What Is Japanese Cinema?

What might Godzilla and Kurosawa have in common? What, if anything, links Ozu's sparse portaits of domestic life and the colorful worlds of anime? In What Is Japanese Cinema? Yomota Inuhiko provides a concise and lively history of Japanese film that shows how cinema tells the story of Japan's modern age.

Discussing popular works alongside auteurist masterpieces, Yomota considers films in light of both Japanese cultural particularities and cinema as a worldwide art form. He covers the history of Japanese film from the silent era to the rise of J-Horror in its historical, technological, and global contexts. Yomota shows how Japanese film has been shaped by traditional art forms such as kabuki theater as well as foreign influences spanning Hollywood and Italian neorealism. Along the way, he considers the first golden age of Japanese film; colonial filmmaking in Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan; the impact of World War II and the U.S. occupation; the Japanese film industry’s rise to international prominence during the 1950s and 1960s; and the challenges and technological shifts of recent decades. Alongside a larger thematic discussion of what defines and characterizes Japanese film, Yomota provides insightful readings of canonical directors including Kurosawa, Ozu, Suzuki, and Miyazaki as well as genre movies, documentaries, indie film, and pornography. An incisive and opinionated history, What Is Japanese Cinema? is essential reading for admirers and students of Japan’s contributions to the world of film.

YOMOTA Inuhiko
Yomota Inuhiko is an acclaimed Japanese essayist, cultural critic, and poet, the author of dozens of books on a wide range of subjects. He taught film studies and comparative literature at Meiji Gakuin University. Yomota has previously been a guest professor and researcher at Konkuk University in Seoul, Columbia University, the University of Bologna, Tel Aviv University, and elsewhere. In addition to being an author of numerous publications, he has also translated a number of works into Japanese from authors such as Colin Wilson, Paul Bowles, Edward Said, Peter Brooks, and Mahmoud Darwish.

*information as of time of publication

History

Publisher:
Columbia University Press

Hardcover
US$80
ISBN 9780231191623
216 mm x 140 mm / 234 pp. / March 2019

Softcover
US$26
ISBN 9780231191630
216 mm x 140 mm / 234 pp. / April 2019

eBook
US$25.99
ISBN 9780231549486 (ePub)
April 2019

Note on Names and Film Titles / Preface to the English Translation / Introduction / 1. Motion Pictures: 1896–1918 / 2. The Rise of Silent Film: 1917–1930 / 3. The First Golden Age: 1927–1940 / 4. Japanese Cinema During Wartime / 5. Film Production in the Colonies and Occupied Lands / 6. Japanese Cinema Under American Occupation: 1945–1952 / 7. Toward a Second Golden Age: 1952–1960 / 8. Upheaval Amid Steady Decline: 1961–1970 / 9. Decline and Torpor: 1971–1980 / 10. The Collapse of the Studio System: 1981–1990 / 11. The Indies Start to Flourish: 1991–2000 / 12. Within a Production Bubble: 2001–2011 / Notes / Index

"No living scholar-critic of Japanese movies possesses Yomota Inuhiko's encyclopedic range and sheer passion for film. What Is Japanese Cinema? is a tour de force of filmic history: a concise and spirited account of how Japanese film came to be, illuminating carryovers from native theatrical traditions and the tensions lining the political history of modern East Asia. That Japanese cinema has all along been local, and—in its imperial ambitions, aesthetic power, or moral force—global in its reach, is a matter that this insightful book brings remarkably to light."

Paul Anderer
Author of Kurosawa's Rashomon: A Vanished City, a Lost Brother, and the Voice Inside His Iconic Films

"A famously rambunctious critic, Inuhiko Yomota proves to be an even better pedagogue. He deftly organizes Japan’s kaleidoscopic genres and film fashions into a totality you can grasp. Auteurs and stars sparkle above an omnivorous industry that metabolized traditional theater, popular manga, and Hollywood techniques into unmistakably Japanese forms. A swift, truly satisfying summary, What Is Japanese Cinema? is also just as vibrant and searching as its title, because its author is clearly in the thrall of his marvelous subject."

Dudley Andrew
Yale University

"What Is Japanese Cinema? goes beyond the auteurist criticism that tells a history of cinema as a compilation of masterpieces. Instead, the work locates cinema in the specific contexts of cultural history as well as technological history. Yomota Inuhiko's knowledge of and attentiveness to film theories and histories is incredible."

Daisuke Miyao
University of California, San Diego

日本映画のすべてがここに濃縮。
活動写真からトーキーへ、小津、黒澤、ゴジラ、裕次郎、ジブリや北野やＪホラーまで。

日本映画史の全貌を明らかにした集英社新書『日本映画史100年』（2000年刊行）。映画ファンの座右の書として、映画を学ぶ人必携のテキストとして、長きにわたり版を重ねてきた。そして刊行から10年以上。この間、日本映画は劇的な変貌を遂げた。製作本数の激増、フィルムからデジタルデータへの記録媒体の変化、インターネット配信への配給……本書はそうした日本映画を巡る近年の状況を踏まえ、最新の研究成果も織り込みながら、新たなる論考を加えた増補改訂版にして決定版である。

四方田犬彦
一九五三年大阪府生まれ。東京大学で宗教学を、同大学院で比較文学を学ぶ。批評家として、映画、文学、漫画、都市論、アジア論といった幅広い領域で活動を続けている。映画関係の主な著書に『電影風雲』（白水社）、『日本映画のラディカルな意志』（岩波書店）、『大島渚と日本』（筑摩書房）がある。また『日本映画は生きている』全八巻（岩波書店）を編集した。一九九八年『映画史への招待』（岩波書店）でサントリー学芸賞受賞。二〇一四年『ルイス・ブニュエル』（作品社）で芸術選奨文部科学大臣賞受賞。

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