An Alternative Approach to AlternativeAny history of non-Western film theory must proceed through series of encounters between variety of critical writings that would enrich, or perhaps alter, our conception of and its experience. This expectation is justified at time when, as D.N. Rodowick argues, we are in need of a more conceptual picture of how film became associated with theory in early twentieth century, and how ideas of theory vary in different historical periods and national contexts.1 Rodowick's call for different genealogies of film and its theories is clearly motivated by shifting position of in today's media environment. As nearly every aspect of film production, distribution, and exhibition becomes digitized through dissemination of new media platforms, it becomes imperative to revisit question, What is cinema? And precisely because corpus of major film theories premised on ontological stability of photographic image has already proved defunct in addressing this question in earnest, scholars in twenty-first century have begun to explore different sets of discourses on experience of moving image, focusing in particular on those developed either before or outside institutionalization of Anglo-European film studies.2 It is in this historical dynamic that one can situate timeliness of growing interest in non-Western film theory: after long and nearly total absence in our curricula, it now reemerges before us as promising alternative to reimaging very object of our study.To emphasize validity of study of non-Western film theory, however, is not same as to assume utility of non-Western critical writings on as given. Rather, it is crucial to remember that what we think constitutes main body of non-Western film theory is far from monolithic in terms of its publication formats-essays, manifestos, film reviews, book-length studies, round-table talks, and so on-and thus it always requires careful interpretation and contextualization of texts in question before proclaiming any value and potential uses. This seemingly modest proposal is of particular importance to me as specialist of Japanese cinema. In late 1970s and early 1980s, when film studies as an academic discipline was still in its formative period, Japanese was frequently deployed to prove efficacy of Western critical theory.3 A prime example here is Noel Burch's To Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in Japanese Cinema (1979). In this influential study, highlights conceptual uniqueness of Japanese film practice by stressing its radical detachment from both the ideolog y of and the very notion of theory.4 And in doing so, as Aaron Gerow points out, Burch constructs Japanese culture as resistant to, and thus critique of, Western logocentrism and its cinematic equivalent, Classical Hollywood cinema from poststructuralist standpoint.5 It is, of course, possible to refute Burch's construction of an anti-realist and anti-theoretical Japanese by exploring previously neglected set of theoretical debates on cinematic realism developed in Japan over past century. And yet, if such an excavation were motivated only by desire to promote Japan as promising alternative for Western mode of film writing, then it would simply be reiteration of Burch's argument from another perspective.Another, and closely related, working principle I want to suggest is that we should refrain from treating non-Western film theory as discourse of Other. Since rise of postcolonial theory in early 1980s, scholars such as Julianne Burton and Homi K. Bhabha began to take issue with hegemony of Western critical theory and its uncritical application to cinemas of Third World.6 Following this timely intervention by postcolonial scholars was publication of studies that made most of primary materials either written by non-Western filmmakers themselves or excavated through extensive archival research. …