Cinema of Discontent

Tomoyuki Sasaki is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at the College of William & Mary. He is the author of Japan's Postwar Military and Civil Society: Contesting a Better Life.

"Using film texts drawn from the 1950s to the 1970s, Sasaki brilliantly and insightfully deconstructs the myth of Japan's postwar 'economic miracle,' recognizing the (inevitably) uneven growth along with the heterogeneity of experiences generated by high-speed economic expansion. He writes from the perspective of an insider, a kind of historico-anthropologist of the anthropocene, and under his magnanimous microscope we feel for the characters in these films and come to know their context—perhaps better than any work on Japanese cinema I have read. I feel like I learn something—about cinema, economics, and culture—on almost every page." — David Desser

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Narrating High-Speed Growth through Film1. Drifting in Tokyo: Reconstruction and Uneven Development in Kawashima Yūzō's Susaki Paradise Red Light (1956) 2. A Girl from Izu: Labor Migration and Modern Subjectivity in Masumura Yasuzō's Blue-Sky Girl(1957) 3. Osaka, City of Spies: The Powerless Worker in Industrial Society in Inoue Akira's Black Weapon (1964) 4. Yokohama Romance: The Cold War, Revolution, and Asian Solidarity in Ezaki Mio's A Warm Misty Night (1967) 5. Waiting for Spring in Shiretoko: A Postscript to High-Speed Growth in Kumashiro Tatsumi's The Light of Africa (1975)CodaNotesBibliographyFilmographyIndex