What Is Japanese Cinema?

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 597-621
Author(s):  
Rea Amit
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
New Media ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
World War ◽  
National Cinema ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Japanese Cinema ◽  
National Characteristics ◽  
Japanese Art

Imamura Taihei (1911–86) is considered by many to be the first film theorist in Japan, and he is known chiefly for his two grand theories on documentary film and animation. Yet, at the same time, Imamura also developed a third, no less ambitious theory, that of “Cinema and Japanese Art,” in which he specified the national characteristics of Japanese cinema. This essay concentrates on this third and less studied thesis. Although the argument Imamura puts forth in the thesis is elusive, aspects in it enable an interpretation of Japanese cinema along lines of phenomenological critical theory. From this perspective, it appears that Imamura establishes a theorization of national cinema that is predicated not on film as a product, or ontological aspects of what films project, but rather on the phenomenology of the film-watching experience. In effect, the thesis thus defines Japanese cinema not as the total sum of films produced in Japan, or by Japanese filmmakers, but as a shared watching experience of films regardless of their country of origin. Measuring Imamura’s thesis against other theories of Japanese national cinema that were published around the same time, during World War II, the essay argues that his theorization is in fact flexible enough to withstand more recent critique leveled against the notion of national cinema, and even allows radical new ways of thinking about national cinema in the contemporary moment of a new media environment and increasing transnational cultural flows.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Lekan
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young People ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Television Program ◽  
World War ◽  
The Core ◽  
Wildlife Control ◽  
Academy Award ◽  
Independence Era

This chapter introduces readers to Bernhard Grzimek, the “animal whisperer” who created Germany’s longest-running television program (A Place for Animals, 1956–1987), won an Academy Award for his documentary film Serengeti Shall Not Die, and sensitized a generation of young people to the power of ecological lobbying. Having rebuilt the Frankfurt Zoo and saving its remaining animals from the rubble of World War II, Grzimek transferred the idea of a permanent sanctuary for animals and from human violence to the Serengeti, the site of the earth’s last great animal migrations. It then examines the core chapters’ theme: the mismatch between this conservation quest and land rights struggles during the independence era. Grzimek raised funds, brokered diplomatic favors, and promised thousands of animal-loving tourists to save this “gigantic zoo” from human encroachment. A grand mission to be sure—but one that feared Africans’ own ideas about wildlife control and sidestepped their aspirations for environmental sovereignty.

Making Icons

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Coates
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Pacific War ◽  
World War ◽  
Peak Period ◽  
Japanese Cinema ◽  
The Media ◽  
Rigorous Study ◽  
Post War

A distinctive feature of post-war Japanese cinema is the frequent recurrence of imagistic and narrative tropes and formulaic characterizations in female representations. These repetitions are important, Jennifer Coates asserts, because sentiments and behaviours forbidden during the war and post-war social and political changes were often articulated by or through the female image. Moving across major character types, from mothers to daughters, and schoolteachers to streetwalkers, Making Icons studies the role of the media in shaping the attitudes of the general public. Japanese cinema after defeat in the Asia Pacific War and World War II is shown to be an important ground where social experiences were explored, reworked, and eventually accepted or rejected by audiences emotionally invested in these repetitive materials. An examination of 600 films produced and distributed between 1945 and 1964, as well as numerous Japanese-language sources, forms the basis of this rigorous study. Making Icons draws on an art-historical iconographic analysis to explain how viewers derive meanings from images during this peak period of film production and attendance in Japan.

scholarly journals Doing Occidentalism in contemporary Japan: Nation anthropomorphism and sexualized parody in Axis Powers Hetalia

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toshio Miyake
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
South Korea ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
National Characteristics ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cross

Axis Powers Hetalia (2006–present), a Japanese gag comic and animation series, depicts relations between nations personified as cute boys against a background of World War I and World War II. The stereotypical rendering of national characteristics as well as the reduction of historically charged issues into amusing quarrels between nice-looking but incompetent boys was immensely popular, especially among female audiences in Japan and Asia, and among Euro-American manga, anime, and cosplay fans, but it also met with vehement criticism. Netizens from South Korea, for example, considered the Korean character insulting and in early 2009 mounted a protest campaign that was discussed in the Korean national assembly. Hetalia's controversial success relies to a great extent on the inventive conflation of male-oriented otaku fantasies about nations, weapons, and concepts represented as cute little girls, and of female-oriented yaoi parodies of male-male intimacy between powerful "white" characters and more passive Japanese ones. This investigation of the original Hetalia by male author Hidekaz Himaruya (b. 1985) and its many adaptations in female-oriented dōjinshi (fanzine) texts and conventions (between 2009 and 2011, Hetalia was by far the most adapted work) refers to notions of interrelationality, intersectionality, and positionality in order to address hegemonic representations of "the West," the orientalized "Rest" of the world, and "Japan" in the cross-gendered and sexually parodied mediascape of Japanese transnational subcultures.

“Godzilla versus Kurosawa: Presentation and Interpretation of Japanese Cinema in the Post World War II United States”

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-437
Author(s):  
Meghan Warner Mettler
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Nuclear Testing ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Japanese Cinema ◽  
Foreign Culture ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Translation Techniques

This tale of two movies contrasts American reception of the most famous Japanese movies of the 1950s: Kurosawa Akira’s Rashomon (1951) and Honda Ishiro’s Gojira/Godzilla (1956). The former played in art houses and critics lauded it; the latter ran mostly at drive-ins, and reviewers dismissed it as trash cinema. While the films may have differed somewhat before they left Japan, the huge gulf in their perceived value was due to the decisions of American producers, in terms of venue as well as translation techniques. But while Godzilla won little respect upon its U.S. release, this may have been a fortunate circumstance in the long run. The image Rashomon offered of Japan reinforced U.S. foreign policy goals at the time, presenting Japan as a cultured and non-threatening ally. Gojira, in contrast, offered a sharp critique of U.S. nuclear testing. Producers’ refusal to preserve the movie in a pristine state and their attempts to disguise its foreign origins neutralized any potential threat to the U.S.-Japan diplomatic alliance. Moreover, treating Rashomon as an artifact from a foreign culture removed it from the tastes and habits of most middlebrow Americans, whereas Godzilla was able to storm into U.S. popular culture eventually to become a transnational icon.

“Imaging the Mind”

2018 ◽  
pp. 9-47
Author(s):  
Noah Tsika
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Psychiatric Treatment ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Psychiatry ◽  
Signal Corps ◽  
Cultural Visibility ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Military ◽  
Industrial State

Focusing on World War II and its immediate aftermath, this chapter offers a genealogy of a particular documentary tendency, one tied to the concurrent rise of military psychiatry and of the military-industrial state. As the psychiatric treatment of combat-traumatized soldiers gained greater institutional and cultural visibility, so did particular techniques associated with—but scarcely limited to—documentary film. This chapter looks at some of the subjectivities—some of the “private visions” and “careerist goals”—of military psychiatrists and other psychological experts whose influence is abundantly evident in a range of “documentary endeavors,” including those carried out (often simultaneously) by Hollywood studios and various military filmmaking outfits, from the Signal Corps Photographic Center to the Training Films and Motion Picture Branch of the Bureau of Aeronautics.

scholarly journals A cerimônia do chá como fator de identidade cultural para imigrantes japoneses e seus descendentes no Brasil

1969 ◽  
pp. 39-48
Author(s):  
Cristina Moreira da Rocha
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Traditional Culture ◽  
The Other ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
World War ◽  
Japanese Art ◽  
Brazilian History ◽  
Brazilian Culture ◽  
Tea Ceremony

This article makes use of a traditional Japanese art, tea ceremony, to examine the attitudes of immigrants who have to face cultural assimilation. In order to do that the author draws a parallel between Brazilian history after World War II and the behavior of immigrants and their descendants since then. Issei (first generation) and (second generation) led different ways since the end of the war. Enjoying a more economically stable situation, and having nowhere to go back to (since Japan had lost the war), the issei went back to their roots and started learning tea ceremony. On the other hand, the nissei needed to assimilate the Brazilian culture if they were to ascend economically and socially. However, since the 80’s Japan has played a central role in the world’s economy and politics. Therefore, there is a new interest in its traditional culture. The research revealed that, presently, not only are nissei and sansei (third generation) willing to learn tea ceremony, but also Brazilians who are non-Japanese descendants.

scholarly journals In Anticipation of Esthetic Revolution: Western Fiction and Documentary Film of 1940-1945

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-53
Author(s):  
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Utilov ◽  
VladimirAlexandrovich Utilov
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
World War ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Propaganda Films

The article reveals the processes in Western cinema during World War II and tells about the creation of educational and propaganda films which were made by famous directors for quite pragmatic purposes but in the end led to the appearance of new forms and new esthetics.

scholarly journals “Never in my life have I heard such a load of absolute nonsense. Wtf.” Political satire on the handling of the COVID-19 crisis

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 767-788
Author(s):  
Douglas M. Ponton
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
New Media ◽  
Political Satire ◽  
World War ◽  
Linguistic Pragmatics ◽  
Emotional Dimension ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Mixed Approach ◽  
Online Sources

This paper problematises political satire in a time when the COVID-19 virus has provoked numerous deaths worldwide, and had dramatic effects on social behaviour, on a scale unknown in western nations since World War II. Most populations have endured lockdown, periods of enforced domestic imprisonment, which led to images of the empty streets of big cities appearing in media, symbols of the drastic changes that the health emergency was making necessary. Yet, from the outset, comic memes began to circulate across (social) media, while in mainstream print media political satirists continued to lampoon official responses to the ongoing crisis. The paper thus aims to explore the connection of political satire and humour, asking two principle research questions: firstly, how to explain the humorous effects of these multimodal artefacts in such depressing circumstances; secondly, from a pragmatic perspective, to account for their overall socio-political function.The study uses memes taken from various online sources (Facebook, Twitter, Google) during the crisis, analysed according to a mixed approach that blends notions from Humour studies, especially incongruity (Morreall 2016), with insights from linguistic pragmatics (e.g. Kecskes 2014). The findings emphasise the emotional dimension of this form of satire, as the memes work against the backdrop of a range of feelings (anger, bitterness, disappointment, frustration, despair, etc.), many of which have been widely generated by the COVID-19 crisis and political responses to it. In short, to paraphrase Walter Benjamin (2008: 378), man may run out of tears but not of laughter. The findings contribute to our understanding of online satire as an emergent genre, one that uses the affordances of new media to extend the social potentialities of a traditional subversive discourse form.

The Frankfurt Discussion

2020 ◽  
pp. 115-142
Author(s):  
Mikko Immanen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
World War ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
Diminished Capacity ◽  
The World ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
The University

This chapter recalls Theodor W. Adorno and Martin Heidegger's reputation as archenemies because of their political antagonism and Adorno's unanswered polemics against Heidegger after World War II. It examines Adorno and Heidegger's emphasis on the philosophical significance of art and their concern over the allegedly diminished capacity of moderns to experience the world beyond the technical domination of nature. It also investigates the role played by Heidegger in the emergence of Adorno's critical theory between the publication of Being and Time in 1927 and Heidegger's Nazi turn in 1933. The chapter reconstructs the Frankfurt discussion between Adorno and his Heideggerian opponents in the University of Frankfurt from 1929 to 1933. It elaborates that Frankfurt discussion was a debate over the significance of Heidegger's revolutionary philosophy and its implicit diagnosis of the crisis of modernity.

Yasujiro Ozu

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisuke Miyao
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
World War ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
Japanese Cinema ◽  
Japanese Film ◽  
The Status ◽  
D 12 ◽  
Film Style

Yasujiro Ozu (b. 12 December 1903–d. 12 December 1963) was a Japanese film director. Growing up as a film fan in the modernizing city of Tokyo, Ozu made his directorial debut at Shochiku Company’s Kamata Studio in 1927 with a silent jidai geki (period drama) film, Sword of Penitence (Zange no yaiba). After that Ozu became specialized in gendai geki (contemporary drama) and initiated a genre shoshimin geki (lower-middle-class salarymen films) with such films as Tokyo Chorus (Tokyo no korasu, 1931) and I Was Born, But . . . (Otona no miru ehon: Umarete wa mita keredo, 1932). Many of his post–World War II films, including Late Spring (Banshun, 1949); Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari, 1953), the film that was voted the greatest film of all time in 2012 Sight and Sound Poll; and the last film An Autumn Afternoon (Sanma no aji, 1962), depicted everyday Japanese urban life, family matters (marriage, funeral, and dissolution), and relationships between generations. He directed fifty-three films by 1962. Ozu has been the object of critical attention by critics and scholars since the time when he was still working. In Japan, the status of Ozu as a foremost director of Japanese cinema was first established in the early 1930s. Early celebrations of Ozu emphasized his realism in faithfully depicting the reality of modern life in Japan. Critics regarded Ozu’s realism as a mode of social criticism. Later, especially after World War II, the primary focus of realism in Ozu criticism shifted to life’s vicissitudes and to a broader idea of humanism. This postwar critical tendency appeared to influence early scholarship on Ozu outside of Japan from the late 1950s the early 1970s, including the work by Donald Richie, which humanistically celebrated Ozu as an auteur. Then, it was Ozu’s unique film style, including the so-called pillow shots (spatially and temporally ambiguous shots that open scenes) and the use of 360-degree space that deviated from the narrational economy of Hollywood’s continuity editing, that made him a central figure during the period that saw the institutionalization of film studies in Euro-American academia in the late 1970s and 1980s. In the formation of the new academic discipline, emphasis was initially placed on formalism and Marxism. Thus, Ozu’s work served as a suitable example in demonstrating both the universal (“a humanist auteur”) and the particular (“a challenger to Hollywood”). Since then, a number of scholars and critics have studied the films of Ozu from various theoretical and historical standpoints.

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