culture

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Japan film archive to suffer from Koizumi 'administrative reform'

The administrative reform bill that the Koizumi government promotes as its top priority issue in the current Diet session will further exacerbate Japan's already poor cultural policy.

In discussing the bill, Japanese Communist Party House of Councilors member Inoue Satoshi took up a problem facing the National Film Center of the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo at a committee meeting on March 30.

Referring to the National Film Center, a Cultural Affairs Agency advisory body in 2003 stressed the need to improve its facilities, pointing out that the Japanese motion pictures' precious films are getting scattered and lost because of the Center's inability to sufficiently collect and store them. A panel evaluating the transformation of national institutions into independent corporate entities in FY 2004 revealed that the Film Center came to the point where no further streamlining is necessary and proposed an increase in the number of staff members in order to take care of the films.

Underlining the need to organizationally strengthen the Center, Inoue stated that the bill that mandates a 5-percent reduction in the number of national government employees in five years is running counter to the necessity to implement the recommendations.

Cultural Minister Kosaka Kenji admitted the need to conserve the films, but made a negative response by saying that personnel cuts are inevitable.

The National Film Center is Japan's only national institution to collect, conserve, restore, and exhibit Japanese and foreign cinema films. With only 11 full-time employees, the Center has so far collected 17 percent (3,200 films) of the post-war Japanese films that have been shown in movie theaters.
- Akahata, April 19, 2006