A Companion to Japanese Cinema

710 Pages·2022·23.228 MB·English

by  David Desser

A Companion to Japanese Cinema
Wiley Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas
The Wiley Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas showcase the rich film
heritages of various countries across the globe. Each volume sets the agenda for
what is now known as world cinema whilst challenging Hollywood’s lock on the
popular and scholarly imagination. Whether exploring Spanish, German, or
Chinese film, or the broader traditions of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Australia,
and Latin America, the 20–25 newly commissioned essays comprising each volume
include coverage of the dominant themes of canonical, controversial, and con-
temporary films; stars, directors, and writers; key influences; reception; and histo-
riography and scholarship. Written in a sophisticated and authoritative style by
leading experts, they will appeal to an international audience of scholars, students,
and general readers.
Published:
A Companion to Japanese Cinema, edited by David Desser
A Companion to Australian Cinema, edited by Felicity Collins, Jane Landman, and
Susan Bye
A Companion to British and Irish Cinema, edited by John Hill
A Companion to African Cinema, edited by Kenneth W. Harrow and Carmela
Garritano
A Companion to Italian Cinema, edited by Frank Burke
A Companion to Latin American Cinema, edited by Maria M. Delgado, Stephen M.
Hart, and Randal Johnson
A Companion to Russian Cinema, edited by Birgit Beumers
A Companion to Nordic Cinema, edited by Mette Hjort and Ursula Lindqvist
A Companion to Hong Kong Cinema, edited by Esther M. K. Cheung, Gina Marchetti,
and Esther C.M. Yau
A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema, edited by Alistair Fox, Michel Marie,
Raphaëlle Moine, and Hilary Radner
A Companion to Spanish Cinema, edited by Jo Labanyi and Tatjana Pavlović
A Companion to Chinese Cinema, edited by Yingjin Zhang
A Companion to East European Cinemas, edited by Anikó Imre
A Companion to German Cinema, edited by Terri Ginsberg & Andrea Mensch
Forthcoming:
A Companion to Korean Cinema, edited by Jihoon Kim and Seung‐hoon Jeong
A Companion to Indian Cinema, edited by Neepa Majumdar and Ranjani Mazumdar
A Companion to
Japanese Cinema
Edited by
David Desser
This edition first published 2022
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Desser, David, editor.
Title: A companion to Japanese cinema / edited by David Desser.
Description: Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2021. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021025947 (print) | LCCN 2021025948 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781118955321 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119692768 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781118955338 (pdf) | ISBN 9781118955345 (epub) |
ISBN 9781118955352 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures--Japan--History.
Classification: LCC PN1993.5.J3 C66 2021 (print) | LCC PN1993.5.J3
(ebook) | DDC 791.430952--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021025947
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021025948
Cover image: © Hideo Kurihara/Alamy Stock Photo
Cover design by Wiley
Set in 11/13pt DanteMTStd by Integra Software Services, Pondicherry, India
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Notes on Contributors viii
Acknowledgements xv
Introduction 1
David Desser
Section 1 History, Ideology, Aesthetics 25
1 Kyoto – The “Hollywood of Japan” 27
Diane Wei Lewis
2 The Pure Film Movement and Modern Japanese Film Style 49
Laura Lee
3 Shiraito Redux: Text, Body, Desire from Kyoka to Mizoguchi 67
Ayako Saito
4 The Adventures of Uchida Tomu 90
Daisuke Miyao
5 Yoshimura Kozaburo and the Working Woman in the Old Capital 106
Alexander Jacoby
6 Calico-World in Rainbow Colors: The Aesthetics of Gender in 1950s
Toei Jidaigeki 130
Junko Yamazaki
7 Silverscreen Dreamboats and the Polyvocal Address 149
Earl Jackson
8 Mad, Bad, and Beautiful: Revisiting Kurosawa’s Women 174
Dolores P. Martinez
9 Biographies of Loss: The Cinematic Melancholy of Kawase Naomi 193
Erin Schoneveld
vi Contents
10 Shaping the Anime Industry: Second Generation Pioneers and the
Emergence of the Studio System 215
Laura Montero-Plata and Marie Pruvost-Delaspre
11 Shapeshifting in Anime: Form and Meaning 247
Richard J. Leskosky
Section 2 The Old and the New 269
12 Ainu in Documentary Films: Promiscuous Iconography and
the Absent Image 271
Marcos P. Centeno-Martín
13 Modernity in Film Exhibition: The Rise of Modern Movie
Theaters in Tokyo, 1920s–1930s 294
Chie Niita
14 Female Stardom and National Identity in Postwar Japan 316
Jennifer Coates
15 Wild, Sexy, and Funny: Toei Does “Pink” 334
Laura Treglia
16 Behind the Voice that Brought Peace: The Emperor as Hero in
The Emperor in August 352
Griseldis Kirsch
17 Queer Time in Summer Vacation 1999 369
Nina Cornyetz
18 Horror Old and New: Nakata Hideo’s Ringu (1998) between
J-Horror and Hibakusha Cinema 382
Olga V. Solovieva
19 Youth, Trauma, and Contemporary Japanese Cinema 401
Jay McRoy
20 “Female Director”: Discourses and Practices in Contemporary Japan 421
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández and Irene González-López
21 The Dying Art of Japanese Cinema 446
Kirsten Cather
Section 3 Intermediality 469
22 Before Media Mix: The Electric Ecology 471
Alexander Zahlten
23 Gosho and the Gagman: Scriptwriting at the
Time of the Talkie Crisis 493
Lauri Kitsnik
Contents vii
24 Inventing Television through Film: Japanese Cinema and TV, 1953–1963 510
Aaron Gerow
25 ’Scope and the City: Reframing a Modern Metropolis 529
Jasper Sharp
26 Bodies in Motion: Japanese Film of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics
Era between Mass Culture, Media, and Memory 547
Ryan Cook
27 Adaptation as Cinematic Translation: Murakami Haruki and
Ichikawa Jun’s Tony Takitani 568
Mika Ko
28 Blockbusters in Japan: Hit Film Culture and the Rise of Fuji
Television as Commercial Film Studio 591
Rayna Denison
29 Hani Susumu, Nouvelle Vague in Japan and Processive Cinema 612
Takuya Tsunoda
30 The Cultural Turn in Post-3.11 Documentary: Kamanaka Hitomi’s
Accented Documentary 639
Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
Index 658
Notes on Contributors
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández is a PhD student at University Rey Juan
Carlos in Madrid completing a thesis on female authorship and representation in
the films directed by Tanaka Kinuyo. She has been a visiting researcher at Meiji
Gakuin University in Tokyo, with the support of the Monbusho Scholarship and
the Japan Foundation Fellowship, and at Birkbeck University of London. Her
research, teaching, and publications focus on the study of female filmmakers in
Japan, gender representations in East Asian cinemas, and transnational film con-
nections between Japan and Latin America.
Kirsten Cather teaches Japanese film, literature, and culture in the Asian Studies
Department at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her PhD in Japanese
literature with a secondary specialization in film from UC Berkeley. Her first book,
The Art of Censorship in Postwar Japan, analyzed landmark censorship trials of
“obscene” (waisetsu) literature, films, photography, and manga. She is now at work
on a book project called Scripting Suicide in Modern Japan that considers how and
why individuals write in the wake of suicide.
Marcos P. Centeno Martín is lecturer and coordinator of the Japanese Studies
programme at Birkbeck, University of London. Before that, he worked at SOAS
where he taught several courses on Japanese Cinema and convened the MA Global
Cinemas and the Transcultural. He was also Research Associate at the Waseda
University and Research Fellow at the Universitat de València. Centeno has writ-
ten extensively on the film representation of the Ainu people and his full-length
documentary film, Ainu. Pathways to Memory (2014) was translated into various
languages and received several prizes by international film festivals and other
institutions.
Jennifer Coates is Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the School of East Asian
Studies, University of Sheffield. She is the author of Making Icons: Repetition and the
Notes on Contributors ix
Female Image in Japanese Cinema, 1945–1964 and co-editor of The Routledge Companion
to Gender and Japanese Culture. Her current ethnographic research project focuses
on early postwar film audiences in Japan.
Ryan Cook received his PhD from Yale University in 2013 and has taught courses
in film studies at Harvard and Emory. His research focuses on Japanese and East
Asian film history. He has published on film criticism and theory and on the works
of individual filmmakers. His most recent articles include “Casablanca Karaoke:
The Program Picture as Marginal Art in 1960s Japan” (The Japanese Cinema Book)
and “New Wave Home Drama: The Woman’s Film, the Japanese Household, and
Queer Family” in Thirst for Love (forthcoming).
Nina Cornyetz is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at The Gallatin School,
NYU. Her teaching and research interests include critical, literary and cinematic
theory, psychoanalysis, gender, and sexuality, with a specialization in Japan. Her
publications includeTraveling Texts and the Work of Afro-Japanese Cultural Production:
Two Haiku and a Microphone and “Murakami Takashi and the Hell of Others:
Sexual (in)Difference, The Eye and the Gaze in © “Murakami” in Criticism.
Rayna Denison is Head of Department for, and a Senior Lecturer in, Film
Television and Media Studies at the University of East Anglia in the UK special-
izing in contemporary Japanese cinema and television research. She is the author
of Anime: A Critical Introduction, the editor of Princess Mononoke: Understanding
Studio Ghibli’s Monster Princess, and has published on Japanese film and television
in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, the International Journal of Cultural
Studies, Japan Forum, and Velvet Light Trap.
David Desser is an emeritus professor of Cinema Studies and East Asian Languages
and Cultures from the University of Illinois. He received his PhD in Cinema
Studies from USC with a dissertation, subsequently published as The Samurai Films
of Akira Kurosawa. He is also the author of Eros plus Massacre: An Introduction to the
Japanese New Wave Cinema and editor or co-editor of anthologies such as Ozu’s
“Tokyo Story,” Cinematic Landscapes, and Reframing Japanese Cinema and numerous
essays on Japanese, Hong Kong, and US cinema.
Aaron Gerow is Professor of East Asian cinema and culture at Yale University. His
books include Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and
Spectatorship, 1895-1925; Research Guide to Japanese Film Studies (co-authored with
Markus Nornes,); A Page of Madness: Cinema and Modernity in 1920s Japan; and
Kitano Takeshi. His co-edited anthology Rediscovering Classical Japanese Film Theory –
An Anthology (in Japanese) appeared in 2018.
Irene González-López is a postdoctoral researcher at Meiji Gakuin University,
funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. After living in Japan for