Proc.

Intern. Congr. Amer., New York, 1902, pp. 91-102). It appears,
further, that the arrival of the Eskimo on the Pacific coast (this,
although not recent, is comparatively late) from their home in
the interior, near or east of the Mackenzie, “interrupted at an
early period the communication between the Siberian and Indian
tribes, which left its trace in many cultural traits common to the
peoples on both sides of the Bering Sea.”
This establishment of the essential unity of the culture-type
(language, mythology, certain arts, customs, beliefs, &c.) of the
“Palaeo-Asiatic” peoples of north-eastern Siberia and that of the
American Indians of the North Pacific coast, as demonstrated
especially by the investigations of Jochelson, Bogoras, &c., is
one of the most notable results of recent organized ethnological
research. No such clear proof has been afforded of the theory of
Polynesian influence farther south on the Pacific coast of
America, believed in, more or less, by certain ethnologists
(Ratzel, Mason, &c.). This theory rests largely upon
resemblances in arts (clubs, masks and the like in particular),
tattooing, mythic motifs, &c. But several things here involved, if
not really American in origin, are so recent that they may
perhaps be accounted for by such Hawaiian and other
Polynesian contact as resulted from the establishment of the
whale and seal-fisheries in the 18th century.
Between the Indians of North America and those of South
America few instances of contact and intercommunication, or
even of transference of material products and ideas, have been
substantiated. It is by way of the Antilles and the Bahamas that
such contact as actually occurred took place. In 1894 (Amer.
Anthrop. vol. vii. p. 71-79) Professor W. H. Holmes pointed out

traces of Caribbean influences in the ceramic art of the Florida-
Georgia region belonging to the period just before the
Columbian discovery. The decorative designs in question,
paddle-stamp patterns, &c., akin to the motives on the wooden
and stone stools from the Caribbean areas in the West Indies,
have been found as far north as 36° in North Carolina and as far
west as 84° in Tennessee and 89° in south-eastern Alabama.
But the evidence does not prove the existence of Carib colonies
at any time in any part of this region, but simply the migration
from the West Indies to the North American coast of certain art
features adopted by the Indians of the Timuquan and Muskogian
Indians and (later) in part by the Cherokee. More recently
(1907) Dr F. G. Speck, in a discussion of the aboriginal culture of
the south-eastern states (Amer. Anthrop. vol. ix., n.s., pp. 287-
295), cites as proof of Antillean or Caribbean influence in
addition to that indicated by Holmes, the following: employment
of the blow-gun in hunting, use of hammock as baby-cradle,
peculiar storage-scaffold in one corner of house, plastering
houses with clay, poisoning fish with vegetable juices. It is
possible also that the North American coast may have been
visited from time to time by small bodies of natives from the
West Indies in search of the mythic fountain of youth (Bimini),
the position of which had shifted from the Bahamas to Florida in
its movement westward. Indeed, just about the time of the
advent of the Europeans in this part of the world a number of
Indians from Cuba, on such a quest, landed on the south-
western shore of Florida, where they were captured by the
Calusas, among whom they seem to have maintained a separate
existence down to 1570 or later. This Arawakan colony, indicated
on the map of linguistic stocks of American Indians north of

Mexico, published by the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1907,
is the only one demonstrated to have existed, but there may
have been others of a more temporary character. In the
languages of this region there are to be detected perhaps a few
loan-words from Arawakan or Cariban dialects. The exaggerated
ideas entertained by some authorities concerning the “mound-
builders” of the valley of the Ohio and Mississippi and their
alleged “civilization” have led them to assume, without adequate
proof, long-continued relations of the tribes inhabiting this part
of the country in the past with the ancient peoples of Yucatan
and Mexico, or even an origin of their culture from beyond the
Gulf. But since these mounds were in all probability wholly the
work of the modern Indians of this area or their immediate
ancestors, and the greater part, if not all, of the art and industry
represented therein lies easily within the capacity of the
aborigines of North America, the “Mexican” theory in this form
appears unnecessary to explain the facts. In its support stress
has been laid upon the nature of some of the copper
implements and ornaments, particularly the types of elaborate
repoussé work from Etowah, Georgia, &c. That the repoussé
work was not beyond the skill of the Indian was shown by
Cushing in his study of “Primitive Copper Working” (Amer.
Anthrop. vol. vii. pp. 93-117), who did not consider the
resemblance of these mound-specimens to the art of Mexico
proof of extra-North American origin. Holmes (Handb. of Inds.
N. of Mex., 1907, pt. i. p. 343) points out that the great mass of
the copper of mounds came from the region of Lake Superior,
and that had extensive intercourse between Mexico or Central
America and the mound-country existed, or colonies from those
southern parts been present in the area in question, artifacts of

undoubtedly Mexican origin would have been found in the
mounds in considerable abundance, and methods of
manipulation peculiar to the south would have been much in
evidence. The facts indicate at most some exotic influence from
Mexico, &c., but nothing far-reaching in its effects.
In the lower Mississippi valley the culture of certain peoples
has been thought to contain elements (e.g. the temples and
other religious institutions of the Natchez) suggestive of Mexican
or Central American origin, either by inheritance from a common
ancient source or by later borrowings. When one reaches the
Pueblos region, with its present and its extinct “village culture,”
there is considerable evidence of contact and inter-influence, if
not perhaps of common origin, of culture-factors. Dr J. Walter
Fewkes, a chief authority on the ethnic history of Arizona, New
Mexico and the outlying areas of “Pueblos culture,” especially in
its ceremonial aspects, has expressed the opinion (Amer.
Anthrop. vol. vii. p. 51) that “it is not improbable that both
Mexican and Pueblos cultures originated in a region in northern
Mexico, developing as environment permitted in its northern and
southern homes.” Unfavourable milieu in the north prevented
the culture of the Pueblos Indians and the Cliff-dwellers, their
ancestors, reaching the height attained in Mexico and Central
America, represented by temple-architecture, ornamentation of
buildings, hieroglyphs, &c. Strong evidence of Pueblos-Mexican
relationship Dr Fewkes sees (Proc. Wash. Acad. Sci., 1900) in
the great serpent cult of Tusayan, the “New Fire” and other
Pueblos ceremonials of importance; also in the mosaic objects
(gorgets, ear-pendants, breast-ornaments, &c.) from Pueblos
ruins in Arizona, some of the workmanship of which equals that
of similar character in old Mexico. The arid region of the south-

western United States and part of northern Mexico may well
have been a centre for the dispersion of such primitive,
institutions and ideas as reached their acme in the country of
the Aztecs. But of the Pueblos languages, the Moqui or Hopi of
north-eastern Arizona is the only one showing undoubted,
though not intimate, relationship with the Nahuatl of ancient
Mexico. The Shoshonian family, represented in the United States
by the Shoshonees, Utes, Comanches and other tribes, besides
the Moqui, includes also the numerous Sonoran tribes of north-
western Mexico, as well as the Nahuatl-speaking peoples farther
south, some of the outliers having wandered even to Costa Rica
(and perhaps to Panama). This linguistic unity of the civilized
Aztecs with the rude Utes and Shoshones of the north is one of
the most interesting ethnological facts in primitive America.
Change of environment may have had much to do with this
higher development in the south. Besides the Shoshonian, the
Coahuiltecan and the Athabaskan are or have been represented
in northern Mexico, the last by the Apaches and Tobosos. From
the period of the Spanish colonization of New Mexico down to
about the last quarter of the 19th century (and sporadically later,
e.g. the attack in 1900 on the Mormon settlement in
Chihuahua), these Indians have hovered around the Mexican
border, &c., their predatory expeditions extending at one time as
far south as Jalisco. In the far west the Yuman family of
languages belongs on both sides of the border.
In the popular mind the religion of the North American Indian
consists practically of belief in the “Great Spirit” and the “Happy
Hunting Grounds.” But while some tribes, e.g. of the Iroquoian and
Caddoan stocks appear to have come reasonably near a pantheistic
conception tending toward monism and monotheism, not a little of

Religion,
Mythology, &c.
present Indian beliefs as to the “Great Spirit,”
“God” and “Devil,” “Good Spirit” and “Evil Spirit,”
&c., as well as concerning moral distinctions in
the hereafter, can reasonably be considered the
result of missionary and other influences coming directly or indirectly
from the whites. The central idea in the religion and mythology of
the aborigines north of Mexico is what Hewitt (Amer. Anthrop., 1902)
has proposed to term orenda, from “the Iroquois name of the fictive
force, principle or magic power which was assumed by the inchoate
reasoning of primitive man to be inherent in every body and being of
nature and in every personified attribute, property or activity
belonging to each of these and conceived to be the active cause or
force or dynamic energy involved in every operation or phenomenon
of nature, in any manner affecting or controlling the welfare of man.”
The orendas of the innumerable beings and objects, real and
imagined, in the universe differed immensely in action, function,
power, &c., and in like manner varied were the efforts of man by
prayers, offerings and sacrifices, ceremonies and rites of a
propitiatory or sympathetic nature to influence for his own welfare
the possessor of this or that orenda, from the “high gods” to the
least of all beings. Corresponding to the Iroquoian orenda is the
wakanda of the Siouan tribes, some aspects of which have been
admirably treated by Miss Fletcher in her “Notes on Certain Beliefs
concerning Will Power among the Siouan Tribes” (Science, vol. v.,
n.s., 1897). Other parallels of orenda are Algonkian manito,
Shoshonian pokunt, Athabaskan cæn. As Hewitt points out, these
Indian terms are not to be simply translated into English by such
expressions as “mystery,” “magic,” “immortal,” “sorcery,” “wonderful,”
&c. Man, indeed, “may sometimes possess weapons whose orenda is

superior to that possessed by some of the primal beings of his
cosmology.”
The main topics of the mythology of the American Indians north of
Mexico have been treated by Powell in his “Sketch of the Mythology
of the North American Indians” (First Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., 1879-
1880), and Brinton in his American Hero Myths (1876), Myths of the
New World (1896) and Religions of Primitive Peoples (1900).
Widespread is the idea of a culture-hero or demi-god (sometimes
one of twins or even quadruplets) who is born of a human virgin,
often by divine secret fecundation, and, growing up, frees the earth
from monsters and evil beings, or re-fashions it in various ways,
improves the breed and perfects the institutions of mankind, then
retires to watch over the world from some remote resting-place, or,
angered at the wickedness of men and women, leaves them,
promising to return at some future time. He often figures in the
great deluge legend as the friend, helper and regenerator of the
human race. A typical example of these culture-heroes is the
Algonkian character who appears as Nanabozho among the Ojibwa,
Wisaketchak among the Cree, Napiw among the Blackfeet, Wisaka
among the Sacs and Foxes, Glooscap (Kuloskap) among the Micmac,
&c. (see Journ. Amer. Folk-Lore, 1891, and Handbook of Amer. Inds.,
1907), whose brother is sometimes represented as being after death
the ruler of the spirit world. The Iroquoian correspondent of
Nanabozho is Tehoronhiawakhon; the Siouan, in many respects,
Ictinike. Among many tribes of the North Pacific coast region the
culture-hero appears as the “transformer,” demi-god, human or
animal in form (coyote, blue-jay, raven, &c.), the last often being
tricksters and dupers of mankind and the rest of creation as well.
This trickster and buffoon (also liar) element appears also in the
Iroquoian and Algonkian culture-heroes and has received special

treatment by Brinton (Essays of an Americanist, 1890). On the
whole, the Algonkian and Iroquoian culture-hero is mainly actuated
by altruistic motives, while the “transformer” of the Indians of the
North Pacific coast region is often credited with producing or shaping
the world, mankind and their activities as they now exist for purely
egotistic purposes. Other noteworthy heroes, “reformers,” &c.,
among the North American Indians are the subject of legends, like
the Iroquoian “Good Mind and Bad Mind,” the Algonkian (Musquaki)
“Hot Hand and Cold Hand,” the Zuñian “Right Hand and Left Hand”;
and numerous others, including such conceptions as the antagonism
and opposition of land and water (dry and wet), summer and winter,
day and night, food and famine, giants and pigmies, &c. In the
matter of the personification of natural phenomena, &c., there is
considerable variation, even among tribes of approximately the same
state of culture. Thus, e.g. as Hewitt notes (Handbook of Amer.
Inds., 1907, pt. i. p. 970), while with the Iroquoian and eastern
Algonkian tribes “the Thunder people, human in form and mind and
usually four in number, are most important and staunch friends of
man”; in the region of the Great Lakes and westward “this
conception is replaced by that of the Thunder bird.”
The Pawnee Indians of the Caddoan stock seem both
individually and tribally to possess a deep religious sense
expressing itself alike in moods of the person and in ceremonies
of a general popular character. This is evident, alike from Miss
Fletcher’s description (Amer. Anthrop., 1899, pp. 83-85) of a
venerable priest of that tribe, Tahiroossawichi, and from her
detailed account of “The Hako: A Pawnee Ceremony” (Twenty-
second Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., 1900-1901, pp. 5-372). This Hako
ceremony, the original stimulus for which was probably desire
for offspring, and then to ensure friendship and peace between

groups of persons belonging to different clans, gentes or tribes,
had no fixed or stated time and “was not connected with
planting or harvesting, hunting or war or any tribal festival,”
although the Indians take up the Hako, with its long series of
observances and its hundred songs, “in the spring when the
birds are mating, or in the summer when the birds are nesting
and caring for their young, or in the fall when the birds are
flocking, but not in the winter when all things are asleep; with
the Hako we are praying for the gift of life, of strength, of plenty
and of peace, so we must pray when life is stirring
everywhere,”—these are the words of the Indian hieragogue.
In the arid region of the south-western United States there
has grown up, especially among the Moqui, as may be read in
the numerous monographs of Dr J. Walter Fewkes (and briefly in
the Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1905), a system of
religious ceremonials and sympathetic magic, the object of
which is to ensure the necessary rainfall and through this the
continued life and prosperity of the people. Here everything is
conceived as really or symbolically related to sun, water, rain.
The Moqui are essentially a religious people, and their
mythology, in which the central figures are the “earth mother”
and the “sky father,” has been described as “a polytheism largely
tinged with ancestor-worship and permeated with fetishism.”
Part of their exceedingly intricate, complex and elaborate ritual
is the so-called “snake dance,” which has been written of by
Bourke (The Snake Dance of the Moquis, 1884), Fewkes and
others.
In the Gulf region east of the Mississippi, “sun worship,” with
primitive “temples,” appears among some of the tribes with

certain curious myths, beliefs, ceremonies, &c. The Natchez, e.g.
according to Dr Swanton (Amer. Anthrop., 1907), were
noteworthy on account of “their highly developed monarchical
government and their possession of a national religion centring
about a temple, which reminds one in many ways of the temples
of Mexico and Central America.” They seem to have had “an
extreme form of sun-worship and a highly developed ritual.” A
simpler form of sun-worship is found among the Kootenay of
British Columbia (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1889, 1892). With the Yuchi
occur some Algonkian-like myths of the deluge, &c.
The best data as to the religion and mythology of the
Iroquoian tribes are to be found in the writings of Hewitt,
especially in his monograph on “Iroquoian Cosmology” (Twenty-
first Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., 1899-1900, pp. 127-339), In the
creation-myths several instances of European influence are
pointed out. Mother-earth and her life are the source, by
transformation and evolution, of all things. The first beings of
Iroquoian mythology (daylight, earthquake, winter, medicine,
wind, life, flower, &c.) “were not beasts, but belonged to a
rather vague class of which man was the characteristic type,”—
later come beast-gods. According to Hewitt the Iroquoian term
rendered in English “god” signifies really “disposer, controller,”
for to these Indians “god” and “controller” are synonymous; and
so “the reputed controller of the operations of nature received
worship and prayers.” Creation-legends in great variety exist
among the North American aborigines, from simple fiat actions
of single characters to complicated transformations
accomplished with the aid of other beings. The specific creation
legend often follows that of the deluge.

Perhaps the most remarkable of all North American creation
stories is that of the Zuñi as recorded by Cushing (Thirteenth
Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., 1891-1892) in his “Outlines of Zuñi
Creation Myths.” Here the principal figure is “Awonawilona, the
maker and container of all,” and the growth-substance the “fogs
of increase,” which he evolved by his thinking in the pristine
night. The long tale of the origin of the sun, the earth and the
sky, and the taking form of “the seed of men and all creatures”
in the lowest of the four caves or wombs of the world and their
long journey to light and real life on the present earth is a
wonderful story of evolution as conceived by the primitive mind,
an aboriginal epic, in fact.
In the mythology and religion of the Algonkian tribes
(particularly the Chippewa, &c.) is expressed “a firm belief in a
cosmic mystery present throughout all nature, called manitou.”
This manitou “was identified with both animate and inanimate
objects, and the impulse was strong to enter into personal
relation with the mystic power; it was easy for an Ojibwa to
associate the manitou with all forms of transcendent agencies,
some of which assumed definite characters and played the rôle
of deities” (Jones). There were innumerable manitous of high or
low degree. The highest development of this conception was in
Kitchi Manitou (Great Manitou), but whether this personification
has not been considerably influenced by teachings of the whites
is a question. The chief figure in the mythology of the Chippewa
and related tribes is Nanabozho, who “while yet a youth became
the creator of the world and everything it contained; the author
of all the great institutions in Ojibwa society and the founder of
the leading ceremonies” (Jones, Ann. Arch. Rep. Ontario, 1905;
Journ. Amer. Folk-Lore, 1902, &c.). It is to this character that

some of the most human of all Indian myths are attached, e.g.
the Micmac legend of the origin of the crowing of babies and the
story of Nanabozho’s attempt to stick his toe into his mouth
after the manner of a little child. Nanabozho is also the central
figure in the typical deluge legend of the Algonkian peoples of
the Great Lakes (Journ. of American Folk-Lore, 1891), which, in
some versions, is the most remarkable myth of its kind north of
Mexico.
The best and most authoritative discussion of the religions
and mythological ideas of the Eskimo is to be found in the article
of Dr Franz Boas on “The Folk-Lore of the Eskimo” (Journ. Amer.
Folk-Lore, 1904, pp. 1-13). The characteristic feature of Eskimo
folk-lore is the hero-tales, treating of visits to fabulous tribes,
encounters with monsters, quarrels and “wars,” shamanism,
witchcraft, &c., and generally of “the events occurring in human
society as it exists now,” the supernatural playing a more or less
important rôle, but the mass of folk-lore being “thoroughly
human in character.” In Eskimo myths there appears to be “a
complete absence of the idea that transformations or creations
were made for the benefit of man during a mythological period,
and that these events changed the general aspect of the world,”
quite in contrast with the conceptions of many Indian tribes,
particularly in the region of the North Pacific, where the
“transformer” (sometimes trickster also), demi-god, human or
animal (coyote, raven, blue-jay, &c.), plays so important a part,
as may be seen from the legends recorded in Dr Boas’s
Indianische Sagen der nord-pacifischen Küste Amerikas (Berlin,
1895) and other more recent monographs. In Eskimo folk-lore
the field of animal tales is quite limited, and Dr Boas is of
opinion that the genuine animal myth “was originally foreign to

Eskimo folk-lore,” and has been borrowed from the Indians.
Perhaps the most prominent character in Eskimo mythology is
Sedna, the old woman, who is mistress of the lower world
beneath the ocean (Amer. Anthrop., 1900). The highest being
conceived of by the Athabaskans of Canada was, according to
Morice (Ann. Arch. Rep. Ontario, 1905, p. 204), “a real entity,
which they feared rather than loved or worshipped.” The way of
communicating with the unseen was through “personal totems,”
revealed usually in dreams. The Hupa, an Athabaskan people of
California, are reported by Goddard as possessing a deep
religious sense. But the most remarkable mythology of any
Athabaskan tribe is that of the Navaho, which has been studied
in detail under some of its chief aspects by Dr Washington
Matthews in his valuable monographs, Navaho Legends (1897)
and The Night Chant (1902). According to Dr Matthews, the
Navaho “are a highly religious people having many well-defined
divinities (nature gods, animal gods and local gods), a vast
mythic and legendary lore and thousands of significant
formulated songs and prayers, which must be learned and
repeated in the most exact manner; they have also hundreds of
musical compositions; the so-called dances are ceremonies
which last for nine nights and parts of ten days, and the
medicine-men spend many years of study in learning to conduct
a single one properly.” The most prominent and revered of the
deities of the Navaho is Estsanatlehi, the “woman who
rejuvenates herself,” of whom it is believed that she grows old,
and then, at will, becomes young again.
The numerous Indian tribes subjected to the environment of
the Great Plains have developed in great detail some special
religious observances, ceremonial institutions, secret societies,

ritual observances, &c. The mental life of these Indians was
profoundly influenced by the buffalo and later not a little by the
horse. Various aspects of Plains culture have recently been
discussed by Goddard, Kroeber, Wissler, Dorsey, Fletcher, Boas,
&c., from whose investigations it would appear that much
intertribal borrowing has taken place. Among some of the
Algonkian (Arapaho, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, &c.), Siouan (Ponka,
e.g.) Caddoan, Shoshonian, Kiowan and perhaps Kitunahan
stocks the “sun-dance” in some form or other prevailed at one
time or another. According to Wissler (Amer. Anthrop., 1908, p.
205), this ceremony, as now practised by many tribes, “is the
result of a gradual accumulation both of ceremonies and
ideas,”—the torture feature, e.g., “seems to have been a
separate institution among the Missouri river tribes, later
incorporated in their sun-dance and eventually passed on to
other tribes.” Some other complicated ceremonials have
apparently grown up in like manner. As ceremonies that are
quite modern, having been introduced during the historical
period, Dr Wissler instances “the Ghost dance, Omaha dance,
Woman’s dance, Tea dance and Mescal eating,” of which all,
except the Ghost dance, “flourish in almost all parts of the area
under various names, but with the same essential features and
songs.” Other interesting ceremonies of varying degrees of
importance and extent of distribution are those of “the
medicine-pipe, buffalo-medicine, sweat-lodge, puberty-rites,
medicine-tipis, war-charms, &c.” Interesting also are the
“medicine bundles,” or “arks” as they were once mistakenly
called.
The “Ghost dance,” the ceremonial religious dance of most
notoriety to-day, “originated among the Paviotso (its prophet

was a young Paiute medicine man, Wovoka or ‘Jack Wilson’) in
Nevada about 1888, and spread rapidly among other tribes until
it numbered among its adherents nearly all the Indians of the
interior basin, from Missouri river to or beyond the Rockies”
(Mooney). Wovoka’s doctrine was that a new dispensation was
at hand, and that “the Indians would be restored to their
inheritance and united with their departed friends, and they
must prepare for the event by practising the songs and dance
ceremonies which the prophet gave them.” East of the Rocky
Mountains this dance soon came to be known as the “Ghost
dance” and a common feature was hypnotic trances. The Sioux
outbreak of 1890-1891 was in part due to the excitement of the
“Ghost dance.” According to Mooney, “in the Crow dance of the
Cheyenne and Arapaho, a later development from the Ghost
dance proper, the drum is used, and many of the ordinary tribal
dances have incorporated Ghost dance features, including even
the hypnotic trances.” The doctrine generally “has now faded out
and the dance exists only as a social function.” A full account of
this “dance,” its chief propagators, the modi operandi of its
ceremonies and their transference, and the results of its
prevalence among so many Indian tribes, is given in Mooney’s
detailed monograph on “The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux
Outbreak of 1890” (Fourteenth Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., 1892-
1893).
In reference to “Messiah doctrines” among the aborigines of
North America, Mooney calls attention to the fact that “within
the United States every great tribal movement (e.g. the
conspiracy of Pontiac, the combination of Tecumseh, &c.)
originated in the teaching of some messianic prophet.” In
primitive America the dance has figured largely in social,

religious and artistic activities of all kinds, and one of its most
interesting developments has occurred among the Plains
Indians, where “the Mandan and other Siouan tribes dance in an
elaborate ceremony, called the Buffalo dance, to bring game
when food is scarce, in accordance with a well-defined ritual”
(Hewitt). Among other noteworthy dances of the North
American aborigines may be mentioned the calumet dance of
several tribes, the scalp dance, the “Green-corn dance” of the
Iroquois, the busk (or puskitau) of the Creeks (in connexion with
“new fire” and regeneration of all things), the “fire dance” of the
Mississaguas, &c.
The Californian area, remarkable in respect to language and
culture in general presents also some curious religious and
mythological phenomena. According to Kroeber, “the mythology
of the Californians was characterized by unusually well-
developed and consistent creation-myths, and by the complete
lack not only of migration but of ancestor traditions.” The
ceremonies of the Californian Indians “were numerous and
elaborate as compared with the prevailing simplicity of life, but
they lacked almost totally the rigid ritualism and extensive
symbolism that pervade the ceremonies of most America.” The
most authoritative discussions of the religion and mythology of
the Californian Indians are those of Dr Dixon and Dr Kroeber, the
latter especially in the University of California Publications in
American Archaeology and Ethnology for 1904-1907.
The shamans, “medicine-men,” &c., of the American Indians
are of all degrees from the self-constituted angekok of the
Eskimo to those among tribes of higher culture who are chosen
from a special family or after undergoing elaborate preliminaries

of selection and initiation. The “medicine-men” of several tribes
have been described with considerable detail. This has been
done for the “Midēwiwin, or Grand Medicine Society of the
Ojibwa” by Hoffman (Seventh Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol. pp. 143-
300); for the “Medicine-men of the Apache” by Bourke (Ninth
Ann. Rep. pp. 443-603) and for those of the Cherokee by
Mooney (Seventh Ann. Rep. pp. 301-397), while a number of the
chief facts concerning American Indian shamans in general have
been gathered in a recent article by Dr R. B. Dixon (Journ. Amer.
Folk-Lore, 1908, pp. 1-12). In various parts of the continent and
among diverse tribes the shaman exercises functions as “healer,
sorcerer, seer, priest and educator.” These functions among the
tribes of lower culture are generally exercised by one and the
same individual, but, with rise in civilization, the healer-sorcerer
and shaman-sorcerer disappear or wane in power and influence
as the true priest develops. The priestly character of the shaman
appears among the Plains tribes in connexion with the custody
of the “sacred bundles” and the keeping of the ceremonial
myths, &c., but is more marked among the Pueblos, Navaho,
&c., of the south-west, while “a considerable development of the
priestly function may also be seen among the Muskogi,
particularly in the case of the Natchez, with their remarkable cult
and so-called temple.” The reverent character of the best
“priests” or shamans among the Pawnee and Omaha has been
emphasized by Miss A. C. Fletcher and Francis la Flesche. The
class-organization of the shamans reaches its acme in the midé
societies of the Chippewa and the priest-societies of the Pueblos
Indians (Moqui, Zuñi, &c.).
The games of the American aborigines north of Mexico have been
made the subject of a detailed monograph by Culin, “Games of the

Games.
North American Indians” (Twenty-fourth Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol.,
1902-1903, pp. 1-846), in which are treated the
games of chance, games of dexterity and minor
amusements of more than 200 tribes belonging to
34 different linguistic stocks. According to Culin, “games of pure skill
and calculation, such as chess, are entirely absent.” There are more
variations in the materials employed than in the object or methods
of play and in general the variations do not follow differences in
language. The type known as “dice game” is reported here from
among 130 tribes belonging to 30 stocks; the “hand-game” from 81
tribes belonging to 28 stocks. The centre of distribution of North
American Indian games, which, with the exception of a few post-
Columbian additions, are all autochthonous, Culin finds in the south-
west—“there appears to be a progressive change from what appears
to be the oldest forms of existing games from a centre in the south-
western United States, along lines north, north-east and east.”
Similar changes radiating southward from the same centre are
likewise suggested. He is of opinion that, outside of children’s games
as such and the kinds of minor amusements common in all
civilizations, the games of the North American Indians, as they now
exist, “are either instruments of rites or have descended from
ceremonial observances of a religious character,” and that “while
their common and secular object appears to be purely a
manifestation of the desire for amusement or gain, they are
performed also as religious ceremonies, as rites pleasing to the gods
to secure their favour, or as processes of sympathetic magic, to drive
away sickness, avert other evil, or produce rain and the fertilization
and reproduction of plants and animals or other beneficial results.”
He also believes that these games, “in what appears to be their
oldest and most primitive manifestations are almost exclusively

Social
organization,
customs, &c.
divinatory.” This theory of the origin of games in divination, which
receives considerable support from certain facts in primitive America,
needs, however, further proof. So, too, with Mr Culin’s further
conclusion that “behind both ceremonies and games there existed
some widespread myth from which both derived their impulse,” that
myth being the one which discloses the primal gamblers as those
curious children, the divine Twins, the miraculous offspring of the
sun, who are the principal personages in many Indian mythologies.
These eternal contenders “are the original patrons of play, and their
games are the games now played by men.”
It was formerly thought that “totemism” and real “gentile
organization” prevailed over all of North America. But it now appears
that in several sections of the country such beliefs and institutions
were unknown, and that even within the limits of
one and the same stock one tribe did, while
another did not, possess them. Matriarchal ideas
and the corresponding tribal institutions were also
once regarded as the primal social condition of all
Indian tribes, having been afterwards in many cases replaced by
patriarchal ideas and institutions. Since the appearance of Morgan’s
famous monograph on Ancient Society (New York, 1878) and his
Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity in the Human Family
(Washington, 1871), the labours of American ethnologists have
added much to our knowledge of the sociology of the American
Indians. Forms of society among these Indians vary from the
absolute democracy of the Athabaskan Ten’a of Alaska, among
whom, according to Jetté (Congr. int. d. Amér., Quebec, 1886), there
exist “no chiefs, guides or masters,” and public opinion dominates
(“every one commands and all obey, if they see fit”), to the
complicated systems of some of the tribes of the North Pacific coast

regions, with threefold divisions of chiefs, “nobles,” and “common
people” (sometimes also, in addition, slaves), secret and “totemic”
organizations, religious societies, sexual institutions (“men’s houses,”
&c.), and other like divisions; and beyond this to the development
along political and larger social lines of alliances and confederations
of tribes (often speaking entirely different languages) which have
played an important rôle in the diffusion of primitive culture, such as
the Powhatan confederacy of Virginia and the Abnaki confederacy of
the North Atlantic region; the confederacy of the Chippewa, Ottawa
and Potawatomi of the Great Lakes; the Huron confederacy of
Ontario; the Dakota alliance of the north-west; the Blackfoot
confederacy of the Canadian north-west; the Caddoan confederacy
of the Arkansas region; the Creek confederacy of the South Atlantic
country. The acme of federation was reached in the great “League of
the Iroquois,” whose further development and expansion were
prevented by the coming of the Europeans and their conquest of
primitive North America. According to Morgan (League of the
Iroquois, New York, 1851) and Hale (Iroquois Book of Rites, 1881),
who have written about this remarkable attempt, by federation of all
tribes, to put an end to war and usher in the reign of universal
peace, its formation under the inspiring genius of Hiawatha took
place about 1459. But J. N. B. Hewitt, himself an Iroquois, offers
reasons (Amer. Anthrop., 1892) for believing that the correct date of
its founding lies between 1559 and 1570.
Tribes like the Kootenay (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1892) have no
totems and secret societies, nor do they seem to have ever
possessed them. This may also be said of some of the Salishan
tribes, though others of the same stock have complicated
systems. The Klamath Indians (Lutuamian stock) “are absolutely
ignorant of the gentile or clan system as prevalent among the

Haida, Tlingit and Eastern Indians of North America;
matriarchate is also unknown among them; every one is free to
marry within or without the tribe, and the children inherit from
the father” (Gatschet). In all parts of California indeed,
according to Kroeber (Handbook of Amer. Inds., 1907, pt. i. p.
191), “both totemism and a true gentile organization were
totally lacking.” Nor does it appear that either personal or
communal totemism is a necessary attribute of clan and gentile
organizations where such do exist. The Heiltsuk of British
Columbia have animal totems, while the Kwakiutl do not,
although both these tribes belong to the same Wakashan stock.
Among the Iroquoian tribes, according to Hewitt (Handbook, p.
303), the primary unit of social and political organization, termed
in Mohawk ohwachira, is “the family, comprising all the male and
female progeny of a woman and of all her female descendants
in the female line and of such other persons as may be adopted
into the ohwachira.” The head of the ohwachira is “usually the
oldest woman in it,” and it “never bears the name of a tutelary
or other deity.” The clan was composed of one or more of such
ohwachiras, being “developed apparently through the
coalescence of two or more ohwachiras having a common
abode.” From the clan or gens developed the government of the
tribe, and out of that the Iroquois confederation.
The power of the chief varied greatly among the North
American aborigines, as well as the manner of his selection.
Among the Eskimo, chiefs properly understood hardly have
existed; nearly everywhere the power of all sorts of chiefs (both
war and peace) was limited and modified by the restraints of
councils and other advisers. Age, wealth, ability, generosity, the
favour of the shaman, &c., were qualifications for the

chieftainship in various parts of the continent. Women generally
seem to have had little or no direct voice in government, except
that they could (even among some of the Athabaskan tribes)
sometimes become chiefs, and, among the Iroquois, were
represented in councils, had certain powers and prerogatives
(including a sort of veto on war), &c. Many tribes had
permanent peace-chiefs and temporary war-chiefs. According to
Hewitt (Handb. of Amer. Inds., 1907, pt. i. p. 264), “In the Creek
confederation and that of the Iroquois, the most complex
aboriginal government north of Mexico, there was, in fact, no
head chief. The first chief of the Onondaga federal roll acted as
the chairman of the federal council, and by virtue of his office he
called the federal council together. With this all pre-eminence
over the other chiefs ended, for the governing power of the
confederation was lodged in the federal council. The federal
council was composed of the federal chiefs of the several
component tribes; the tribal council consisted of the federal
chiefs and sub-chiefs of the tribe.” The greatest development of
the power of the chief and his tenure of office by heredity seems
to have occurred among the Natchez and certain other tribes of
the lower Mississippi and Gulf region. Among the Plains tribes, in
general, non-inheritance prevailed, and “any ambitious and
courageous warrior could apparently, in strict accordance with
custom, make himself a chief by the acquisition of suitable
property and through his own force of character” (Hewitt).
Among the North American aborigines the position of woman
and her privileges and duties varied greatly from the usually
narrow limits prescribed by the Athabaskans, according to
Morice (Congr. int. d. Amér., Quebec, 1906), to the socially high
status reached among some of the Iroquoian tribes in particular.

In the North Pacific coast region the possession of slaves is said
to have been a cause of a relatively higher position of woman
there than obtained among neighbouring tribes. The custom of
adoption both of children and captives also resulted
advantageously to woman. The rôle and accomplishments of
woman in primitive North America are treated with some detail
in Mason’s Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture (1894). The form
of the family and the nature of marriage varied considerably
among the North American aborigines, as also did the
ceremonies of courtship and the proceedings in divorce, &c.
With some tribes apparently real purchase of brides occurred,
but in many cases the seeming purchase turns out to be merely
“a ratification of the marriage by means of gifts.” Great
differences in these matters are found within the limits of one
and the same stock (e.g. Siouan). Female descent, e.g.,
prevailed among the Algonkian tribes of the south-east but not
among those of the north and west; and the case of the Creeks
(Muskogian) shows that female descent is not necessarily the
concomitant of a high social status of woman. Among the Zuñi,
where the man is adopted as a son by the father of his wife,
“she is thus mistress of the situation; the children are hers, and
she can order the husband from the house should occasion
arise” (Lowie and Farrand). With many tribes, however, the
husband could divorce his wife at will, but Farrand and Lowie in
their discussion of Indian marriage (Handb. of Amer. Inds., 1907,
pt. i. p. 809) report on the other hand the curious fact that
among the Wintun of California “men seldom expel their wives,
but slink away from home, leaving their families behind.” In the
case of divorce, the children generally go with the mother. From
a survey of the available data Lowie and Farrand conclude that

“monogamy is thus found to be the prevalent form of marriage
throughout the continent,” varied from to polygamy, where
wealth and other circumstances dictated it. In California, e.g.,
polygamy is rare, while with some of the Plains tribes it was
quite common. Here again differences of note occurred within
the same stock, e.g. the Iroquois proper could not have more
than one wife, but the Huron Indian could. The family itself
varied from the group of parents and children to the larger ones
dictated by social regulations among the eastern tribes with clan
organizations, and the large “families” found by Swanton (Amer.
Anthrop., 1905) among certain tribes of the North Pacific coast,
where relations and “poor relations,” servants and slaves entered
to swell the aggregate. Exogamy was widely prevalent and
incest rare. Cousin-marriages were frequently tabooed.
With many of the North American aborigines the giving of the
name, its transference from one individual to another, its change
by the individual in recognition of great events, achievements,
&c., and other aspects of nominology are of significance in
connexion with social life and religious ceremonies, rites and
superstitions. The high level attained by some tribes in these
matters can be seen from Miss Fletcher’s description of “A
Pawnee Ritual used when changing a Man’s Name” (Amer.
Anthrop., 1899). Names marked epochs in life and changed with
new achievements, and they had often “so personal and sacred
a meaning,” that they were naturally enough rendered “unfit for
the familiar purposes of ordinary address, to a people so
reverently inclined as the Indians seem to have been.” The
period of puberty in boys and girls was often the occasion of
elaborate “initiation” ceremonies and rites of various kinds, some
of which were of a very trying and even cruel character.

Ceremonial or symbolic “killings,” “new-births,” &c., were also in
vogue; likewise ordeals of whipping, isolation and solitary
confinement, “medicine”-taking, physical torture, ritual bathings,
painting of face or body, scarification and the like. The
initiations, ordeals, &c., gone through by the youth as a prelude
to manhood and womanhood resembled in many respects those
imposed upon individuals aspiring to be chiefs, shamans and
“medicine-men.” Many facts concerning these rites and
ceremonies will be found in G. Stanley Hall’s Adolescence (1904)
and in the articles on “Ordeals” and “Puberty Customs” in the
Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico (1907-1910). In
the method of approach to the supernatural and the
superhuman among the North American aborigines there is
great diversity, and the powers and capacities of the individual
have often received greater recognition than is commonly
believed. Thus, as Kroeber (Amer. Anthrop., 1902, p. 285) has
pointed out, the Mohave Indians of the Yuman stock have as a
distinctive feature of their culture “the high degree to which they
have developed their system of dreaming and of individual
instead of traditional connexion with the supernatural.” For the
Omaha of the Siouan stock Miss A. C. Fletcher (Proc. Amer.
Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1895, 1896; Journ. Anthr. Inst., 1898) has
shown the appreciation of the individual in the lonely “totem”
vigil and the acquisition of the personal genius.
From the Indians of North America the white man has borrowed
not only hosts of geographical names and many common terms of
speech, but countless ideas and methods as to food, medicines,
clothes and other items in the conduct of life. Even to-day, as G. W.
James points out in his interesting little volume, What the White
Race may learn from the Indian (Chicago, 1908), the end of the

Contact of
races.
instruction of the “lower” race by the “higher” is
not yet. The presence of the Indians and the
existence of a “frontier” receding ever westward
as the tide of immigration increased and the line
of settlements advanced, have, as Prof. Turner has shown (Ann. Rep.
Amer. Hist. Assoc., 1893), conditioned to a certain extent the
development of civilization in North America. Had there been no
aborigines here, the white race might have swarmed quickly over the
whole continent, and the “typical” American would now be much
different from what he is. The fact that the Indians were here in
sufficient numbers to resist a too rapid advance on the part of the
European settlers made necessary the numerous frontiers (really
“successive Americas”), which began with Quebec, Virginia and
Massachusetts and ended with California, Oregon, British Columbia,
Yukon and Alaska. The Indians again are no exception to the rule
that one of the fundamentally important contributions of a primitive
people to the culture-factors in the life of the race dispossessing
them consists of the trails and camping-places, water-ways and
trade-routes which they have known and used from time
immemorial. The great importance of these trails and sites of Indian
camps and villages for subsequent European development in North
America has been emphasized by Prof. F. J. Turner (Proc. Wisconsin
State Histor. Soc., 1889 and 1894) and A. B. Hulbert (Historic
Highways of America, New York, 1902-1905). It was over these old
trails and through these water-ways that missionary, soldier,
adventurer, trader, trapper, hunter, explorer and settler followed the
Indian, with guides or without. The road followed the trail, and the
railway the road.
The fur trade and traffic with the Indians in general were not
without influence upon the social and political conditions of the

European colonies. In the region beyond the Alleghanies the free
hunter and the single trapper flourished; in the great north-west the
fur companies. In the Mackenzie region and the Yukon country the
“free hunter” is still to be met with, and he is, in some cases,
practically the only representative of his race with whom some of the
Indian tribes come into contact. J. M. Bell (Journ. Amer. Folk-Lore,
xvi., 1903, 74), from personal observation, notes “the advance of the
barbarous border civilization,—the civilization of the whaler on
Hudson’s Bay, of the free trader on the Athabasca Lake and river, of
the ranchers and placer miners on the Peace and other mountain
rivers,” and observes further (p. 84) that “the influx of fur-traders
into the Mackenzie River region, and even to Great Bear Lake within
the last two years, since my return, has, I believe, very much altered
the character of the Northern Indians.” In many parts of North
America the free trapper and solitary hunter were often factors in
the extermination of the Indian, while the great fur companies were
not infrequently powerful agents in preserving him, since their aims
of exploiting vast areas in a material way were best aided by alliance
or even amalgamation. The early French fur companies, the
Hudson’s Bay Company, the North-West Company, the American Fur
Company, the Missouri Fur Company, the Russian-American
Company, the Alaska Commercial Company, &c., long stood with the
Indians for the culture of the white man. For two centuries, indeed,
the Hudson’s Bay Company was ruler of a large portion of what is
now the Dominion of Canada, and its trading-posts still dot the
Indian country in the far north-west. The mingling of races in the
region beyond the Great Lakes is largely due to the fact that the
trading and fur companies brought thither employés and
dependants, of French, Scottish and English stock, who intermarried
more or less readily with the native population, thus producing the

mixed-blood element which has played an important rôle in the
development of the American north-west. The fur trade was a
valuable source of revenue for the early colonists. During the
colonial period furs were sometimes even legal tender, like the
wampum or shell-money of the eastern Indians, which, according to
Mr Weeden (Econ. Hist. of New England), the necessities of
commerce made the European colonists of the 17th century adopt
as a substitute for currency of the Old World sort.
In their contact with the Indians the Europeans of the New World
had many lessons in diplomacy and statecraft. Alliances entered
upon chiefly for commercial reasons led sometimes to important
national events. The adhesion of the Algonkian tribes so largely to
the French, and of the Iroquoian peoples as extensively to the
English, practically settled which was ultimately to win in the
struggle for supremacy in North America. If we believe Lewis H.
Morgan, “the Iroquois alliance with the English forms the chief fact
in American history down to 1763.”
The whites in their turn have influenced greatly the culture,
institutions and ideas of the American aborigines. The early influence
of the Scandinavians in Greenland has had its importance
exaggerated by Dr Tylor (Journ. Anthrop. Inst., 1879). French
influence in Canada and Acadia began early and was very marked,
affecting the languages (several Algonkian dialects have numerous
loan-words, as have the Iroquois tongues still spoken in Quebec)
and the customs of the Indians. French authorities, missionaries and
traders seemed to get into more sympathetic relations with the
Indians, and the intermarriage of the races met with practically no
opposition. Hence the French influence upon many tribes can be
traced from the Atlantic past the Great Lakes and over the Plains to

the Rocky Mountains and even beyond, where the trappers,
voyageurs, coureurs des bois and missionaries of French extraction
have made their contribution to the modern tales and legends of the
Canadian north-west and British Columbia. In one of the tales of the
North Pacific coast appears Shishé Tlé (i.e. Jesus Christ), and in
another from the eastern slope of the Rockies Mani (i.e. Mary).
Another area of French influence occurs in Louisiana, &c. The
English, as a rule, paid much less attention than did the French to
the languages, manners and customs and institutions of the
aborigines and were in general less given to intermarriage with them
(the classical example of Rolfe and Pocahontas notwithstanding),
and less sympathetically minded towards them, although willing
enough, as the numerous early educational foundations indicate, to
improve them in both mind and body. The supremacy of the English-
speaking people in North America made theirs the controlling
influence upon the aborigines in all parts of the country, in the
Pacific coast region to-day as formerly in the eastern United States,
where house-building, clothing and ornament, furniture, weapons
and implements have been modified or replaced. Beside the Atlantic,
the Micmac of Nova Scotia now has its English loan-words, while
among the Salishan tribes of British Columbia English is “very
seriously affecting the purity of the native spech” (Hill-Tout), and
even the Athabaskan Nahané are adding English words to their
vocabulary (Morice).
The English influence on tribal government and land-tenure,
culminating in the incorporation of so many of the aborigines as
citizens of Canada and the United States, began in 1641. The first
royal grants both in New England and farther south made no
mention of the native population of the country, and the early
proprietors and settlers were largely left to their own devices in

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