Hear Sun Ra, the Avant-Garde Jazz Legend, Play on a 1966 Batman and Robin Album for Kids

In the mid 1960s, when the Bat­man TV show was in full swing, a New Jer­sey toy com­pa­ny released a chil­dren’s record of Bat­man & Robin songs. Called The Sen­sa­tion­al Gui­tars Of Dan & Dale, Bat­man & Robin, the album fea­tured, as WFMU’s Beware of the Blog notes, “one of the great­est uncred­it­ed ses­sion com­bos of all time, includ­ing the core of Sun Ra’s Arkestra and Al Koop­er’s Blues Project.” Anony­mous­ly, Sun Ra played on organ, Jim­my Owens on trum­pet, Tom McIn­tosh on trom­bone & Dan­ny Kalb on gui­tar.

Oth­er than the well-known Bat­man and Robin themes (above), the kid’s album was cre­at­ed around music that had fall­en into the pub­lic domain–e.g. Chopin’s Polon­aise Op. 53, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Sym­pho­ny and the love theme from Romeo and Juli­et. Over at WFMU, you can hear var­i­ous tracks, includ­ing Bat­man’s Bat­marangBat­man and Robin Over The RoofsFlight of the Bat­manThe Rid­dler’s RetreatJok­er is WildPen­guin’s Umbrel­la, and more. Enjoy.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

Hear Sun Ra’s 1971 UC Berke­ley Lec­ture “The Pow­er of Words”

A Sun Ra Christ­mas: Hear His 1976 Radio Broad­cast of Poet­ry and Music

The Evo­lu­tion of Bat­man in Cin­e­ma: From 1939 to Present

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How to Make Sushi: Free Video Lessons from a Master Sushi Chef

I think we’ve all had moments when, bel­ly­ing up to our favorite sushi bar, we’ve watched the chef in action behind the counter and thought, “I won­der if I could do that?” Then we see a doc­u­men­tary like Jiro Dreams of Sushi and think, “Well, no, I prob­a­bly could­n’t do that.” Still, you don’t have to live, breathe, and dream sushi your­self to get some­thing out of prac­tic­ing the craft, and if you want to get a han­dle on its basics right now, you could do much worse than watch­ing the video series Diaries of a Mas­ter Sushi Chef.

Hiroyu­ki Ter­a­da, the mas­ter sushi chef in ques­tion, first learned the basics him­self at home from his father, then con­tin­ued his stud­ies in Kōchi, on the Japan­ese island of Shikoku, then made a name for him­self in Amer­i­ca, at NoVe Kitchen and Bar in Mia­mi.

More recent­ly, his fame has come from his Youtube chan­nel, which, in line with his rep­u­ta­tion for com­ing up with uncon­ven­tion­al dish­es, fea­tures videos like this con­ver­sion of a Big Mac into a sushi roll — kids, don’t try this at home. But do watch some of his instruc­tion­al videos, which cov­er such tra­di­tion­al top­ics as how to pre­pare sushi riceknife skills, and how to fil­let a whole salmon.

If you real­ly want to start from square one, Ter­a­da has also put togeth­er a four-part minis­eries on mak­ing sushi at home from gro­cery store ingre­di­ents. When you get those teach­ings down, you have only to prac­tice — and prac­tice, and prac­tice, and prac­tice some more. From there, you can also move on to Ter­ada’s roll-spe­cif­ic videos, which teach how to make some of his more elab­o­rate cre­ations: the crazy salmon roll, the uni tem­pu­ra mon­ster roll, even some­thing called the meat lover’s roll. Would Jiro approve? Maybe not, but the Mia­mi nightlife crowd cer­tain­ly seems to.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Right and Wrong Way to Eat Sushi: A Primer

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­maand the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Casablanca’s Hilarious Alternative Final Scene Featuring Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon: Pragmatism Carries the Day!

The clas­sic film Casablan­ca is peren­ni­al­ly ripe for par­o­dy, but for some rea­son, its spoofs usu­al­ly con­fine them­selves to Rick­’s Café Améri­cain. It’s rare that any­one gets fun­ny with the famous final scene, where (spoil­er!) Humphrey Bog­a­rt’s Rick sac­ri­fices his per­son­al hap­pi­ness, insist­ing that his beloved board a plane that will safe­ly car­ry her and her hus­band, a leader of the Czech Resis­tance, away from Vichy-con­tolled Casablan­ca.

There are excep­tions of course.

Bugs Bun­ny

The Simp­sons

Woody Allen

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Kate McK­in­non bests them all with a dewy-eyed Ingrid Bergman impres­sion nail­ing the Swedish-born actress’ glo­ri­ous­ly cin­e­mat­ic mid­dle Atlantic accent, described by writer Trey Tay­lor in The Atlantic as a learned “hybrid of Britain’s Received Pro­nun­ci­a­tion and stan­dard Amer­i­can Eng­lish as it exists today.”

It’s a refresh­ing change to see the Ilsa char­ac­ter dri­ving the laughs.

McKinnon’s scene part­ner, J.K. Sim­mons, gives an equal­ly cred­i­ble per­for­mance as Bogart’s Rick. The award-win­ning actor has demon­stra­ble com­ic chops, but for this sketch, the writ­ers wise­ly had him play it dead seri­ous.

The play­ers are fur­ther abet­ted by the design team’s faith­ful exe­cu­tion of the orig­i­nal, includ­ing cos­tumes by Tom Broeck­er and Eric Jus­t­ian. Who wouldn’t want to wear that hat?

Much of Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch’s orig­i­nal dia­logue was left intact. It’s repro­duced below for your scruti­ny, along with Bog­a­rt and Bergman’s per­for­mance.

You’ll notice one sig­nif­i­cant line reas­sign­ment, neces­si­tat­ed by this Ilsa’s prag­mat­ic response to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of wind­ing up in a con­cen­tra­tion camp.

As in the orig­i­nal, love does not tri­umph, but they’ll always have Paris.

INT./EXT. AIRPORT HANGAR — NIGHT

Rick takes the let­ters of tran­sit out of his pock­et and

hands them to Renault, who turns and walks toward the hangar.

RICK

If you don’t mind, you fill in the names. That will make it even more offi­cial.

RENAULT

You think of every­thing, don’t you?

RICK

(qui­et­ly And the names are Mr. and Mrs. Vic­tor Las­z­lo.

Renault stops dead in his tracks, and turns around.  Both Ilsa and Renault look at Rick with aston­ish­ment.

ILSA

But why my name, Richard?

RICK

Because you’re get­ting on that plane.

ILSA

(con­fused)  I don’t under­stand. What about you?

RICK

I’m stay­ing here with him ’til the plane gets safe­ly away.

Rick­’s inten­tion sud­den­ly dawns on Ilsa.

ILSA

No, Richard, no. What has hap­pened to you? Last night we said —

RICK

Last night we said a great many things. You said I was to do the  think­ing for both of us. Well, I’ve done a lot of it since then and it all adds up to one thing. You’re get­ting on that plane with Vic­tor where you belong.

ILSA

 (protest­ing) But Richard, no, I, I —

RICK

You’ve got to lis­ten to me. Do you have any idea what you’d have to look for­ward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten we’d both wind up in a con­cen­tra­tion camp. Isn’t that true, Louis?

 Renault coun­ter­signs the papers.

RENAULT

I’m afraid Major Strass­er would insist.

ILSA

You’re say­ing this only to make me go.

RICK

I’m say­ing it because it’s true. Inside of us we both know you belong with Vic­tor. You’re part

of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with

him, you’ll regret it.

ILSA

No.

RICK

Maybe not today, maybe not tomor­row, but soon, and for the rest of your life.

ILSA

But what about us?

RICK

We’ll always have Paris. We did­n’t have, we’d lost it, until you came to Casablan­ca. We got it back last night.

ILSA

And I said I would nev­er leave you.

RICK

And you nev­er will. But I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going you can’t fol­low. What I’ve got to do you can’t be any part of. Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it does­n’t take much to see that the prob­lems of three lit­tle peo­ple don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Some­day you’ll under­stand that.  Now, now…

Ilsa’s eyes well up with tears.  Rick puts his hand to her chin and rais­es her face to meet his own.

RICK

Here’s look­ing at you, kid.

If McKinnon’s take on Ingrid Bergman leaves you scream­ing for more, here are Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton, Justin Bieber and Ellen DeGeneres.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Twin Beaks, Sesame Street’s Par­o­dy of David Lynch’s Icon­ic TV Show (1990)

A Fun Par­o­dy of Down­ton Abbey Fea­tures George Clooney & the Cast of the Show

The Bea­t­les Per­form in a Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, 1964

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.Follow her @AyunHalliday

The Daily Habits of Famous Writers: Franz Kafka, Haruki Murakami, Stephen King & More

stephenking

Image by The USO, via Flickr Com­mons

Though few of us like to hear it, the fact remains that suc­cess in any endeav­or requires patient, reg­u­lar train­ing and a dai­ly rou­tine. To take a mun­dane, well-worn exam­ple, it’s not for noth­ing that Stephen R. Covey’s best-sell­ing clas­sic of the busi­ness and self-help worlds offers us “7 Habits of High­ly Effec­tive Peo­ple,” rather than “7 Sud­den Break­throughs that Will Change Your Life Forever”—though if we cred­it the spam emails, ads, and spon­sored links that clut­ter our online lives, we may end up believ­ing in quick fix­es and easy roads to fame and for­tune. But no, a well-devel­oped skill comes only from a set of prac­ticed rou­tines.

That said, the type of rou­tine one adheres to depends on very per­son­al cir­cum­stances such that no sin­gle cre­ative person’s habits need exact­ly resem­ble any other’s. When it comes to the lives of writ­ers, we expect some com­mon­al­i­ty: a writ­ing space free of dis­trac­tions, some pre­ferred method of tran­scrip­tion from brain to page, some set time of day or night at which the words flow best. Out­side of these basic para­me­ters, the dai­ly lives of writ­ers can look as dif­fer­ent as the images in their heads.

But it seems that once a writer set­tles on a set of habits—whatever they may be—they stick to them with par­tic­u­lar rig­or. The writ­ing rou­tine, says hyper-pro­lif­ic Stephen King, is “not any dif­fer­ent than a bed­time rou­tine. Do you go to bed a dif­fer­ent way every night?” Like­ly not. As for why we all have our very spe­cif­ic, per­son­al quirks at bed­time, or at writ­ing time, King answers hon­est­ly, “I don’t know.”

So what does King’s rou­tine look like? “There are cer­tain things I do if I sit down to write,” he’s quot­ed as say­ing in Lisa Rogak’s Haunt­ed Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King:

“I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There’s a cer­tain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, some­where with­in that half hour every morn­ing,” he explained. “I have my vit­a­min pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places. The cumu­la­tive pur­pose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of say­ing to the mind, you’re going to be dream­ing soon.”

The King quotes come to us via the site (and now book) Dai­ly Rou­tines, which fea­tures brief sum­maries of “how writ­ers, artists, and oth­er inter­est­ing peo­ple orga­nize their days.” We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured a few snap­shots of the dai­ly lives of famous philoso­phers. The writ­ers sec­tion of the site sim­i­lar­ly offers win­dows into the dai­ly prac­tices of a wide range of authors, from the liv­ing to the long dead.

HarukiMurakami3

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A con­tem­po­rary of King, though a slow­er, more self-con­scious­ly painstak­ing writer, Haru­ki Muraka­mi incor­po­rates into his work­day his pas­sion for run­ning, an avo­ca­tion he has made cen­tral to his writ­ing phi­los­o­phy. Expect­ed­ly, Muraka­mi keeps a very ath­let­ic writ­ing sched­ule and rou­tine.

When I’m in writ­ing mode for a nov­el, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the after­noon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and lis­ten to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this rou­tine every day with­out vari­a­tion. The rep­e­ti­tion itself becomes the impor­tant thing; it’s a form of mes­merism. I mes­mer­ize myself to reach a deep­er state of mind. But to hold to such rep­e­ti­tion for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of men­tal and phys­i­cal strength. In that sense, writ­ing a long nov­el is like sur­vival train­ing. Phys­i­cal strength is as nec­es­sary as artis­tic sen­si­tiv­i­ty.

Not all writ­ers can adhere to such a dis­ci­plined way of liv­ing and work­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly those whose wak­ing hours are giv­en over to oth­er, usu­al­ly painful­ly unful­fill­ing, day jobs.

Franz-Kafka

Image of Franz Kaf­ka, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

An almost arche­typ­al case of the writer trapped in such a sit­u­a­tion, Franz Kaf­ka kept a rou­tine that would crip­ple most peo­ple and that did not bring about phys­i­cal strength, to say the least. As Zadie Smith writes of the author’s por­tray­al in Louis Begley’s biog­ra­phy, Kaf­ka “despaired of his twelve hour shifts that left no time for writ­ing.”

[T]wo years lat­er, pro­mot­ed to the posi­tion of chief clerk at the Work­ers’ Acci­dent Insur­ance Insti­tute, he was now on the one-shift sys­tem, 8:30 AM until 2:30 PM. And then what? Lunch until 3:30, then sleep until 7:30, then exer­cis­es, then a fam­i­ly din­ner. After which he start­ed work around 11 PM (as Beg­ley points out, the let­ter- and diary-writ­ing took up at least an hour a day, and more usu­al­ly two), and then “depend­ing on my strength, incli­na­tion, and luck, until one, two, or three o’clock, once even till six in the morn­ing.” Then “every imag­in­able effort to go to sleep,” as he fit­ful­ly rest­ed before leav­ing to go to the office once more. This rou­tine left him per­ma­nent­ly on the verge of col­lapse.

Might he have cho­sen a health­i­er way? When his fiancée Felice Bauer sug­gest­ed as much, Kaf­ka replied, “The present way is the only pos­si­ble one; if I can’t bear it, so much the worse; but I will bear it some­how.” And so he did, until his ear­ly death from tuber­cu­lo­sis.

While writ­ers require rou­tine, nowhere is it writ­ten that their habits must be salu­bri­ous or mea­sured. Accord­ing to Simone De Beau­voir, out­ré French writer Jean Genet “puts in about twelve hours a day for six months when he’s work­ing on some­thing and when he has fin­ished he can let six months go by with­out doing any­thing.” Then there are those writ­ers who have relied on point­ed­ly unhealthy, even dan­ger­ous habits to pro­pel them through their work­day. Not only did William S. Bur­roughs and Hunter S. Thomp­son write under the influ­ence, but so also did such a seem­ing­ly con­ser­v­a­tive per­son as W.H. Auden, who “swal­lowed Ben­zedrine every morn­ing for twen­ty years… bal­anc­ing its effect with the bar­bi­tu­rate Sec­onal when he want­ed to sleep.” Auden called the amphet­a­mine habit a “labor sav­ing device” in the “men­tal kitchen,” though he added that “these mech­a­nisms are very crude, liable to injure the cook, and con­stant­ly break­ing down.”

So, there you have it, a very diverse sam­pling of rou­tines and habits in sev­er­al suc­cess­ful writ­ers’ lives. Though you may try to emu­late these if you har­bor lit­er­ary ambi­tions, you’re prob­a­bly bet­ter off com­ing up with your own, suit­ed to the odd­i­ties of your per­son­al make­up and your tolerance—or not—for seri­ous phys­i­cal exer­cise or mind-alter­ing sub­stances. Vis­it Dai­ly Rou­tines to learn about many more famous writ­ers’ habits.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dai­ly Rou­tines of Famous Cre­ative Peo­ple, Pre­sent­ed in an Inter­ac­tive Info­graph­ic

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Life & Discoveries of Mary Leakey Celebrated in an Endearing Cutout Animation

“Over half a cen­tu­ry, Mary Leakey labored under the hot African sun, scratch­ing in the dirt for clues to ear­ly human phys­i­cal and cul­tur­al evo­lu­tion. Sci­en­tists in her field said she set the stan­dards for doc­u­men­ta­tion and exca­va­tion in pale­olith­ic arche­ol­o­gy. They spoke of hers as a life of envi­able achieve­ment.” That’s how The New York Times start­ed its 1996 obit­u­ary for Mary Leakey, “matri­arch of the famous fos­sil-hunt­ing fam­i­ly in Africa whose own rep­u­ta­tion in pale­oan­thro­pol­o­gy soared with dis­cov­er­ies of bones, stone tools and the foot­prints of ear­ly human ances­tors.”

Above, you can watch the Timesnew­ly-released cutout ani­ma­tion, cel­e­brat­ing her life and pale­oan­thro­pol­o­gy work in east­ern Africa. The endear­ing sev­en-minute film cov­ers her dis­cov­ery of Pro­con­sul africanus in 1948, Zin­jan­thro­pus boi­sei in 1959, Homo habilis in 1960, and the trail of ear­ly human foot­prints found at Lae­toli in the mid-1970s. The film also fea­tures some­thing you’ll like­ly nev­er see else­where — peo­ple throw­ing ele­phant dung fris­bees! Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Creepy Cut Out Ani­ma­tion of Samuel Beckett’s 1953 Nov­el, The Unnam­able

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

The Adven­tures of Famed Illus­tra­tor Gus­tave Doré Pre­sent­ed in a Fantasic(al) Cutout Ani­ma­tion

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

 

Kanye Lectures at Oxford University on Genius, Class & a Whole Lot More

Kanye West annoys a lot of peo­ple because of his ego, and because he doesn’t rely on oth­ers to call him a genius. He’ll tell you right away that he is one, and a mis­un­der­stood one at that. But is that entire­ly a bad thing? Con­sid­er Picas­so, who Kanye men­tions in this off-the-cuff, occa­sion­al­ly ram­bling, very Kanye talk record­ed at the Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty in March of 2015. Picas­so was a man round­ly con­sid­ered by biog­ra­phers and fel­low artists (not to men­tion the women who mod­eled for him) as a rag­ing ego­ma­ni­ac. He thought he was God, but for­tu­nate­ly Picas­so didn’t have Twit­ter to announce it. (Kanye, how­ev­er, wrote “I Am a God”). Time and dis­tance and death have soft­ened what to many peo­ple was a rep­re­hen­si­ble blowhard because of the beau­ty and mag­nif­i­cence he left behind. So what about Kanye?

Over 40 min­utes, which you can watch above with the help of this tran­script to deal with the rather poor audio, West makes the case for becom­ing a mod­ern Renais­sance per­son, and aim­ing to be not just as famous as a Picas­so, but–and here’s where most of us shake our heads–better than Picas­so.

How dare he? But Picas­so was very good at brand­ing him­self dur­ing his lat­er years, toss­ing off draw­ings to give to busi­ness own­ers instead of pay­ing cash. He and Dali were more shame­less in fact than West in turn­ing fame into gold. Why not set your sights on sur­pass­ing that ego? Picas­so was 56 when he com­plet­ed “Guer­ni­ca”. West has a ways to go.

There’s plen­ty of “Kanye” moments in the talk. He com­pares The Matrix to the Bible. He talks dis­mis­sive­ly about $5,000 sweaters while design­ing such goods. He lets you know that Oba­ma has his pri­vate num­ber. He talks class.

But there’s also ample evi­dence that Kanye real­izes the place he has found him­self and isn’t plan­ning on squan­der­ing that chance. Two years after the divi­sive album Yeezus, Kanye says this.

One of my biggest prob­lems, one of my biggest Achille’s heels has been my ego. And if I, Kanye West, the very per­son, can remove my ego, I think there’s hope for every­one.

The video above was made avail­able online this week, thanks to the Oxford Guild, the stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion that host­ed Kanye’s lec­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Mal­colm X Debate at Oxford, Quot­ing Lines from Shakespeare’s Ham­let (1964)

Do Rap­pers Have a Big­ger Vocab­u­lary Than Shake­speare?: A Data Sci­en­tist Maps Out the Answer

Stephen Hawk­ing Won­ders Whether Cap­i­tal­ism or Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Doom the Human Race

Watch Picas­so Cre­ate Entire Paint­ings in Mag­nif­i­cent Time-Lapse Film (1956)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast, now in its sec­ond sea­son. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

The First Episode of Serial: Season 2 Is Now Online: Go Inside the World of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl

serial season 2
If you’ve been won­der­ing how the Ser­i­al pod­cast would fol­low up on its remark­able first sea­son, the sus­pense is over. This morn­ing, Sea­son 2 is get­ting under­way. Episode 1 is now online, ready for down­load.

A year ago, we got inti­mate­ly famil­iar with the 1999 mur­der of Hae Min Lee and the tri­al of Adnan Syed. Now, host Sarah Koenig will take us deep­er into the world of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the sol­dier held cap­tive by the Tal­iban for five years, who is now fac­ing deser­tion charges by the US Army.

You can sub­scribe to Ser­i­al via Rss feed or iTunes, or lis­ten to the episodes via the web.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

 

Time Travel Back to Tokyo After World War II, and See the City in Remarkably High-Quality 1940s Video

In May we fea­tured col­or footage of a bombed-out Berlin a month after Ger­many’s defeat in the Sec­ond World War. Today we have footage of Tokyo, the oth­er Axis pow­er’s cap­i­tal city, shot in that after­math era, albeit in black-and-white — but at such a high lev­el of clar­i­ty and with such smooth­ness that it feels as if it could have come from a his­tor­i­cal movie made today. These clips, assem­bled into a sort of music video by the record pro­duc­er and DJ Boo­gie Bel­gique, take us for a ride down a shop­ping street in the Shin­bashi dis­trict, past mar­ket stalls in Shibuya, along­side the riv­er, and even into areas meant exclu­sive­ly for the occu­py­ing Amer­i­can forces.

Giv­en that, and giv­en the obvi­ous­ly high tech­nol­o­gy used to cap­ture the footage itself, the occu­py­ing Amer­i­can forces more than like­ly shot this film them­selves. But when did they do it? Clear­ly, Tokyo has had time to build itself back up after the immense destruc­tion of the war, but how much time exact­ly? The Japan-watch­ers at Rock­et News 24 have put their heads togeth­er to answer that ques­tion. “Japan was occu­pied from 1945 to 1952, so it was most like­ly around that time,” writes that site’s Scott Wil­son.

He goes on to enu­mer­ate the visu­al clues that help pin down the year, includ­ing one poster for “Hat­su Imai, the first woman elect­ed to the Japan­ese House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 1946” and anoth­er for Mir­a­cle on 34th Street, orig­i­nal­ly released in Novem­ber 1948. The con­sen­sus, in any case, seems to call this the Tokyo of the late 1940s, the city that Yasu­jirō Ozu, one of Japan’s most beloved auteurs, used as a set­ting in films like The Record of a Ten­e­ment Gen­tle­manA Hen in the Wind, and Late Spring.

But Ozu nev­er includ­ed any vis­i­ble traces of the Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion, much less the clear pres­ence we see in this doc­u­men­tary clip, in large part due to the demands of the Amer­i­can cen­sors. They frowned on any direct ref­er­ence to the Unit­ed States, to the point that they almost cut out of Late Spring the admir­ing ref­er­ence to Gary Coop­er, to whom the main char­ac­ter’s match­mak­ing aunt com­pares the suit­or she’s cho­sen for her. That main char­ac­ter, named Noriko, went on to appear in Ozu’s Ear­ly Sum­mer in 1951 and Tokyo Sto­ry in 1953 — not as the exact same per­son each time, but always played by Set­suko Hara, rest her sweet soul, as the arche­typ­al young-ish woman in post­war Tokyo. How many real-life Norikos of Shin­bashi or Shibuya, I won­der, turned their heads to watch the Amer­i­can cam­era crew pass by?

via Rock­et News 24

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

Dra­mat­ic Col­or Footage Shows a Bombed-Out Berlin a Month After Germany’s WWII Defeat (1945)

Berlin Street Scenes Beau­ti­ful­ly Caught on Film (1900–1914)

Watch 1920s “City Sym­phonies” Star­ring the Great Cities of the World: From New York to Berlin to São Paulo

1927 Lon­don Shown in Mov­ing Col­or

Lon­don Mashed Up: Footage of the City from 1924 Lay­ered Onto Footage from 2013

Three Films Cap­ture 1940s New York, Chica­go & Los Ange­les in Vivid Col­or

An Intro­duc­tion to Yasu­jiro Ozu, “the Most Japan­ese of All Film Direc­tors”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­maand the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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