ABSTRACT
This essay examines the Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino) and its grassroots film activities during the early 1930s. During this time, Prokino’s on-the-ground activities were conceived as “everyday interventions” (nichijō teki mochikomi) and reflected a broader policy shift toward grassroots activity within the Japanese proletarian arts movement as a whole. Prokino spread proletarian consciousness among the masses by increasing direct contact between farmers, workers, and activists. It leveraged many different aspects of filmmaking and film culture—including factory and farm village screenings, film publications, and film circles—in the hope of establishing a broad-based participatory political network for revolutionary struggle.
Previous scholarship has focused on Prokino’s finished works and film criticism. However, reframing Prokino’s activities in terms of grassroots activism, we see that completing films for exhibition was not always their primary goal. The strategy of nichijō teki mochikomi was a conscious response to the Japanese state’s own policies of “education mobilization” and “thought rectification.” Through these campaigns, the Home Ministry and the Education Ministry marshaled locally based community organizations such as youth groups, block associations, and neighborhood associations. Prokino’s on-the-ground activities were aimed at blocking state-directed grassroots mobilization efforts and were envisioned as strategies of counter-mobilization.
