What Is Japanese Cinema?

A compact, breezy, and stimulating summary of Japanese film history. . . . Yomota's book offers something largely absent from English-language writing about Japanese cinema: a Japanese perspective. -- Kazu Watanabe * Film Comment * A deft and engaging history of Japanese film. -- Roger Pulvers * Japan Times * An excellent history of Japanese film. Invaluable...Highly recommended. * Choice * No living scholar-critic of Japanese movies possesses Yomota Inuhiko's encyclopedic range and sheer passion for film. What Is Japanese Cinema? is a tour de force of filmic history: a concise and spirited account of how Japanese film came to be, illuminating carryovers from native theatrical traditions and the tensions lining the political history of modern East Asia. That Japanese cinema has all along been local, andin its imperial ambitions, aesthetic power, or moral forceglobal in its reach, is a matter that this insightful book brings remarkably to light. -- Paul Anderer, author of <i>Kurosawa's Rashomon: A Vanished City, a Lost Brother, and the Voice Inside His Iconic Films</i> A famously rambunctious critic, Inuhiko Yomota proves to be an even better pedagogue. He deftly organizes Japans kaleidoscopic genres and film fashions into a totality you can grasp. Auteurs and stars sparkle above an omnivorous industry that metabolized traditional theater, popular manga, and Hollywood techniques into unmistakably Japanese forms. A swift, truly satisfying summary, What Is Japanese Cinema? is also just as vibrant and searching as its title, because its author is clearly in the thrall of his marvelous subject. -- Dudley Andrew, Yale University What Is Japanese Cinema? goes beyond the auteurist criticism that tells a history of cinema as a compilation of masterpieces. Instead, the work locates cinema in the specific contexts of cultural history as well as technological history. Yomota Inuhiko's knowledge of and attentiveness to film theories and histories is incredible. -- Daisuke Miyao, University of California, San Diego

Yomota Inuhiko is an acclaimed Japanese essayist, cultural critic, and poet, the author of dozens of books on a wide range of subjects. He taught film studies and comparative literature at Meiji Gakuin University. Philip Kaffen is an assistant professor in the Department of Languages and Culture Studies at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

Note on Names and Film Titles Preface to the English Translation Introduction 1. Motion Pictures: 18961918 2. The Rise of Silent Film: 19171930 3. The First Golden Age: 19271940 4. Japanese Cinema During Wartime 5. Film Production in the Colonies and Occupied Lands 6. Japanese Cinema Under American Occupation: 19451952 7. Toward a Second Golden Age: 19521960 8. Upheaval Amidst Steady Decline: 19611970 9. Decline and Torpor: 19711980 10. The Collapse of the Studio System: 19811990 11. The Indies Start to Flourish: 19912000 12. Within a Production Bubble: 20012011 Notes Index