Tuesday, 7/31, morning session - Kerim Yasar, USC

[Courtney Hendrix]

I also found the role of the Benshi interesting and even more interesting for me was that they many times took liberties with their narrations . I think my students could find it fun to create their own picture or comic strip and swap artwork and act as Benshi's in creating a narration for each other's work. I know their imaginations could take things in many directions. It could also lead into a great discussion on why it could be detrimental for the Benshi's to stray from the initial narration as it changes what the artist originally set forth to convey. 

[Wen Shi]

Professor Yasar talked about a few Japnaese directors and films and Tokyo story immediately drew my attention. The movie focused on the details in daily life like cutting vegetables and conversation between family members, which makes me feel like the story is happening right infront of me whiling watching. Tokyo story reminds me of Little Miss Sunshine which is also a low budget family movie. I think it will be interesting to have students watch both movies and havea discussion comparing the time period, historical backgroud, family dynamics, filming techiniques, cutural differences between Japan and US..       

I think Hayao Miyazaki's movies will be very appealing to middle schoolers the age group that I am teaching. If taking the movie spirted away as an example, I will break students into groups and let them translate the movie clips in Mandarin. They can act out the part of the movie they choose and practice the language. The final project can be a presentation or act of the story. It will be a fun and engaging exercise for students to practice speaking and listening in Chinese.

Comments:

I always thought that animation is a big part of Japanese film industry. I wish the professor could talk about it.

[Courtney Hendrix]

The idea of the "Pillow Shot" also jumped out to me for my students. In my classroom it could help them grasp the concepts of a setting and what is needed to convey a specific space in their artwork. Like Professor Yasar pointed out it was  important for them to realize in a dense visual field, that has many things to look at, for it to also be orgainized and geometric as to not distract too much from the subject which is something my students can struggle with when it comes to drawing settings at times. 

[Dacia Garza]

Ruth, I agree with your comments. These were most interesting to me and what I would like to point out to my students this year. I would like to incorporate an excerpt from "The Toyko Story" into a lesson by first discussing the story's plot, theme, and other narrative elements using visual thinking strategies and/or Depth and Complexity Icons. Then focusing on the film maker's strategies, followed b a future story-trailer assignment requiring them to create a video using an Ozu film technique such as mentioned in your comments. 

[Kim Leng]

Professor Yasar’s lecture regarding the influence of Benshi tradition on the silent film era in Japan was enlightening. They have that much power to make up cultural facts.  I did not know that the silent film era in Japan consisted of the Benshi tradition. It’s no wonder that Japanese came much later to the sound film era. The Benshis were holding onto their jobs and the Japanese theatres holding 1,000 + people also needed an upgrade.

We have Career Day at our school.  I can introduce the Benshi tradition and tie that with what jobs students think will be obsolete in the future and why.  Then we can take a look at https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/fastest-declining-occupations.htm and compare their list with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Did one or more of their guesses make the list?Another fun activity might be for students to try their hand at being Benshi for the day.  They compose the story, offer cultural facts (have them do prior research about a country). This process will allow students to do hone their storytelling, listening and writing skills. 

[Mayra Brady]

Professor Yasar's lecture this morning made me understand and look at Japanese cinema in a different way.  For example, the way the camera is being placed (lower) to capture the true essence of the character. Even though I teach middle school, I believe the biography of Ozu and some of his work can be used in the classroom. Professor Yasar mentioned we need to have the students look at details when presenting the cinema clips and make it into a game. Middle school students like to compete against each other and I think this is a great way to have fun while learning.    

[Jacqueline Mercado]

I thorougly enjoyed Professor Yasar's introduction to Japanese cinema.  Due to my participation in previous seminars, I have had the opportunity to watch several Japanese films and so have had some exposure to Japanese film, directors and some of the themes professor Yassar talked about today.  I appreciate foreign films and believe that they are a valuable teaching tool for use in the classroom.  Through foreing films students can learn about different aspects of a given culture and perspectives but can also see themselves in the universal themes expressed through the film.  I appreciate that Professor Yassar offered us some useful strategies that can help in the implementation of foreign films in the classroom.   One way to guide students as they make sense of a film is to look at the universal themes--points of commonality and identification, dig into the historical and cultural context of the film and examine the cinematic techniques of the film such as the use of space, camera and how characters' bodies are used to evoke meaning.  The list of recurring themes specific to Japanese cinema that Professor Yassar included in his presentation is specially useful as one can easily provide this list to students.  In addition to providing students with a list of universal themes, preparing key questions beforehand is ideal to guide students' thinking and discussions.  Students can watch segments of a film and can journal their reactions, observations and answers to the above mentioned topics.   I found today's presentation to be educational, enjoyable and extremely useful. It did not only enhance my understanding of Japanese cinema, but the content presented can be easily shared with students.  I found the clips of Tokyo Story and Still Walking engaging and will continue to think of ways I can share such films with my students.

 

[Juana Evink]

Today's morning lecture on Japanese cinema  was interesting. I teach 7th grade world history, yet I could use some clips from Japanese film as a hook or to emphazise a point. I'm thinking of the scene from Tokyo Story, where the boy trows a tamtrum, I believe that my students can relate to that. Also, it will make the unit on medieval Japan more relevant to them.

[Zoey McKinney]

One of the things I appreciated in Professor Yasar's presentation were his thoughts on how to engage students in watching older films or foreign films. I know that my fourth graders would have a lot of those reactions that he discussed - "Why are they acting so weird?" or "It's in black and white!" so I appreciate that he addressed those. It's interesting to compare Tokyo Story with the K-pop videos we discussed yesterday, and their "schizophrenic" nature as Professor Young called it. Thinking about the media that students are consuming today, it is extremely fast-paced, it's louder and packed with jokes and dramatic moments to get audience reactions. I think today's students are probably able to follow these productions better than we are, but when it comes to an older, slower, quieter film, they might be a little lost. They're not used to long, stationary shots, and scenes of household chores. I think it is definitely valuable to expose them to films like this to give them a sense of where there current media comes from. I liked Professor Yasar's ideas for questioning about content, context, and formal elements, as these can be applied to any piece of media and give many entry points for students to access the piece in different ways. 

[Stella Castro]

The first part of today’s seminar was presented by our guest speaker Mr. Kerim Yasar who teaches at the University of Southern California, (USC). Mr. Yasar subject topic was called “Japanese Film & Families through the lens of Yasujiro Ozu an Asian director. Mr. Yasar’s presentation was excellent as it was interesting to learn About Mr. Ozu, (a person I had never ever heard of before). It was interesting to learn about how Mr. Ozu favored to shoot scenes with his camera very low and without much movement. By doing this Mr. Ozu was able to capture the whole bodies of the characters in his movies, to which I thought was really cool, when we were shown video clips of some of Mr. Ozu’s work.

Two interesting tidbits I learned today, (actually I learned more than two but will just comment on these two, and one was that in the Japanese/Asian culture, the last names or rather the family name goes first before someone’s first name. The second item is that back in the 1940’s-1950”s, there were a lot of films being produced, roughly about 2 a day. That is a whole lot of films to watch. It was interesting to also learn about the Venshi, (I hope I spelled that right), who were people that gave voice and/or opinions, to the silent movies. Sometimes though they may ad lib what they thought was happening or what they wanted to happen in the movie/s. I never had heard of this prior to today. It was funny to hear that sometimes the Venshi talked over the film. Mr. Yasar also pointed out that because many people wanted to watch the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 many people bought TV’s for their homes and that was a reason for the decline in movie going, as people decided it was easier to stay home and watch TV, than it was to go out and spend money on the family, to which I totally agree with that concept. 

It was fun to watch the several small movie clips that were shown. In this session I learned a couple of vocabulary words, such as the meaning of a “pillow word”, as well as titles of movies by the three famous Japanese/Asian directors, (Kurosawa,Mizoguchi, and Ozu.

From this session I can teach my students how to do research on the computer about famous movie directors, ( e.g., Lucas, Coppola, and Ozu). I can teach them  simple vocabulary words  in Japanese,  for instance Arigato=thank-you, jicai=period, ninjo=human emotion, ( I hope I spelled those words correctly).  I can also do a compare/contrast of the movies back in the day as compared to nowadays, for example black and white versus, color, silent vs. talking, plain effects vs. special effects, and much more.

[Stella Castro]

In the second part of today’s session Mr. Clay Dube  presented. First Mr. Dube pointed out on the importance of the document that Mr. Berry read yesterday about, to which I do not recall the tile of it but the word that stood out and Mr. Dube reiterated were, “There is no Art”, which these words left me why someone would say this as there are many types of “Art”, and Art comes in many shapes and forms, whether it be musical, acted out, written and or drawn/painted. Whoever said this is totally wrong or just plain ignorant. They may as well be living under a rock. However Mr. Dube presentation was that on the subject called “ Children”, but  the lecture consisted more about posters. Granted there were children on the posters representing  the coming of the New Year. The entire poster shown had a hidden/subtle message to the, that sometimes it was hard to pinpoint the meaning. At times, the whole class would guess the incorrect meaning to the posters, that this in turn was actually cool. However Mr. Dube went on to tell/describe to us what the subtle/hidden meaning to these poster really meant, and some were surprisingly different than what we had thought, (e.g., The posters of planned parenthood). Mr. Dube told us of the meaning of some of the items in the posters and their representations of the item/s , as well as just explaining the posters to/for us. I thought this very kind of Mr. Dube. 

Mr. Dube also went on to explain the differences with birth dates here in the United States  versus the birth dates in the Asian cultures. The first and foremost point I recall is that as soon as a child is born they count that as their first birthday. That is strange but yet very interesting for me. Mr. Dube went on to show us some clips of interesting movies, and telling us  some of the names of interesting movies/books to watch and or read. We were also shown a couple of propaganda posters and were told we were going to get into groups to discuss them , unfortunately time ran out.

I can teach my students many  things from today’s seminar sessions, but from this part of the session I can teach my students about the differences between Asian and American birthdays. I can tell them about the Chinese zodiac/calendar. I can teach them about animals. I can teach them I can teach them how to make a poster that expresses their views, wants and needs. I can teach them synonyms and antonyms, as well as how to paint and use watercolors to make their posters beautiful. 

[Shad Springer]

I teach the historical fiction novel "Code Talkers" with my sixth grade class, which centers on how Native American (Navajos) used their language to transmit top-secret messages for the military during WWII. The novel focuses on the conflict between the U.S. and the Japanese in the Pacific theater, and as the enemy combatant, the Japanese are often dehumanized as "the other". As a post-read concluding activity, I'd like to show the film "Tokyo Story" to my class and have them contrast how the Japanese are depicted in the book versus the novel as well as identify how war had a corrosive effect on the families of both Native American and Japanese soldiers. 

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[Gerlinde Goschi]

I appreciated Dr. Yasar's analysis of Japanese cinema.  I found it very helpful that the presentation also included questions for students and challenges to overcome, such as: "It's in black and white!" or " It's too slow!"  I should have known, but, did not, that Haikus should include one of the four seasons as part of it.  I will incorporate this new information into my lessons during my poetry unit.  

I would like to show a 5-10minute segment of the movie Tokyo Story to my class.  I would ask students to watch for details about the home and the children's lives closely. I would discuss with the class similarities and differences between the home depicted in the movie and their own home today.  Students would write about the class discussion in their journals.

[Kim Leng]

"Watching the clips of Japanese cinema I felt my body and mind in a more relaxed state."

I agree.  The scenes from Tokyo Story were breathtaking.  I love how Ozu frames each scene to show us the space the characters inhabit and what people do in each of those spaces. He's given the audience time to think about the dialogue between the various characters...Time to take in what's spoken out loud and their facial gestures without any other distractions.

 

 

[Jess Meyer]

I really appreciated the list of themes commonly seen in Japanese movies.  Since I teach world history, I would like to have my students use the theme of "he tensions between duty/obligation (giro) and human emotion (ninjo)" to analyze the historical context and social implications of "Grave of the Flies" and "Gojira".  Both movies are excellent examples of changing perspectives.  (Grave of the Fireflies is about children in Japan at the end of WWII and Gojira is about the implications of atomic power in the world.)  I think these movies would be very accessible to my students as well as allowing room for analysis.

 

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