AHT was surprised to find out there are only few Japanese Blu-ray including english subtitles. Although there’s no official answer (?), here are some strange facts about the lack of english subs on Japanese DVDs/BRs:
■ Made for the local market only?
Back in 2003, Shochiku released 4 Ozu boxes, movies you couldn’t really find anywhere. Guess what? It wasn’t subbed. Donald Richie talked about that during an interview:
Midnight Eye: They didn’t put any subtitles on them, did they?
Donald Richie: “You idiots! What are you doing!”, I told the company, and they said “Well, our people don’t really want that.” I said, “You don’t know who your people are. You could sell this all over the world.” And anyway, nobody listened.
However, the rights to all the Ozu titles were bought by Criterion, so they have already issued a splendid new edition of Tokyo Story. They are coming over here to talk to me about The Story of Floating Weeds, the 1934 silent film which they are releasing repackaged with the 1959 remake. They’re going to release all the Ozu pictures one by one, so they will all be made available at some point.
■ Take the plane to watch english subbed j-films!
No joke inside! Jason Gray published recently an article “Inflight Entertainment: The New Way to See J-Cinema?” where he stated the fact that many airlines have rights of many japanese films with english subs. Basically, some films have english subtitles BUT, japanese companies won’t add it to the dvds.
■ Unofficially: You can’t understand the Japanese Culture
What’s the purpose of adding english subtitles on films gaijin can’t understand because it’s not made for them. That’s maybe why many oldies (and some recent films) are rotting somewhere, waiting to be discover?
■ Do you have any other facts/reasons?
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Well, there are some DVD with English subs. When I went to Japan, I “randomly” bought DVD (I didn’t check if there where subtitled) and I was very pleased back home to see that all of them were subbed.
Anyway, I would add one suggestion : the DVD will be released later abroad. In example : Tokyo Sonata’s DVD didn’t have subs but it was going to be released abroad later. Nanayomachi’s Japanese DVD has subs and (I think that) it is not planned to be released abroad.
I guess the situation is somewhat similar as with Thai DVD, subtitles are not included as it could hurt the international sales rights… even if in the end none of them are sold due to their notoriously overpriced licence fees!
If there are no English subbed editions available anywhere in the world, the Japanese companies can set the price higher. If there was a subbed R2J available, it wouldn’t only mean that some potential customers have already bought it, but that some potential customers have bought the ebay bootlegs or downloaded the torrents that are based on the subbed R2J release.
I’m sure this is a common way of thinking among Japanese companies. They don’t sell only movies. They sell rights to release movies in specified languages. This is why many French and Scandinavian releases don’t include English subtitles. Their contract states they are not allowed to include English subtitles… unless they pay extra.
But then again, in case of so many smaller audience Japanese films it would really be a good idea to include English subs. Take Toei for example. Do they think a western distibutor is gonna pay $10 000 to license a ninkyo yakuza film? Ain’t gonna happen. Never has happeded, actually. If Toei spent an extra few hundred dollars per film to include English subtitles, they could sell a few hundred additional copies of each film. I’m sure this would be far more profitable in the long run than waiting for the miracle day some US company is stupid enough to make a financial suicide by licensing an oldie from them. They can really only sell pinky violence and Sonny Chiba and Kinji Fukasaku films to western distributors…
@Tadanobu : you’re right.
It’s also for business reasons.
Japanese companies, like most of worldwide film right-holders, just wish to make the most of the library of films and rights they own.
The global world of DVD edition is the result of a wide ‘territorial strategy’ : the owners of film libraries sell rights to companies for specific(s) regions(s) or territory, if possible to as much possible territories and companies possible, increasing the profit made with the same film.
In order to make everyone not competing against each other (especially when it comes to releases from adjacent countries) and taking globalization into account (you have the technical possibility to buy almost any DVD released from any country), they make sure by contract that each rights buyer/local company release the film on DVD with only local language subtitles.
By doing so, they ensure the most profit possible from the film rights they own.
One broader view, this is basically the system whoch worldwide cinema is living on since quite some time now : to gather the money needed to produce a movie, you rely on pre-sales of the rioghts attached to it (theatrical rights, video rights, TV rights, VOD rights) in various countries or territories (e.g that’s what Cannes Film Market is about).
That’s why, for example, you have a portion of American films released on DVD in France without any English subtitles : these DVD are released by companies which owns only rights for France.
On the other hand, some global companies, owning film rights for various territories (hello US majors), are releasing DVD including a wide array of languages and subtitles, this time trying to reduce costs.
Back to our example, one of the main reason Japanse DVD aren’t English subtitled is certainly avoiding ‘self-competition’ with future possible releases in English-speaking territories.
In brief, welcome to a not-so global system
My advice: Get a region-free DVD player. Sometimes you can get a Korean or Hong Kong version of a Japanese film, and those usually always have English subs.
Make sure that your region-free DVD player has a digital upconvert capability (so you can pump up the resolution to 1080). This will make your DVDs look much better on high-def TV screens.
Good think I speak decent Japanese.
Of course it’s only good enough to understand more modern films. Old jidaigeki and chambara are especially difficult to understand when they start using tons of honorifics and humblerespectablehonorableoldpeople form.
Suggestion: Buy the DVD, rip it while maintaining picture quality as high as possible, add srt or sub files, burn, watch. Keep a catalog of the original DVD and the burned disk with subs. You get subs, you save the original disk from getting scratches, and you don’t have to lend the original when someone wants to borrow it so there’s no risk of losing the real one. Takes a bit of work but it’s the best solution, I think.
After a number of trips to Japan I have managed to only find about 15 movies that I wanted with English subs.The prices in Australian dollars ranged from $30 to $65. CdJapan sell quite a few , but with similar prices. I’ve found Japanese disks from Hong Kong to be the best value, yhe less recent they are the lower the price.
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