Image Romanticism and Yakuza Cinema

Abstract

ABSTRACT Image Romanticism and Yakuza Cinema aims to do two things. One is to give a clear and readable introduction to ninkyō yakuza films as a genre, rerouting some of the more standard culturalist interpretations by focusing instead on questions of industry, medium, and image. The second is to situate that genre within a theoretical, historical, and political field I term ‘image romanticism.’ In particular, I draw attention to three elements that tie these two different orientations together: reciprocity of the face and gaze; ironic iconoclasm; and the abyss beyond words at the heart of cinematic experience. These foci help highlight concerns around genre, violence, beauty, sexuality, cinephilia, anti-modernism, and imperial history. The desire to liberate images from all external structuring forces at work – especially linguistic and discursive attempts to ground the images in something besides their own force – is at the heart of these films. In this, yakuza films become a site where the image of the outlaw becomes the image as the outlaw. The films thus function as crucial place for renegotiating relationships to technical images when the ground of cinema was shifting and increasingly uncertain.