Visions of Japanese Modernity
by Aaron Gerow
Publisher Comments " Visions of Japanese Modernity is the single best account of the formation of Japanese cinema. Deftly drawing on film discourses, regulations, and exhibition practices, it brilliantly brings into focus one of the most exuberant and contested moments in the history of cinema. It not only sets new standards for film history but also plants the seeds for a counterhistory to cinema as such."and#151;Thomas LaMarre, author of The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation"In this landmark study, Aaron Gerow richly demonstrates the vibrancy of Japanese film culture as no book has done before. Visions of Japanese Modernity is centered on the contentious Pure Film Movement, and the transformations it helped provoke in performance, screenwriting, censorship, film style, and benshi oratory. With virtually no extant films to work with, Gerow strategically turns to a multitude of other sources, including fanzines, popular movie magazines, sociological studies, government regulations, and impressive works of early film theory. Rich in detail and lucidly argued, Visions of Modernity provides a model for writing about filmmaking in its social, political and aesthetic contexts."and#151;Aband#233; Mark Nornes, author of Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema "Gerow offers not only a benchmark in the study of Japanese cinema, but a major contribution to world film history; a thoroughly researched and complexly argued 'discursive' history of early Japanese cinema, that avoids approaching it simply as an alternative to western cinema and reveals the unique role cinema played in the formulation of modern Japanese culture. Gerow makes clear the foundations of Japanese film history in the silent eraand#151;and how it shaped the complex and exciting national cinema that followed."and#151;Tom Gunning, author of D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film
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Kitano Takeshi
by Aaron Gerow
Publisher Comments Explores the issues of auteurship and stardom in the films of Kitano Takeshi especially as they relate to problems of personal and national identity in a Japan confronting an age of globalization. This book relates the director to issues of contemporary cinema, Japanese national identity, and globalism.
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The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema
by Daisuke Miyao
Publisher Comments
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, even in realms of technological activity that are quite evidently dispersed across cultures. Film and media studies are not immune to this trend. They continue to fret over the "Westernness" of film technologies vis-
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Culture of Japanese Fascism
by Alan Tansman
Publisher Comments This bold collection of essays demonstrates the necessity of understanding fascism in cultural terms rather than only or even primarily in terms of political structures and events. Contributors from history, literature, film, art history, and anthropology describe a culture of fascism in Japan in the decades preceding the end of the Asia-Pacific War. In so doing, they challenge past scholarship, which has generally rejected descriptions of pre-1945 Japan as fascist. The contributors explain how a fascist ideology was diffused throughout Japanese culture via literature, popular culture, film, design, and everyday discourse. Alan Tansmanandrsquo;s introduction places the essays in historical context and situates them in relation to previous scholarly inquiries into the existence of fascism in Japan. Several contributors examine how fascism was understood in the 1930s by, for example, influential theorists, an antifascist literary group, and leading intellectuals responding to capitalist modernization. Others explore the idea that fascismandrsquo;s solution to alienation and exploitation lay in efforts to beautify work, the workplace, and everyday life. Still others analyze the realization of and limits to fascist aesthetics in film, memorial design, architecture, animal imagery, a military museum, and a national exposition. Contributors also assess both manifestations of and resistance to fascist ideology in the work of renowned authors including the Nobel-prize-winning novelist and short-story writer Kawabata Yasunari and the mystery writers Edogawa Ranpo and Hamao Shirand#333;. In the work of these final two, the tropes of sexual perversity and paranoia open a new perspective on fascist culture. This volume makes Japanese fascism available as a critical point of comparison for scholars of fascism worldwide. The concluding essay models such work by comparing Spanish and Japanese fascisms. Contributors. Noriko Aso, Michael Baskett, Kim Brandt, Nina Cornyetz, Kevin M. Doak, James Dorsey, Aaron Gerow, Harry Harootunian, Marilyn Ivy, Angus Lockyer, Jim Reichert, Jonathan Reynolds, Ellen Schattschneider, Aaron Skabelund, Akiko Takenaka, Alan Tansman, Richard Torrance, Keith Vincent, Alejandro Yarza
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Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society
by Victoria Bestor
Synopsis The Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society is an interdisciplinary resource that focuses on contemporary Japan and the social and cultural trends that are important at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This Handbook provides a cutting-edge and comprehensive survey of significant phenomena, institutions, and directions in Japan today, on issues ranging from gender and family, the environment, race and ethnicity, and urban life, to popular culture and electronic media. Written by an international team of Japan experts, the chapters included in the volume form an accessible and fascinating insight into Japanese culture and society. As such, the Handbook will be an invaluable reference tool for anyone interested in all things Japanese. Students, teachers and professionals alike will benefit from the broad ranging discussions, useful links to online resources and suggested reading lists. The Handbook will be of interest across a wide range of disciplines including Japanese Studies, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Sociology and Asian Studies in general.
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The International Film Musical
by Creekmur, Corey K.
Publisher Comments
This is the first comparative consideration of the musical's role within national cinema traditions. While the musical is one cinema's few genuinely international genres, it has often functioned as an explicitly local or national form, drawing upon distinct traditions understood as 'native' rather than 'international'. Simultaneously, musicals from around the world have often imitated Hollywood models, resulting in their easy dismissal as culturally 'impure' and demonstrating the creative and ideological tension between promoting and abandoning traditional cultural forms and styles. This productive tension between local and global elements lies at the heart of international film musicals, which typically acknowledge the dominant Hollywood model while claiming their own cultural specificity.
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Censoring History: Perspectives on Nationalism and War in the Twentieth Century
by Laura E. Hein and Mark Selden
Synopsis
Considering the great influence textbooks have as interpreters of history, politics and culture to future generations of citizens, it is no surprise that they generate considerable controversy. Focusing largely on textbook treatment of lingering - and sometimes explosive - tensions originating in World War II, Censoring History addresses issues of textbook nationalism in historical and comparative perspective. Discussions include Japan's Comfort Women and the Nanjing Massacre; Nazi genocide against the Jews, Gypsies, Catholics and others; Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Indochina wars. The essays address controversies over textbook content around the globe: How and why do specific representations of war evolve? What are the international and national forces affecting how textbook writers, publishers and state censors depict the past? How do these forces differ from country to country? Other comparative essays analyze nationalist and war controversies in German, US and Chinese textbook debates.
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In Godzilla's Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage
by William M Tsutsui, Michiko Ito
Publisher Comments These essays consider the Godzilla films and how they were shaped (by and in turn shaped) postwar Japanese culture, as well as the globalization of Japanese pop culture icons in the wake of the Godzilla phenomenon. They fall within a wide range of disciplines: film studies, anthropology, history, literature, theater, and cultural studies. Contributors include Susan Napier, Anne Allison, Christine Yano, and others.
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