What is Tokusatsu: A Fact Based Definition

[Japaneseseriesfan]

I find this thread to not be nothing short of a man trying to tell us the distinction between Western media and Japanese media.

This is not a fact based definition, or whatever you want to call it. I do not lack perception, in fact I have perceived through this "opinion based thread" on how things work that I can call it bullshit right now.

You have outright stated that it is impossible to try and make something and call Tokusatsu if it is not within the realm of the Japanese culture. This, is you being ignorant. Tokusatsu is a genre. Filmmakers decide what Genre they want to do. Just because Tokusatsu isn't as big of a Genre as say Thriller, or Action, doesn't man other people can't replicate it, or maybe, make it even better by adding their own taste from their own cultures or other cultures, this revolutionising the idea and redefining Tokusatsu for what it is.

Things are always getting redefined. Tokusatsu might be to you what anime is to assholes in schools; a genre of fictional storytelling suited for kids and will never expand beyond that. But It's actually not that at all, it's live action. It's actual drama, actual people doing real things. The day will come when people want to study more... complex things, and Tokusatsu is one of those. It combines elements of many different types of films and mashes it into one realm of reality we've been allowed into all these years.

Who knows, maybe 200 years from now, it might not even be called Tokusatsu. Some French guy might go over to Japan, take over the movie industry, and since he was a big fan of Toku, he revolutionised it in his own image, and blah blah blah... but you get the point I'm trying to make.

Filmmaking doesn't need to be defined. It just needs to be appreciated.

 

[Shynilyte]

But as you mention several times there is no English language dictionary definition for Tokusatsu, but there is one for terms like "Samurai", "Anime", "Manga" & "Sushi." But please make note of the fact that this wasn't always the case. 20-years ago you wouldn't have found "Anime" in an English language dictionary either. The term had to be borrowed from Japan and incorporated into the common English vernacular where it has come to mean "a style of animation originating in Japan." (Merriam-Webster)

So while "Tokusatsu" as of now doesn't have a formal dictionary definition here in English yet it very well could in the future.

It probably will, but honestly, word meanings change and all (see:tycoon), and all the cultural differences you went on about aren't going to be as relevant in the future. For example, Japanese monster movies using costumes instead of CGI. If there was already a serious consideration by Toho to make Godzilla CGI back then, it would only be more possible in the future when studios have even more advanced CGI. Hell, it's already started to change with Tsuburaya using CGI for certain monsters in Ultraman movies like the chimera thing in Superior Ultraman 8 Brothers.

But even without a Merriam-Webster sanction definition that doesn't mean we as a fandom can't do our best to lay out an informal definition in the meantime.

Considering that fandoms have trouble agreeing on anything, that's a pipe dream, at best.

Obviously if you are in Japan, speaking Japanese, you can use Tokusatsu to refer to SFX in general including non-Japanese productions. But that's not what is under discussion. What's under discussion is how the term should be used and understood outside of the Japanese language when used in English, if it is used at all.

Then, why cite opinions by Japanese people like Anno if you know that anyone living in Japan would have no objections to using "tokusatsu" to refer to non-Japanese media?

And I'm glad to hear you say you wouldn't actually say "Doctor Who is a tokusatsu I'd like to get into" but unfortunately there are a lot of people who would and do. Here on HJU alone, but also elsewhere, I've run into folks who say things like "The Avengers was the best American tokusatsu I've seen" or "Star Trek is the best tokusatsu series ever" or "Pacific Rim: Hollywood does Tokusatsu!" and as Lynxara said it's pretty ridiculous looking.

I'd say using the word "tokusatsu" when speaking in English sounds ridiculous regardless of what you're referring to, but maybe that's just me. I guess I tend to think in terms of franchise (i.e, Kamen Rider, Ultraman) rather than genre.

I like being able to say "I like Tokusatsu" and have people know I mean the other longer definition, in the same way I find I can say "I like Anime" to most people and they know I mean "I like Japanese animated films and TV" or the way I can say to many "I like Kaiju" and have them understand I mean "I like Japanese movie monsters (as oppose to non-Japanese ones)", something which should increase dramatically after the release of PACIFIC RIM, even though the monsters in there are only faux-kaiju themselves

Yeah, people understand that when you say "tokusatsu" you're referring to Japanese media, but that's not really a definition, so much as how people understand it.

Filmmaking doesn't need to be defined. It just needs to be appreciated.

You might have a point there.

 

[Lynxara]

So in other words, you think it's "asinine" when people refer to MMPR, France 5, Mystic Knights and other shows as Tokusatsu?

Yes. I would say it is so asinine as to be utterly fatuous. MMPR is a co-production and is best understood that way. The whole point of France Five is that it's a French parody/tribute to Super Sentai. While the later episodes get into co-production territory, the earlier ones are classic fan film stuff. The whole point of Mystic Knights was that Saban wanted to try producing its own special effects property, so it could stop being dependent on Toei's footage to make a show. It is at best a co-production and at worst just a cheap live-action kids' show, depending on its production specifics.

I do not understand why anyone outside of this forum would ever, ever, ever call those shows tokusatsu. It could only serve to make the conversion about them more confusing, since you'd have to stop and explain why you need a Japanese word to talk about these things that are, at best, only somewhat related to Japan at all, and that English already has words to describe.

On this forum, I can see why people want to stretch the meaning of tokusatsu to include those shows. At the end of the day, it's not really about the word or the genre. It's people who post on this forum wanting to discuss stuff that's comparable to the Japanese stuff they're discussing, and that other people are likely to be into already. It also lets them relate their own work for the common topic of interest that brought us all together. This is fairly typical fannish behavior.

I've seen manga forums back in the day do the same **** by allowing discussion of "American manga" so that members could talk about Vertigo comics or whatever Ben Dunn was doing. Superhero books were somehow "not manga," largely because nobody wanted to talk about them. Playing semantics like this is all well and good if you do it in one community, but the minute you try to take it outside of this walled garden, and go to an English-speaking Doctor Who or Blake's 7 forum to talk about fine British tokusatsu, you're going to look like a drooling weeaboo twit, and you will be treated as such.

How people use the words in Japan doesn't matter, because we're all typing in English. We speak English, to other English-speakers, who are probably from countries where English is commonly spoken and Japanese is not. The Japanese words we use as English loanwords no longer mean exactly what they did in Japanese, because we've put them into a different context. In English, anime is Japanese cartoons, manga is Japanese comics, and tokusatsu is... well, honestly, my experience is hardly anybody outside of communities like this knows what it fucking means, so I don't use it very much. "Japanese live-action" usually gets the point across better.

Anyway, because the stuff is Japanese, and often seems pretty weird to Westerners as a result of being Japanese, we borrow a Japanese word to describe it. And even then, that only came after the topics were extensively discussed in English. Through the 70s, it was just "Japanese cartoons," and anime came later as a term the fans preferred. Manga was coined pretty quickly, since it got traction over here after anime already had a toehold in the collective geek consciousness. The idea of the loanwords is that they make it quicker and easier to specify what is being discussed, in English. We discuss a Japanese thing, we use a Japanese loanword. That's only useful because we're talking to other people who speak English.

Incidentally, the loanword principle is also why you can't always translate wasei eigo with their original English meanings. As Japanese loanwords, those words often no longer mean exactly what they did in English anymore, due to the change of context. So unless you're going to sit here and tell me that, dammit, you've got to call that concert the characters are going to a "live," because "live" is an English word, you've got no real right to say that people in English have to use "tokusatsu" the exact same way Japanese people do. That's the exact same level of linguistic point-missing.

 

[Dessa]

I was going to stay away from posting in this thread, but I saw something that bothered me.

SUSHI DOES NOT MEAN 'RAW FISH'. Sushi is a specific dish, which may or may not involve fish, which may or may not be cooked. The word itself doesn't even have anything to do with fish, it's in reference to the vinegared rice. Anything made with that rice falls under the definition of "sushi". If you're referring to the type of sushi that specifically uses raw fish, the word is "sashimi", which itself means "sliced raw fish".

I'm sorry, but "sushi = raw fish" is one of my pet peeves.

 

[Aoi Kurenai]

Personally speaking, whenever anyone asks me what I'm watching, I tend to just saying it's a Japanese superhero show or Japanese sci-fi depending on what I'm actually watching. (because I also watch stuff like J-Drama and variety shows from time to time) I just...don't see the offense to be taken when other people want to use the term in the way that the Japanese do. Maybe it is linguistically wrong, but at the end of the day, if fans can come to appropriate other terms to mean things they didn't originally mean, why can't they make an effort to keep the original meaning intact?

I've actually come across message boards where people were under the impression that tokusatsu refers to a show with a transforming hero and nothing more. With something like that in mind, it doesn't strike me as strange that there are people who want to use the word as intended. And maybe it's just not something I ever thought deep enough about, but I've never once thought of it as something people do because they think it puts them in leagues with the Japanese until I read this thread. The very first definition I ever read of the word simply described it as something that refers to a special effects heavy production, so when people use the word tokusatsu, that's always what my mind went back to.

In the face of people using the word to mean something that it isn't, it's just so bizarre to me that anyone could take offense to the usage of the word as it's originally intended. I don't often use the word tokusatsu to refer to things that aren't Japanese, just because in my little world there are other terms that come to mind faster but...I dunno, my own family history makes me a very multicultural person, so there are people in my family who know various languages and often use words from those languages in English conversation when they can't find the proper equivalent, and they stick to the meaning that the word has in its original language. So I don't really think in terms of people wanting to use the word because they think it's going to put them in leagues with the Japanese, but rather that it's a term for these shows they watch that they couldn't categorize themselves before. There are other ways to categorize them, but I wouldn't think it's asinine to use the word. At least not in the context of a message board geared specifically towards geeky endeavors.

 

[MechaGolem]

I was going to stay away from posting in this thread, but I saw something that bothered me.

SUSHI DOES NOT MEAN 'RAW FISH'. Sushi is a specific dish, which may or may not involve fish, which may or may not be cooked. The word itself doesn't even have anything to do with fish, it's in reference to the vinegared rice. Anything made with that rice falls under the definition of "sushi". If you're referring to the type of sushi that specifically uses raw fish, the word is "sashimi", which itself means "sliced raw fish".

I'm sorry, but "sushi = raw fish" is one of my pet peeves.

My apologies, you are correct I should have said "sashimi."

 

[Mr. Yellow]

The thing about this is..nobody is ever going to come to a consensus.

It's like when not everyone can agree on what genre of music a band fits into.

Personally, I try not to think about it too hard. Special Effects, action, some mini-sets. It also doesn't have to be Japanese.

It's a catch all term that originated in Japan for all similar productions, but spread.

 

[MechaGolem]

I find your inability to think outside your box strikingly sad

We're having a debate about categories and you're complaining about people not thinking outside the box. There is something strikingly funny about that.... the entire enterprise of categorization is about constructing boxes.

Tokusatsu is a genre of film, not the sole work of one person. You're reaching with that analogy. If we were comparing Ishinomori's works to Gene Roddenberry, then maybe that example could be used.

But... nope, sorry.

I think you can take the analogy of singular artists and expanded it to whole cultures. "Tokusatsu" as a genre is unique to Japanese cinematic culture. Another example would be the "Western" which is unique to American culture; some would argue it's the only true American genre of film even. Does that mean people in other cultures can't make films that don't resemble American Westerns? Of course not! During the 1960s and 70s the Italians made a ton of these like Sergio Leone's Dollar's Trilogy staring Clint Eastward which are amazing films, often considered some of the best Westerns (in the broad sense of the term) ever made. Nevertheless they aren't true Westerns by virtue of not only not being American made but also because they are stylistically and thematically very different from, say, the films of John Ford. For these reasons these Italian made Westerns are referred to as Spaghetti Westerns, so as to distinguish them from the genuine article.

The same is true regarding Japanese Tokuatsu and such shows and movies like MMPR, The Guyver, Gorgo, TMNT:TNM, etc.... The Japanese are genuine, the non-Japanese are something else.

This screams weeaboo....

The brandishing about of pejoratives never helps one's argument.

Also we must have different definitions of "weeaboo" (what a surprise) since as a term meant to indicate a non-Japanese person attempting to act Japanese through speech and dress I would actually say that the one wanting to use a Japanese term like "Tokusatsu" to refer to non-Japanese SFX productions when speaking in English because "that's what the Japanese would do" is pretty much textbook "weeaboo" behavior.

:laugh: Nice...

You're trying to force your Western ideology and classification onto a foreign industry and that just doesn't work. Just because YOU want to make the distinction between the mediums doesn't be that is the case here in Japan.

No it's just the opposite. I'm actually trying to understand aesthetic philosophy behind that foreign industry, rather then simply shoehorning its terminology into my preconceived notions about how things work.

And if the distinction between mediums doesn't exist then explain why I can find multiple Japanese sources attesting to it.

Oh, I understand. I am surrounded by it everyday since I live and work in this country with the demographic most shows in this genre are marketed at. It's you that refuses to accept the reality that tokusatsu is what the word literally means: special effects. You don't want to accept that majority of the shows produced in this genre have mostly been marketed to toddlers and children for decades as superhero entertainment.

Saying I am refusing to acknowledge the demographic that the majority of Tokusatsu productions are marketed at is a pretty big allegation to throw at somebody, though I don't blame you since that is also a pretty big issue within the fandom. However it's not one that I have. I understand very well that Kamen Rider and Super Sentai, amongst others, are children's shows. I'm not one of those people under the delusion that just because a series seems dark and edgy, like Kabuto, it must have been targeted at adults.

Nevertheless you riding off the entire genre as simply kid's stuff is as much a misnomer as someone saying Toei is marketing Sentai to adults; a claim that Kyoryuger alone should be enough to refute.

As I already noted you have clearly adult oriented Tokusatsu programs like GARO, Cutie Honey: The Live, Akibaranger and even some films like Noboru Iguchi's recent Karate-Robo Zaborgar (2011).

But then there is also the grandaddy of all Tokusatsu; Ishiro Honda's Godzilla (1954) and that was certainly made for adults, as were the bulk of it's early sequels and spin-offs like Mothra and Rodan. In the biography Godzilla and My Movie Life Honda is quoted as saying that his intentions were always to make monster movies for adults that were also “accessible to children” that the Godzilla series ultimately progressed in a direction where “children were becoming the target audience.” In fact it was only in the early 70s that Toho started marketing Godzilla movie directly and exclusively at children via their Champion Festival.

This seems to be true of the Tokusatsu genre in general as shows like Ultraman, Kamen Rider and Super Sentai were originaly broadcast in evening time slots where they could be seen by the whole family, as oppose to Sunday mornings as is now the case. In fact just to cite some numbers when Ultraman first aired in 1966/67 it commanded no less than 42.8% of the Japanese viewing audience, which equates to some 40-million viewers were tuning in every week. You don't get those kinds of numbers from JUST children watching.

You fail to realize that this style of special effects has been used for decades all around the world. It is just the word that the Japanese use to call any anything that features special effects (you say peppers, Japanese say piman. It's still the same goddamn thing). It is not ~exclusive~ to Japan no matter how much want it to be.

Your argument is not fact, it's an opinion. A romanticization of a fan who wants to validate it by giving it more than what it actually is.

I think the only romance going on here is the one that Lynxara mentioned earlier where certain fans try to universalize what should be easily recognizable as a unique Japanese cinematic art form as being something ubiquitous, or in your case, trivial.

If I'm guilty of trying to "validate" Tokusatsu as an art form (which I honestly think someone like Hideaki Anno is more guilty of) then I would say you are equally guilty of trying to "discredit" it but dumbing it down to just a word for SFX shows aimed at "toddlers."

I find this thread to not be nothing short of a man trying to tell us the distinction between Western media and Japanese media.

This is not a fact based definition, or whatever you want to call it. I do not lack perception, in fact I have perceived through this "opinion based thread" on how things work that I can call it bullshit right now.

No that's absolutely what this is. I feel this is an issue in the fandom and I wanted to point it out. It's been bothering me for some time and I was just waiting for the right opportunity, as well as researching the topic as thoroughly as I could; which is exactly what stops it from being just my "opinion" as the reason why I've bothered to cite sources throughout this entire discussion.

Tokusatsu might be to you what anime is to assholes in schools; a genre of fictional storytelling suited for kids and will never expand beyond that. But It's actually not that at all, it's live action. It's actual drama, actual people doing real things. The day will come when people want to study more... complex things, and Tokusatsu is one of those. It combines elements of many different types of films and mashes it into one realm of reality we've been allowed into all these years.

I have no idea who this comment is addressed to. It sounds like it should be addressed to Ladymercury but I'm not sure.

Also I'm not sure where you have been for the past 10 years or so but within the Academy anime and manga have become very well regarded. It's not at all uncommon to find entire University courses devoted to the study of anime and manga. As an undergrad (I'm a grad student now) I even took an entire course just on the films of Hayao Miyazaki and their meaning.

Tokusatsu has even had it's moment in the sun. There have been multiple books and articles published on the Godzilla film series as well Ultraman and Super Sentai and Kamen Rider. Anne Allison of Duke University even has an entire chapter on Super Sentai and Kamen Rider in her 2006 book Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination, though I really recommend Tom Gill's essay “Transformational Magic: Some Japanese super-heroes and monsters” in The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture (1998) from Cambridge. Also back in 2006 UN Berkley actually offered an entire course on Kaiju Eiga that I would have loved to take. Well maybe one day I'll teach my own.

Filmmaking doesn't need to be defined. It just needs to be appreciated.

I feel the way to enhance one's appreciation of a subject is to study it.

Then, why cite opinions by Japanese people like Anno if you know that anyone living in Japan would have no objections to using "tokusatsu" to refer to non-Japanese media?

I cite the opinions of Japanese people like Anno and Shinji Higuchi and Tomo'o Haraguchi because they do make the very distinction I'm talking about. In fact I'm getting it from them.

I've only just started Anno and Higuchi's 149 page “An Investigative Report regarding Japanese Tokusatsu” but even within the first few pages they make such a distinction clear saying: "As will be shown later, Japan developed a unique set of special effects techniques that have been employed since the 1950s" (p. 6) There is also a glossary in the back that defines Tokusatsu and says that while "tokusatsu in the broad sense of the term refers to special effects" they are using a more "narrow" definition intended to refer to the techniques and traditions developed in Japan. (p. 139)

Also everything Lynxara wrote in that last post was gold.

 

[Ladymercury]

[...blahblah] During the 1960s and 70s the Italians made a ton of these like Sergio Leone's Dollar's Trilogy staring Clint Eastward which are amazing films, often considered some of the best Westerns (in the broad sense of the term) ever made. Nevertheless they aren't true Westerns [..blllaaah] Italian made Westerns are referred to as Spaghetti Westerns, so as to distinguish them from the genuine article.

Please don't talk down to posters as if they have limited knowledge.

Spaghetti Westerns are still Westerns. They're still considered to be 'genuine'. Spaghetti Western is just a subgenre of the Western genre of film. No where has Spaghetti Westerns been discredited as not authentic Western films aside from individual opinions, like yourself, who decide to box the genre that only films made and directed in America by Americans can only be a true Western.

The American Film Institute defines western films as those 
"set in the American West that embod[y] the spirit, the struggle 
and the demise of the new frontier."[2]

The same is true regarding Japanese Tokuatsu and such shows and movies like MMPR, The Guyver, Gorgo, TMNT:TNM, etc.... The Japanese are genuine, the non-Japanese are something else.

Nope.

By that ideology, every Toyota made in America is not a real genuine Toyota because they weren't made in Japan. They're just carbon copy Toyotas!

The brandishing about of pejoratives never helps one's argument.

but it tru

Also we must have different definitions of "weeaboo" (what a surprise) since as a term meant to indicate a non-Japanese person attempting to act Japanese through speech and dress I would actually say that the one wanting to use a Japanese term like "Tokusatsu" to refer to non-Japanese SFX productions when speaking in English because "that's what the Japanese would do" is pretty much textbook "weeaboo" behavior.

How is it weeaboo if that's what the word means? Like, 特撮 is a condensing of the word, 特殊撮影, tokushusatsuei, which means special effects.

That's not weeaboo, it's the straight up definition of the word. Weeaboos try to force a purist ideology to it; if it's not Japanese, then it's not the real thing! If it's dubbed, I won't watch it! You're trying to push your romanticized definition as definitive fact when Japanese sources point to it being the exact opposite of the case.

And if the distinction between mediums doesn't exist then explain why I can find multiple Japanese sources attesting to it.

Which is why you're picking and choosing which sources you want to rely on. You're not listing industry standards, you're using opinions and trying to push those opinions as fact.

As I already noted you have clearly adult oriented Tokusatsu programs like GARO, Cutie Honey: The Live, Akibaranger and even some films like Noboru Iguchi's recent Karate-Robo Zaborgar (2011).

You totally missed my first post so I'm not even going to go through this merry-go-round on that topic.

But then there is also the grandaddy of all Tokusatsu; Ishiro Honda's Godzilla (1954) and that was certainly made for adults, as were the bulk of it's early sequels and spin-offs like Mothra and Rodan. In the biography Godzilla and My Movie Life Honda is quoted as saying that his intentions were always to make monster movies for adults that were also “accessible to children” that the Godzilla series ultimately progressed in a direction where “children were becoming the target audience.” In fact it was only in the early 70s that Toho started marketing Godzilla movie directly and exclusively at children via their Champion Festival.

One movie does not speak for an entire genre. Godzilla is still a family film, no matter how much you want to spin it. It was meant for general audiences.

This seems to be true of the Tokusatsu genre in general as shows like Ultraman, Kamen Rider and Super Sentai were originaly broadcast in evening time slots where they could be seen by the whole family, as oppose to Sunday mornings as is now the case. In fact just to cite some numbers when Ultraman first aired in 1966/67 it commanded no less than 42.8% of the Japanese viewing audience, which equates to some 40-million viewers were tuning in every week. You don't get those kinds of numbers from JUST children watching.

Also, over 60% of the country watched the NHK Asadora Oshin back in the early 80s. You can not cling to the television/media scape of nearly 50 years ago, where television had finally entered the homes of a country recovering from a war and say that, welp! Ultraman is totally meant for adults, the entire country watched it! The entire country was different then from today.

I mean, we can even say the scope of the entire world was different. Look at American programming from then to today. The scope, the culture, is entirely different. You can not take from the past, try to apply it to now, and still say your definitive 'fact' still stands. Tokusatsu of today is not, and will not be the same, as yesteryears.

If I'm guilty of trying to "validate" Tokusatsu as an art form (which I honestly think someone like Hideaki Anno is more guilty of) then I would say you are equally guilty of trying to "discredit" it but dumbing it down to just a word for SFX shows aimed at "toddlers."

But, in 2013, it is. Srry2say.

which is exactly what stops it from being just my "opinion" as the reason why I've bothered to cite sources throughout this entire discussion.

It is your opinion. Your citing other people's opinions to come up with your own opinion. But at the end of the day tokusatsu will only be a show with special effects:

特撮（とくさつ）は、特殊撮影技術そのもの、
あるいはSFXが多用された映画やテレビ番組などを指す通称。

Tokusatsu, a special effects (filming) technique, or a common name given to movies and television shows that use a heavy amount of special effects.

You can have your opinion but it ain't fact.

 

[Mr. Yellow]

Even Gojira was inspired by King Kong, and there are strong rumors of unofficial King Kong films made in Japan that predated Gojira. So it's not technically the first tokusatsu.