Shanghai
(“Shina jihen koho kiroku: Shanhai”)
1938 / B&W / 16mm / 77 min
Photography: Miki Shigeru
Editing: Kamei Fumio
Sound: Kanayama Kinjiro
Location Sound: Fujii Shinichi
Music: Iida Nobuo
Narrator: Matsui Suisei
Production Company: Culture Films Department, Toho
Source: Nippon Eiga Shinsha
Cinematographer Miki Shigeru’s first work after moving to Toho. Miki is well known as the cameraman for Mizoguchi Kenji’s White Threads of the Waterfall (“Taki no shiraito,” 1933) and as the first ever to record a solar eclipse on film in The Black Sun (“Kuroi taiyo,” 1936). Miki’s liberal use of a mobile camera and of panorama shots coolly depicts Shanghai from the point of view of one person standing in a former battlefield. At the time, the British, French, German, and Japanese settlements were all adjacent to each other; relations between Japan and China remained tense and anti-Japanese resistance was thriving. A section of the city reduced to ruins after the Shanghai Incident and the aftermath of a fierce battle along a tributary to the Yangtze River in the city’s suburbs are photographed with great care. Kamei’s ability to compose a film supports Miki’s stirring material. This work was the first Japanese documentary to use on-location synchronized sound.