Conclusion

Abstract

This book has examined the shift in Japanese cinematic modes from the film studio era to the post-studio era, with particular emphasis on their relation to recent developments in digital technology and the transformation in the critical framework from the national to the transnational cinema. This concluding chapter considers the extent to which the national cinema has truly become transnational and asks whether the unambiguous structural equalities between the national cinema and the studio system or between the transnational disposition and the post-studio production mode are viable. It argues that the complicit relationship between America's universalism and Japan's particularism has influenced Japanese cinema studies. The chapter proposes a few research interests that might reveal the new cinema's counterintuitive connection with the national by focusing on television cinema and Japanese cinema's relationship to the kontentsu sangyo—the business of producing and selling digital media products—as well as Japan's national policy regarding media content.