Melissa Croteau - Böcker

This book explores significant representations of Shinto and Buddhist sacred space, spiritual symbols, and religious concepts that are embedded in the secular framework of Japanese films aimed at general audiences in Japan and globally. These cinematic masterpieces by directors Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Makoto Shinkai operate as expressions of and, potentially, catalysts for transcendence of various kinds, particularly during the Heisei era (1989–2019), when Japan experienced severe economic hardship and devastating natural disasters. The book’s approach to aesthetics and religion employs the multifaceted concepts of ma (structuring intervals, liminal space-time), kū (emptiness, sky), mono no aware (compassionate sensibility, resigned sadness), and musubi (generative interconnection), examining the dynamic, evolving nature of these ancient principles that are at once spiritual, aesthetic, and philosophical. Scholars and enthusiasts of Japanese cinema (live action and anime), religion and film, cinematic aesthetics, and the relationship between East Asian religions and the arts will find fresh perspectives on these in this book, which moves beyond conventional notions of transcendental style and essentialized approaches to the multivalent richness of Japanese aesthetics.

This collection of essays examines the ways in which recent Shakespeare films portray anxieties about an impending global wasteland, technological alienation, spiritual destruction, and the effects of globalization. Films covered include Titus, William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, Almereyda's Hamlet, Revengers Tragedy, Twelfth Night, The Passion of the Christ, Radford's The Merchant of Venice, The Lion King, and Godard's King Lear, among others that directly adapt or reference Shakespeare. Essays chart the apocalyptic mise-en-scenes, disorienting imagery, and topsy-turvy plots of these films, using apocalypse as a theoretical and thematic lens.