Contemporary Japanese Cinema Research Articles

The accented Japanese screenplay: Transnational currents in contemporary Japanese cinema

Japanese cinema in the early twenty-first century has seen the emergence of Japanese-language films written by non-Japanese screenwriters. The arrival of these screenwriters and screenplays complicates existing discourses on ‘nation’ and the transnational in Japanese cinema. In particular, it adds to the tensions around East–West binaries that often permeate considerations of non-Japanese contact with cinematic representations of Japan and requires industry practitioners and researchers to re-consider notions of ‘Japan’ and cultural contact in cinema from Japan. Drawing on the concept of ‘accented cinema’, this article positions Japanese screenplays by non-Japanese screenwriters as accented Japanese screenplays. Two such screen texts are critiqued to suggest the dialogic inevitability of polyvocal interpretations of accented Japanese screenplays with regard to issues of privilege and marginalization, as well as the national and the transnational.

Trauma and sensation: a study of the youth icon in All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001)

ABSTRACT Through an analysis of All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001), this paper adopts the contemporary paradigm of cinematic affect in the study of contemporary Japanese cinema. Contextualizing the film within the rise of the Japanese New Independent in the 1990s, it argues that contemporary Japanese cinema exists as an assemblage of auteurist works that revisit Japanese culture and identities with cinematic iconography. This paper combines a historical profile of film director Iwai Shunji and a critical review of the Deleuzian-influenced paradigm of cinematic affect from which it theorizes an ‘affective icon’ for the appreciation of Iwai’s film, embodied with the traumatic expression of the youth icon.

Kamen Rider

Kamen Rider

“Disarmed”: Disability, Trauma, and Emasculation in Contemporary Japanese Cinema

Disability, especially when war-related, is dangerous ground for entertainment films. Depictions of battle-scarred living bodies are necessarily political, since they cannot avoid commenting on the conflict of which they are a stark visual reminder. Yet depictions are politically multivalent: seeing the disabled has a wide range of effects on audiences. Unsurprisingly, then, disabled survivors of the war have rarely appeared on postwar screens. But the trend of avoiding the messy reality of war-related disability, and disabled bodies more generally, has ended, as the emphatic success of period drama Love and Honor (2006) can attest. In the new century, many films have tackled this once-taboo topic, winning success at the box office or, like Caterpillar (2010), at film festivals. In this article, I analyze depictions of disabled war survivors and other disabled bodies in recent Japanese films, drawing a contrast between Love and Honor and the aforementioned Caterpillar; I explore what motivated this more visceral retelling of both war trauma and general disability, and why each succeeded either commercially or critically. The trend towards depicting disability coincides perfectly with Japanese cinema’s resurgent success against Hollywood. Visceral depictions of traumatized bodies that are symbolically—or literally—disarmed have resonated with domestic audiences, perhaps because disability not only emasculates, it can also empower: the disabled, many believe, can speak with greater authority on the war or the human condition than anyone else. But what will they (be made to) say?

Juggling with cultural stereotypes: The light humour of Naoko Ogigami

ABSTRACTWhile searching for examples of ambiguous storytelling in contemporary Japanese cinema I came across Ogigami Naoko's ultra-light comedy Megane/Glasses (2007). This article combines my personal intercultural viewing experience with an exemplary analysis of the narrative and dramaturgical groundings of the film's extraordinary lightness. A key concept in this reader-response critical approach is the concept of stereotyped reading by Ruth Amossy. Ogigami's playful and humorous stagings of Japanese cultural stereotypes are examined not only in terms of their comic impact, but first and foremost in terms of their use as dramaturgical device. As such, in Glasses they prove successful in designing the viewer's cognitive processes to an extent that in the end, the relief of our common patterns of thought induces a unique and lasting form of catharsis. The feeling of lightness remains in our heads long after the film has concluded.

An alternative representation of sexual difference in contemporary Japanese cinema made by women directors

ABSTRACTHito no Sex wo Warau na/Sex is No Laughing Matter (2008) and Tsuki To Cherry/Moon and Cherry (2004) are films directed by women, Iguchi Nami and Tanada Yuki. Both films, through the conflict between sex and experiences of love, disrupt the traditional dialectic of opposites — man and woman, active and passive, subject and object — that comes into play in the sexual and symbolic act of the encounter with the Other. However, in these two films, the key to understanding the alternative representation of sexual difference lies more in the presence of the transgressive female character than in the exchange of the sexual roles. These two works share the presence of a transgressive female character, both at the textual and symbolic level, and suggest that the encounter between the sexes is still possible thanks to the construction of non-stereotyped gender representation.

Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925 (review)

Reviewed by: Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925 Harald Salomon Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925. By Aaron Gerow. University of California Press, 2010. 344 pages. Hardcover $60.00/£41.95; softcover $24.95/£16.95. Motion pictures, wrote the poet Yanagisawa Ken in September 1918, move the hearts of the general population more powerfully than the lofty ideas expressed by Woodrow Wilson (about human liberty) or Leo Tolstoy (about pacifism). His enthusiastic testimonial to the societal impact of cinema was in reaction to a call by the editors of the monthly periodical Chūō kōron. The influential journal had invited numerous "men of culture" to comment on the most prominent symbols of modern life, namely, motion pictures, automobiles, and cafés. Other commentators displayed a different attitude toward contemporary Japanese cinema. They complained about the distasteful atmosphere of theaters and criticized the clamor of film narrators who provided superfluous explanations for inferior "moving pictures" (katsudō shashin) produced domestically. Such comments echoed the criticisms of [End Page 184] the Pure Film Movement (Jun Eigageki Undō), which is the focus of Aaron Gerow's Visions of Japanese Modernity. Gerow, the author of this thoroughly researched and visually appealing book, taught for several years at Yokohama National University and Meiji Gakuin University. In 2004, he joined the faculty of Yale University, where he teaches in the Film Studies Program and in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. He has published numerous articles on such topics as early Japanese film, contemporary directors, censorship, nationalism, and the representation of minorities in Japanese cinema. His previous monographs focused on the director Kitano Takeshi and the silent film Kurutta ippeiji (A Page of Madness; 1926).1 A particularly important contribution to the field is also his Research Guide to Japanese Film (Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2009), coauthored with Abé Mark Nornes. Recently, he acted as guest editor for a special issue on Japanese film theory published by the Review of Japanese Culture and Society. Visions of Japanese Modernity evolved out of a Ph.D. dissertation presented to the University of Iowa in 1996. The resulting book is a tour de force in the study of early Japanese film culture. Characterizing this tome are a well-structured argumentation, carefully selected images, and a comprehensive index that illustrates the book's impressive thematic repertoire. The vibrancy of early Japanese cinema is legend. Any attempt to approach this cinematic heritage, however, must grapple with the challenge that virtually no physical evidence of the films remains. In discussing source materials supporting the study of Japanese silent film, Mariann Lewinsky has estimated that fewer than one percent of those produced are extant.2 This is partly a result of business practices of that era. The number of prints per film was kept low, and after its release in urban entertainment centers a print would be screened in provincial cities and rural areas until it literally fell apart. The remaining fragments, relates Gerow, would be cut and sold at temple fairs. Other authors have had to face the problem of sources as well. Joanne Bernardi, for example, who has also written about the Pure Film Movement, made a virtue of necessity and demonstrated the promise of film scenarios as source material.3 Gerow, however, goes one step further and embarks on a "discursive history" of early Japanese film. In the thirty-nine-page introduction to the book, he reviews approaches to the study of early cinema and modernity in Japan and other nations. Against this backdrop, the author develops an innovative project that draws on Michel Foucault's discourse analysis, Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of culture, and historical perspectives on film formulated by scholars such as Tom Gunning, Miriam Hansen, Iwamoto Kenji, and Komatsu Hiroshi. Earlier histories of Japanese cinema, holds Gerow, focused on textual or auteurist analyses of film style and generally featured a "reflectionist" model of the interactions between cinema and society (pp. 4-5). By comparison, Visions of Japanese Modernity explicitly turns to "the discursive basis on which films would have been created, watched, understood, and discussed" (p. 7). Thus, oral and...

The films of Mitani Kōki: Intertextuality and comedy in contemporary Japanese cinema

The purpose of this article is to investigate the importance of intertextual references in the films of one of Japan’s most successful contemporary comedy filmmakers, Mitani Koki. Since Mitani consciously makes references to other films, intertextuality works as a key element to comprehend his works. Although the recognition of the references used in his films is not too significant to influence entertaining perspectives, the absence of these detailed intertextual components would prevent the films being recognised as ‘Mitani films’. By analysing all of his four films, this article will provide a useful example of the idea of intertextuality. In addition, this study will also focus on Japan in the 1990s, when Mitani debuted as a film director. This is an important point to be discussed, since his film-making approaches seem to be significantly related to the social background of the time.

Contemporary Japanese Cinema in Transition

INTRODUCTION The main objective of this special issue is to examine Japanese cinema in its post-studio developments, taking into account the industrial and technological conditions of transition. The impact of new media on Japanese cinema (digital cameras, computer editing, alternative distribution via DVD and the Internet, digital projection, etc.) has been enormous. Meanwhile, academic discourses have failed to produce a cohesive collection or anthology that reflects the surprising speed and uncertainty of these changes. Digitalized and multi-media-formatted cinema is now a dispersed phenomenon, ubiquitous and transnational, yet it is also regional in the economic, industrial, and cultural contingencies of its implementation, a situation exemplified by contemporary Japanese cinema. The contributors to this special issue of CJFS/RCEC attempt to map, however tentatively, this changing topography, addressing three central questions regarding current Japanese cinema: What has been the result of the intersection of global technology and regional cinematic conditions? What has been the impact of digital production and distribution on film style? How have new technologies affected the construction of identity within and through cinematic mediation? In 1997, following a series of successful Japanese films, a number of mass media outlets rather hastily proclaimed a cinematic renaissance in Japan.1 In that year Kitano Takeshi's Hana-bi (1997) won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival, Kawase Naomi's Moe no suzaku (Suzafeu,1997) won the Golden Camera Award at Cannes, and Miyazaki Hayao's Princess Mononoke Mononoke hime, 1997) broke Japanese box office records by grossing nearly 19 billion Japanese yen ($182 million U.S.).2 These successes notwithstanding, the number of productions by Japanese studios has steadily decreased, and some studios have even sold off their property (e.g. Toei and Shochiku in 1999 and Nikkatsu in 2000). At present, so-called independent filmmaking has become the common practice in Japan, and the percentage of independent films has increased dramatically from eighteen percent in 1992 to thirty-two percent in 1997. 3 The independent filmmakers are now major players, producing films with much tighter budgets and under more constraints due to their producers' unwillingness to shoulder significant financial risks. The impact of this new cinematic environment is most apparent in film production and distribution. The increased use of digital cameras and computerized editing has helped to reduce costs and speed up the process of production and post-production. In place of 35mm film, high definition digital video is often used in order to bring down production costs and is then blown up to 35mm for theatrical release. With lightweight cameras, less equipment, and smaller crews, filmmakers have developed a new aesthetic that is both Japanese and transnational. With the studios being largely dysfunctional, filmmakers shoot and make films much as the American cinema-verite filmmakers did with 16mm cameras in the 1960s. As a result, new filmic styles, such as feature films incorporating formal aspects of documentary, have appeared in contemporary Japanese cinema. These methods emphasize ordinary Japanese locales, experiences, and identities more than had been the case with films produced in studios. The new Japanese cinema shares aesthetic similarities with other cinemas created under parallel industrial conditions, such as the Chinese Sixth Generation films, especially Zhang Yuan's documentary and narrative feature films, Jia Zhangke's oeuvre including Still Life Sanxia haoren, 2006), and the Dogme 95 series, exemplified by Lars von Trier's The Idiots Idioterne, 1998). The director Kore'eda Hirokazu, with a background in television documentary, has created his feature films within this aesthetic tradition, and his film Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai, 2004) received high critical praise at Cannes. …

Capturing “Authenticity”: Digital Aesthetics in the Post-Studio Japanese Cinema

En diminuant les coûts de production et en ouvrant de nouvelles possibilités de tournage en lieux réels, les technologies numériques ont favorisé l’émergence d’un nouveau genre dans le cinéma japonais contemporain : le long métrage de fiction s’appropriant la technique et les ressources expressives du documentaire. Comme ce fut également le cas dans plusieurs autres cinémas nationaux évoluant dans des contextes industriels semblables, cette irruption du quotidien à l’écran entraîna une remise en question des frontières séparant film et vidéo, fiction et documentaire. Cet essai se penche sur une certaine esthétique de « l’authenticité » s’étant développée dans le cinéma de fiction et le documentaire japonais, et plus particulièrement dans le documentaire personnel. Trois films se retrouvent au centre de cette discussion : Dare mo shiranai/Personne ne sait (Kore’eda Hirokazu, 2004); Tarachime (Kawase Naomi, 2006), et Atarashii kamisama/Nouveau dieu (Tsuchiya Yutaka, 1999). Alliant tradition documentaire et fiction, ces œuvres communiquent l’instabilité du réel par le biais de l’esthétique numérique et du concept « d’authenticité ».

Aftereffects of the End of the World (“i♥ny”)

akira mizuta lippit is Professor of Cinema, Comparative Literature, and Japanese Culture at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife (University of Minnesota Press, 2000) and Atomic Light (Shadow Optics) (University of Minnesota Press, 2005). At present, he is preparing a manuscript on experimental film and video and beginning work on a study of contemporary Japanese cinema.

Are we there yet? Traveling toward the self in contemporary Japanese cinema

Are we there yet? Traveling toward the self in contemporary Japanese cinema

J-Horror: New Media's Impact on Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema

Les récents films d’épouvante japonais, connus collectivement sous le terme de « J-Horror », exemplifient le phénomène de la dispersion transnationale d’un cinéma digital multî-médiatîque qui est, paradoxalement, déterminé par des contingences culturelles, industrielles et économiques régionales. Le potentiel véritable du cinéma digital ne se retrouve pas dans les effets spéciaux générés par ordinateur qui apparaissent dans la série Star Wars, mais plutôt dans les mouvements régionaux, comme le « J-Horror », qui renversent le courant traditionel des capitaux et de la culture, c’est-à-dire, le monopole hollywoodien. Ce phénomène n’est pas nouveau dans l’histoire du cinéma. Ce qui le rend unique est le déploiement vernaculaire de sa spécificité médiatique, temporelle et régionale.

Hybridity in Contemporary Japanese Cinema: Heterogeneity in a Homogenous Society

Contemporary Japan has discovered a new vogue in a globalized aesthetic. European language is found everywhere, from non-sequitur slogans in coffee shops, to meaningless catch phrases printed on contemporary high fashion. Japan has discovered a type of occidental fetish object in the European word - connotative of exotic Western locales, such as French Bistros or Texas barbecue restaurants. Marianna Torgovnick, in her book Gone Primitive, catalogues a history of Western fetishization of "Primitive" iconography.

Cinema, censorship, and the state: the writings of Nagisa Oshima, 1956-1978

The First time I made a film in color...I imposed a small taboo on myself internally. It was to never shoot the color green. Nagisa Oshima is generally regarded as the most important Japanese film director after Kurosawa and is one of Japan's most productive and celebrated postwar artists. His early films represent the Japanese New Wave at its zenith, and the films he has made since (including In the Realm of the Senses and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence) have won international acclaim. The more than 40 writings that make up this intellectual autobiography reveal a rare conjunction of personal candor and political commitment. Entertaining, concise, disarmingingly insightful, they trace in vivid and carefully articulated detail the development of 0shima's theory and practice.The writings are arranged in chronological order and cover the period from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s. Following a historical overview of contemporary Japanese cinema, a substantial section articulates the theoretical and political rationale of 0shima's own film production, which he sees as being profoundly influenced by the social formation and political processes of postwar Japan. Among many other topics considered in his essays, Oshima questions the economics of film production, the ethics of the documentary film, censorship (both political and sexual), and the relation of aesthetics and social taboos. A filmography and notes round out this important collection.