The Shochiku Centennial Collection is a multi-year project established by the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Harvard Film Archive in partnership with the legendary Japanese motion picture studio Shochiku Co., Ltd. With the goal of creating a legacy collection of new 35mm prints of classic films from Shochiku’s impressive catalogue, this project endeavors to strike fifty new prints of studio titles dating from the silent era through the 1970s, selected by HFA Director Haden Guest and Professor Alexander Zahlten. As part of the collection at the HFA, these prints will be vital resources for research, teaching, and study at Harvard for years to come. Shochiku prints will also, of course, be regularly featured in the HFA’s cinematheque program.
Launching the Shochiku Centennial Collection, a retrospective titled "OZU 120: The Complete Ozu Yasujiro" was held during the summer of 2023. Presented by the HFA and Shochiku, in partnership with RIJS and the Japan Foundation, this summer-long event offered the rare opportunity to see all extant films of Ozu Yasujiro (1903-1963) screened on 35mm. Five new prints were created for this occasion as the first installment of the HFA's partnership with Shochiku. Advancing his film career at Shochiku from cinematic assistant to assistant director, Ozu maintained deep ties with the company and produced a multitude of films spanning decades, genres, and themes, receiving regular national awards and "best-of" recognitions. The retrospective marked the 120th anniversary of Ozu's birth as well as the 60th anniversary of his death – two identical dates separated by 60 years, an auspicious duration of time according to the lunar calendar.
During the 2023-24 academic year, the HFA welcomed Shochiku CEO Jay Sakomoto and General Manager Meri Koriyama, in a compact program that combined newly struck prints: an encore from the summer-long Ozu retrospective The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, as well as vintage prints of Yamada’s Tora-san, Our Loveable Tramp and Oshima’s The Sun’s Burial. Also included was a new 4K version of Shinoda’s Demon Pond, showcased as a prime example of Shochiku’s superlative restoration work.
During the 2024-25 academic year, in partnership with the Reischauer Institute, the HFA will continue celebrating the Shochiku Centennial Collection by showcasing two newly struck prints of seminal films from the pioneering studio: the historic landmark Carmen Comes Home, one of Japan’s first color features, and Where Spring Comes Late, a little-known classic of Seventies cinema that ambitiously set out to capture a sweeping portrait of the Japanese nation from the point of view of a displaced Kyushu family making the long voyage to northernmost Hokkaido.
What is Shochiku?
One of the oldest motion picture production companies in Japan, The Shochiku Company, Ltd. was founded in 1895 as a company initially dedicated to kabuki, with a film production division opened in 1920. As a film studio, Shochiku distinguished itself quickly by turning away from the popular jidaigeki, or historical costume dramas, in favor of contemporary films in innovative dialogue with Hollywood and European cinema. Indeed, by the early 1930s Shochiku had defined itself by its focus on shoshimin eiga films centered around the everyday lives and struggles of middle- and working-class families, a genre best exemplified by the films of Ozu Yasujiro, the filmmaker who spent nearly his entire career at the studio and who remains one of the best-known Shochiku directors. Other seminal filmmakers who thrived at Shochiku included Kinoshita Keisuke, Gosho Heinosuke, Yoshimura Kozaburo, Shimazu Yasujiro and Yamada Yoji.
Shochiku was constantly ahead of its time, producing both Japan’s first full-length sound film, Gosho’s The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine (1931), as well as its first color feature film, Kinoshita’s Carmen Comes Home (1951). During the 1960s, Shochiku helped spark a vital renewal of post-WWII Japanese cinema by hiring young, intellectually oriented filmmakers to create a New Wave deliberately modeled on the nouvelle vague transforming French cinema at the time. Far ahead of the New Hollywood of the 1970s, the Shochiku New Wave launched the careers of some of the most important filmmakers in Japanese film history, including Oshima Nagisa, Yoshida Kiju and Shinoda Masahiro.
Throughout its history, Shochiku has been well known as a “director’s studio,” a stance established by its first longtime head, Kido Shiro, who understood the importance of granting filmmakers and creative talent a carefully measured (especially in terms of budget) freedom to realize their artistic visions. Today, Shochiku is led by CEO Junichi (Jay) Sakomoto, who is, in fact, Kido’s grandson and whose deep appreciation of the studio’s legacy is made clear by his generous support of this new collaboration with the Harvard Film Archive.
What is the HFA?
The Harvard Film Archive is one of the largest and most significant university-based motion picture collections in the world. Housed in the historic Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, the HFA preserves, exhibits, and provides research access to its collection of film elements for more than 30,000 titles. While the majority of the HFA holdings are analogue 35mm and 16mm exhibition prints, recent years have brought in a wealth of digitally born cinema. As a member of the International Federation of Film Archives and as a division of the Harvard College Library, the HFA upholds its mission to preserve and thoughtfully expand its collections in order to keep pace with the research, study, and teaching needs of the university and to contribute to the preservation of film heritage.
The HFA’s world-renowned collection includes exhibition prints and elements of films (sound materials, negatives, inter positives, A/B rolls) from around the world and from across film history, with especially strong holdings in post-WW2 European art cinema, Classical Hollywood cinema, documentary and experimental film, as well as Latin American and Japanese cinema. Japanese cinema has been at the core of the HFA’s collection and exhibition program from the very beginning, in keeping with a steady interest in Japanese films from across the university. Among the 328 Japanese films represented in the HFA’s current collection are key works from The Shochiku Company, Ltd.
The HFA preserves rare and unique films from its collection in order to ensure that films are accessible for research and screenings for years to come. Equally importantly, the HFA also hosts regular screenings of prints from its collection for Harvard classes in its state-of-the-art theater, giving students the increasingly rare opportunity to view and study films in their original format and on the big screen. The HFA also has a long history of inviting directors to present and discuss their work in person and engage with students, often visiting classes for unique and intimate encounters. At Harvard, important use is made of the university’s many libraries and museums to allow “object-based” teaching with rare materials from these repositories, including film prints, and the HFA’s collection has greatly enhanced the teaching of film, media, history, anthropology, and art, among other fields.
In addition to its vast collection and active preservation program, the Harvard Film Archive also operates a year-round cinematheque, presenting originally curated film programs in its 200-seat theater and drawing a vibrant audience both from the Harvard campus and from across the Greater Boston and New England region. The HFA is celebrated for curating and presenting groundbreaking film programs that embrace and expand the pedagogical mission of Harvard University by reaching audiences on campus and far beyond.
Over the years, the HFA has presented many programs of Japanese cinema and welcomed such legendary figures as filmmakers Susumu Hani, Masahiro Shinoda, Kiju Yoshida, Nobuhiko Obayashi, and Kazuo Hara, actress Mariko Okada, and rising stars Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Tetsuya Mariko. The rich history of the archive and cinematheque can be explored on the HFA website, including program notes as well as audio recordings of conversations and Q&A’s with filmmakers such as those named above.
Shochiku, the HFA, and the Centennial Collection
Having recently celebrated its 100-year anniversary, The Shochiku Company, Ltd., is among the most important studios in the history of Japanese and global cinema and has produced some of its most important works. A collection of Shochiku films at the HFA not only provides the opportunity to honor a selection of Shochiku's works as well as contribute to a re-discovery of lesser known works of equal historical importance, but also deepen an already strong relationship between Shochiku and Harvard, as well as the long friendship between Professor Andrew Gordon and President Jay Sakomoto.
The Shochiku Centennial Collection offers the following values and significance:
A. The collection will offer film scholars an opportunity to study and create new understandings of the body of work produced by Shochiku and, more generally, to understand the history of Japanese and global film.
B. The collection will give Harvard faculty the opportunity to screen films for students. This will greatly enhance the appreciation and understanding of these works among Harvard students, as well as respond to their continually growing interest in film from Japan and Asia.
C. Public screenings will bring wider attention to the value and importance of Shochiku films.
D. The great durability of 35 mm film, compared to digital versions, will allow these films to last another century. In a world of unavoidable natural and human disasters, keeping Shochiku films in multiple places, particularly international locations such as the United States, ensures long term preservation and wide access.
E. Harvard University has additional centers and departments that can engage with the collection and deepen the relationship with Shochiku.
The HFA’s position as one of a number of premiere film archives and theaters in the world uniquely positions it to spotlight Shochiku’s immense cultural contributions to world cinema, and the addition of this collection to the HFA’s extensive holdings will ensure the highest-quality preservation of Shochiku’s works for decades – even beyond the next 100 hundred years.