JAPN 300B: Japanese Film

During the six-and-a-half-year occupation of Japan (1945 1952), U.S. film studios in close coordination with Douglas MacArthur's Supreme Command for the Allied Powers launched an ambitious campaign to extend their power and influence in a historically rich but challenging film market. An interdisciplinary book that combines U.S. diplomatic and cultural history, film and media studies, and modern Japanese history, Screening Enlightenment offers new insights into the origins of this unique political and cultural transpacific relationship."

This work the works of over 150 filmmakers to uncover what makes their films worth watching.

The Relay of Gazes is a study of multimedia representations of Japanese culture in the latter half of the twentieth century. Carol Ota examines the way these representations changed and reflected social and personal concerns during a period of accelerating globalization.

Word and Image in Japanese Cinema examines the complex relationship between the temporal order of linguistic narrative and the spatiality of visual spectacle, a dynamic that has played an important role in much of Japanese film.

In A Hundred Years of Japanese Films, Richie offers an insider's look at the achievements of Japanese filmmakers. He begins in the late 1800s, when the industry took its inspiration from the traditional stories of Kabuki and Noh theater, and finishes in the present with the latest award-winning dramas showcased at Cannes. In between, Richie explores the roots of Japan's contribution to world cinema. He discusses the careers of Japan's rising stars and celebrated directors, and also offers a fascinating view of the strategies and politics of the movie studios themselves.

Tracing the development of the Japanese cinema from 1896 (when the first Kinetoscope was imported) through the golden ages of film in Japan up to today (1980s), this work reveals the once flourishing film industry and the continuing unique art of the Japanese film.

Until 1951, when Kurosawa's Rashomon won the Golden Lion award for best film at the Venice Film Festival, Japanese cinema was isolated from world distribution and the international discourse on film. After this historic event, however, Japanese cinema could no longer be ignored. In "Time Frames," Scott Nygren explores how Japanese film criticism and history has been written both within and beyond Japan, before and after Rashomon.