From the memories of younger children taken to the cinema by older family members to the casual viewers who used the cinema as a place to stop or rest, the preceding chapters have explored the recollections of incidental participants in cinema culture as well as more dedicated fans of film. Chapter 6 turns to the dedicated cinemagoer with an account of historic film-related grassroots organisations in postwar Kansai. Beginning with the activities of the Kyoto kiroku eiga o miru kai (Kyoto documentary film viewing group, 1955–62), an amateur film-appreciation group that evolved into a film production unit, this chapter traces the increasingly political activities of film clubs and circles in Kyoto. As we move into the 1960s, the second part of this chapter considers the relation of the kinds of selves developed through film viewership to the activism of the decade. Exploring how viewers found models for activist conduct, and also spaces and reasons to abstain from activism, in the very same cinema, we can see how cinema is used as a flexible signifier in discourse, particularly in relation to giving an account of one’s personal politics.

Organised Film Viewing and Political Activism

During participant observation at a monthly film-screening event in northwest Kyoto called the Kinugasa eiga kai (Kinugasa Film Club), the three organisers introduced me to Asai Eiichi (1933–), co-leader of the previous incarnation of the club and producer of the film Nishijin (Nishijin, 1961). Perhaps understandably, discussion around the club’s mission tended to look back to previous decades, when the forerunners of the organisation had driven direct interventions into local exhibition practices and reception. Their desire to situate the contemporary Kinugasa eiga kai as a kind of descendent organisation from Asai’s group suggested the importance of a sense of lineage for this organised audience group, and highlights the role of younger, later or descendent audience groups in remediating (and perhaps glorifying) the activities of their forebears. While Chapter 7 explores the phenomenon of such citizen-organised groups as a significant part of the ‘crafting’ of cinema culture in postwar Japan, this chapter links film clubs, circles and regular screening groups, and the Kinugasa eiga kai in particular, to a mode of talking about cinema that touches on political identity and ideology.