By Mark Schilling
Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, the president of Kadokawa Shoten Publishing, was half kidding
when he announced that the first film of Kadokawa Pictures -- a new company risen last
April from the ashes of the old Daiei Studio -- would "rival Harry Potter of the US and
Lord of the Rings of New Zealand in its worldwide appeal." There is no way that
Kadokawa's remake of the 1968 Yoshiyuki Kuroda hit The Big Spook War (Yokai
Daisenso) is going to pull in billions of dollars around the planet -- but it does point to
growing trend in the Japanese film business: New revivals of decades-old properties.
The most successful was Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi, a free reworking of a 1962 Kenji
Misumi film that launched a 26-part series. Earning Y2.85 billion ($26 million) at the
domestic box office last year, the film was not only Kitano's biggest ever hit, but has
inspired producers to search through the video bins for other golden oldies.
Among those hitting theatres in recent months are Casshern, Kazuaki Kiriya's retro
futuristic CGI extravaganza based on a 1973 TV animation series, and Cutie Honey,
Hideaki Anno's SF romp based on an early seventies comic and TV anime by cult
favorite Go Nagai. Reaching back even farther is Toshio Tsuda's Tange Sazen, a near
shot-by-shot remake of a 1935 Sadao Yamanaka period drama of the same title, whose
one-eyed warrior hero has inspired a total of 34 films over the decades since he made his
first appearance in the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper in 1927.
This retro boom demonstrates not only the depth of Japan's pop culture mines, but the
hunger for proven properties that don't cost a fortune. Nostalgia may be a factor, though
one that is often exaggerated. The Casshern anime ran all of one season on Japanese TV
-- and is now fondly remembered by only a small cohort of over-thirty fans (of whom
director Kiriya is admittedly one). More important is the talent needed to make pop
culture relics appeal to today's young audiences, for whom Pokemon is already ancient
history. So far the revivalists have been lucky -- all but the first of the films mentioned
above have become profitable hits. But then their producers aren't paying percentages to
J.K. Rowling.
