Edinburgh University Press, 2008. — 232 p. — ISBN10: 0748624759; ISBN13: 978-0748624751. This book is a major historical and cultural overview of an increasingly popular genre. Starting with the cultural phenomenon of Godzilla, it explores the evolution of Japanese horror from the 1950s through to contemporary classics of Japanese horror cinema such as Ringu and Ju-On: The...
University of Hawaii Press, 2008. — 216 p. — ISBN10: 0824831632, ISBN13: 9780824831639. Film played a crucial part in the promotion and expansion of the Japanese empire in Asia from the first motion picture screening in Japan in 1896 right through the end of the Pacifi c War in 1945. We do not usually associate Japan’s fi lm industry with either imperialism or the domination of...
British Film Institute & Princeton University Press, 1988. — 406 p. Over the last two decades, Yasujiro Ozu has won international recognition as a major filmmaker. Combining biographical information with discussions of the films' aesthetic strategies and cultural significance, David Bordwell questions the popular image of Ozu as the traditional Japanese artisan and examines the...
I.B.Tauris, 2005. — 320 p. — ISBN10: 1845110862 / ISBN13: 978-1845110864. Review ""Legends have a basis in both a perceived 'virtual' reality and in a 'true life' reality. Chris D.'s book shows both sides, which is essential in understanding how filmmaking legends are born."" -- Takashi Miike (director of such films as ""Ichi, Dead or Alive"" and ""Audition"". Chris D. is...
Cambridge University Press, 1997. — 173 p. Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953) is generally regarded as one of the finest films ever made. Universal in its appeal, it is also considered to be 'particularly Japanese'. Exploring its universality and cultural specificity, this collection of specially commissioned essays demonstrates the multiple planes on which the film may be...
Columbia University Press, 2019. — 248 p. — ISBN10: 0231191626, 13 978-0231191623. What might Godzilla and Kurosawa have in common? What, if anything, links Ozu's sparse portraits of domestic life and the colorful worlds of anime? In What Is Japanese Cinema? Yomota Inuhiko provides a concise and lively history of Japanese film that shows how cinema tells the story of Japan's...
Stone Bridge Press, 2008. — 432 p. This important work fills the need for a reasonably priced yet comprehensive volume on major directors in the history of Japanese film. With clear insight and without academic jargon, Jacoby examines the works of over 150 filmmakers to uncover what makes their films worth watching. Included are artistic profiles of everyone from Yutaka Abe to...
Routledge, 2010. — 240 p. Over the last 20 years, ethnic minority groups have been increasingly featured in Japanese Films. However, the way these groups are presented has not been a subject of investigation. This study examines the representation of so-called Others – foreigners, ethnic minorities, and Okinawans – in Japanese cinema. By combining textual and contextual...
Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2008. — 232 p. — ISBN10: 9042023317; ISBN13: 978-9042023314. Over the last two decades, Japanese filmmakers have produced some of the most important and innovative works of cinematic horror. At once visually arresting, philosophically complex, and politically charged, films by directors like Tsukamoto Shinya (Tetsuo: The Iron Man [1988] and Tetsuo...
FAB Press, 2004. — 304 p. — ISBN: 9781903254417. Fully-revised and updated edition of the best-selling guide to Japan’s most prolific and successful film director. This second edition of Agitator features * a new and expanded 16-page color section * completely updated DVD information * several brand-new reviews of Takashi Miike films including Audition, Dead or Alive, Ichi the...
Oxford University Press, 2014. — 497 p. The reality of transnational innovation and dissemination of new technologies, including digital media, has yet to make a dent in the deep-seated culturalism that insists on reinscribing a divide between the West and Japan. The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema aims to counter this trend toward dichotomizing the West and Japan and to...
Duke University Press Books, 2013. — 400 p. In this revealing study, Daisuke Miyao explores "the aesthetics of shadow" in Japanese cinema in the first half of the twentieth century. This term, coined by the production designer Yoshino Nobutaka, refers to the perception that shadows add depth and mystery. Miyao analyzes how this notion became naturalized as the representation of...
CRC Press, 2018. — 186 p. — ISBN13: 978-1-1385-7128-0 Through the analysis of the work of the main Japanese animators starting from the pioneers of 1917, the book will overview the whole history of Japanese animated film, including the latest tendencies and the experimental movies. In addition to some of the most acclaimed directors Miyazaki Hayao, Takahata Isao, Shinkai...
University of Minnesota Press, 2007. - 297 p. 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...
Routledge, 2007. — 384 p. — ISBN10: 0415328489;ISBN13: 978-0415328487 Japanese Cinema includes twenty-four chapters on key films of Japanese cinema, from the silent era to the present day, providing a comprehensive introduction to Japanese cinema history and Japanese culture and society. Studying a range of important films, from Late Spring, Seven Samurai and In the Realm of...
Princeton University Press, 1991. — 344 p. With a career stretching from the chaos of war-torn Japan to the current power and prosperity of his country, the great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa has been internationally acclaimed as a giant of world cinema. Rashomon , which won both the Venice Film Festival's grand prize and an Academy Award for best foreign-language...
Wallflower Press, 2013. - 120 p. The Cinema of Takeshi Kitano: Flowering Blood is a detailed aesthetic, Deleuzian, and phenomenological exploration of Japan's finest currently-working film director, performer, and celebrity. The volume uniquely explores Kitano's oeuvre through the tropes of stillness and movement, becoming animal, melancholy and loss, intensity, schizophrenia,...
Kodansha International, 2005. - 317 p. The authoritative guide to Japanese film, completely revised and updated. A Hundred Years of Japanese Film by Donald Richie, the foremost Western expert on Japanese film, gives us an incisive, detailed, and fully illustrated history of the country's cinema. Called "the dean of Japan's arts critics" by Time magazine, Richie takes us from...
Oxford University Press, 1990. - 99 p. The Japanese cinema is one of the major national cinemas and commands the attention of world audiences. Yet there is much in the Japanese film that Western audiences, unfamiliar with the Japanese cultural tradition, may fail to appreciate, and may even misinterpret. This succinct introduction, illustrated with stills from representative...
English. — New York: Doubleday & Company, 1971. — 261 p. This book makes Japanes movies accessible to Western audiences. It is a succinct history of Japanese film through 1970 as well as an exploration of Japanese culture. The book is comprehensive and discusses both well-known classics and popular films. The author does a good job of establishing the historical basis for the...
McFarland, 2007. — 265 p. — ISBN: 0786431369, 978-0786431366 This study examines the history of the Japanese period film and proposes that a powerful relationship exists between the past and present in Japan's narrative tradition. The first section of the book analyzes the form and function of the Japanese period film, describing the unique iconography and characteristics of...
University of Hawaii Press, 2008. — 185 p. Nippon Modern is the first intensive study of Japanese cinema in the 1920s and 1930s, a period in which the country's film industry was at its most prolific and a time when cinema played a singular role in shaping Japanese modernity. During the interwar period, the signs of modernity were ubiquitous in Japan's urban architecture,...
Miami, Florida: Vital Books, 1998. — 639 p. — (Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia). — ISBN: 978-1-8892-8852-9 Reviews Japanese pink films, a unique genre that may be Japan's most important contribution to world cinema. Focus is on movies from major studios and distributors over the past four decades. Many of these films realistically portray S&M sex, rape, and violence, yet are...
London: Reaktion Books, 2014. - 207 p. “Most directors have one film for which they are known or possibly two,” said Francis Ford Coppola. “Akira Kurosawa has eight or nine.” Through masterpieces such as „Kagemusha“, „Seven Samurai“, and „High and Low“, Akira Kurosawa (1910–98) influenced directors from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to Martin Scorsese, and his...
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