Abstract: Spanning the late 1970s and the early 1990s, a series of co-produced documentaries featuring Japanese film and media entities – such as NHK (Nihon H艒s艒 Ky艒kai, or Japan Broadcasting Corporation) – in partnership with China Central Television (CCTV) emerged. Emblematic of what Stephanie DeBoer calls the Sino-Japanese 鈥榯echno-friendship鈥�, these projects launched spectacular trans-China voyages undertaken by transnational film and television teams along routes and territories across the Silk Road (NHK and CCTV), the Yangtze River (directed by Sada Masashi with CCTV), the Yellow River (NHK and CCTV), and the Great Wall (Tokyo Broadcasting System Television and CCTV). These co-productions were integral to a wide-ranging set of transnational encounters throughout what I call the 鈥榣ong 1980s鈥� which were realized via coproduced fiction films, the importation of Japanese film and television works into China, and the continued endeavors of intra-governmental film festivals and themed exhibitions across major cities in both countries.
This talk will mainly re-examine the groundbreaking television series Silk Road (狈贬碍鈥檚 Shiruku R艒do, broadcast 1979–1981; CCTV鈥檚 Sichou zhilu, broadcast 1981–1984), moving beyond media texts and discursive analysis to rethink location shooting and post-production through the lens of cultural-technical assemblages and media operations. Intersecting with Cold War studies, my research seeks to highlight how, enabled by the PRC鈥檚 policy of Reform and Opening Up from the late 1970s, the Silk Road coproduction reconfigured the practical horizons of Sino-Japanese cultural and cinema diplomacy. It did so by leveraging access to on-location shooting in China and facilitating direct technology transfers between the two broadcasters – NHK and CCTV – well before the rise of Sino-Japanese media collaborations shaped by global neoliberal imperatives. As such, my talk will highlight how the coproduction intermixed evolving socio-economic interests on both sides, particularly amidst CCTV鈥檚 institutional development and NHK鈥檚 pursuit of high-quality cultural products with commercial value. Crucially, turning to the on-location and postproduction of sound—the process of stereorization—for NHK鈥檚 Silk Road, I will argue that although it was technically aimed at enhancing the auditory experience for viewers, it also operated as a cultural technique that modulated how the landscapes of China鈥檚 western frontier were made audible and knowable to newly cosmopolitan publics.
Ma Ran is Associate Professor in the Japan-in-Asia Cultural Studies and Screen Studies programmes at Nagoya University. Her research examines Inter-Asia film and screen cultures. Her publications include articles in Verge: Studies in Global Asias, the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, and chapters in Chinese Film Festivals: Sites of Translation (2017), The Japanese Cinema Book (2020), and The Routledge Companion to Asian Cinemas (2024). She is the author of Independent Filmmaking across Borders in Contemporary Asia (Amsterdam University Press, 2019). Her recent work explores the political aesthetics of Okinawa-related image cultures within debates on archipelagic media and ecologies, and studies Sino-Japanese media connections since the late Cold War with a focus on technology, infrastructure, and decolonization.
