1,720,976 research outputs found
The End of Japanese Cinema: Industrial Genres, National Times, and Media Ecologies by Alexander Zahlten
No full textThis year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of the book that still has to be considered the most, if not the only comprehensive history of Japanese cinema in the English language. While Japanese Film: Art and Industry (1959, co-authored by Joseph Anderson and Donald Richie, and slightly updated in its 1982 edition) was criticized for its auteurist and Cold War-era attitudes, its immense achievement and authoritative status is impossible to ignore. Its very existence seems to have effectively prevented any study of comparable scope from emerging, while the field of Japanese film studies itself has expanded considerably during the last few decades. This lasting anxiety of influence is visibly imprinted on Alexander Zahlten’s first monograph, The End of Japanese Cinema, both in its provocative title and in its book design that borrows from Anderson and Richie the intricate charts that delineate apprenticeship lineages and studio affiliations and blurs out all names, as if to suggest the need to eschew these industrial relations that have been hitherto considered an inextricable part of structuring Japanese film history
Rocking Under Orion’s Belt: The Rise and Fall of Seibu Kōdō as International Concert Venue
No full textAn edifice resembling a temple hall and located on the outskirts of the Kyoto University campus, Seibu Kōdō, rose to national prominence in the early 1970s as a hub for the city’s burgeoning performing arts and rock music scene. Its reputation and legend quickly grew after hosting the MOJO WEST series, inaugurated in 1971, that included concerts by iconic Japanese bands such as Flower Travellin’ Band, Murahachibu, and Zunō keisatsu. Towards the end of the decade, Seibu Kōdō began attracting international performers, spearheaded by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in 1976. However, an incident during a concert by The Police in 1980 led to a permanent suspension of welcoming foreign acts. This paper explores Seibu Kōdō’s formative years as a concert venue and the way its connections to the radical student movement, symbolised by the constellation of three red stars painted on its roof, informed its peculiar self-management model. This facilitated the venue’s use as a space for unrestricted artistic expression, but at the same time hindered its development beyond local significance
Tangible Images: Reading and Writing Classical Japanese Cinema
No full textJapanese cinema has commonly been studied through the contributions of major directors and actors, its various genres, and, more recently, by audience engagement. This monograph adopts an alternative viewpoint, focusing on the significant yet overlooked role of scriptwriters in the filmmaking process and in the popular imagination during the peak of the studio system between the 1930s and 1960s. Simultaneously, it examines the role and function of a new type of readership, equipped with specific intermedial skills, facilitated by the wide and continuous availability of film scenarios. The monograph is structured into three main parts. The first part provides an analysis of the evolution of the textual format of the Japanese film scenario, emphasising the transformative period that coincided with the advent of sound cinema and tracing the development of the standard master-scene script. It also outlines the field of scenario publishing and demonstrates how the serialisation of film scripts in various periodicals, and their subsequent anthologising, functioned as a site for canon formation. An examination of the standardised use of the manuscript paper (genkō yōshi) in scriptwriting traces the implications arising from its medium specificity as a hybrid modern writing device. The second part shifts the focus to the act of reading scripts and discusses the concerted efforts of the Shinario bungaku undō (Scenario Literature Movement) to establish the scenario as a distinct entity within the literary field. It delineates several topics that emerged in course of the debate, including the scenario’s autonomous status, its role in inviting new talent from outside the industry, and its archival capacity for film preservation. It also examines the unique faculties and skills required from readers of the scenario form, and discusses various examples and functions of readership, including film criticism by Itami Mansaku. The final part is dedicated to exploring the social and spatial conditions of scriptwriting. It highlights how the perceived critical status and privileged writing environment have projected a particular image of the writers and their creative processes. A discussion of the collaborative writing space, as exemplified by the jōyado (regular inn), is further complicated by the introduction of gender in scriptwriting and contributions of several female writers. Finally, an examination of script scouting practises that characterise Japanese scriptwriting, and Mizuki Yōko’s work in particular, addresses the extent of scriptwriter’s agency and authorial status. In conclusion, this book provides a multi-faceted exploration of the role of scriptwriters in Japanese cinema, highlighting their significant contributions and the complexities of their craft. As such, this study offers a fresh perspective on some of the reasons behind the international success of Japanese film since the 1950s, arguing for a more nuanced understanding that fully acknowledges the collaborative nature of filmmaking and the diversity of audience reception through cinema’s textual means
Christopher Bolton, Interpreting Anime; Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game Media
No full textIt is the year 2019 and we now live in the present of the cataclysmic event credited for first introducing the world beyond Japan to anime. I am of course talking about Akira (1988), the seminal feature-length animated film, which, as the author of one of the books reviewed here puts it, took its contemporary audiences by wonder and surprise. In a way, then, what was once part of a distant and imaginary future has somehow already become our present. And while now effectively caught up with this post-apocalyptic fantasy, there still appears to be an ongoing and unresolved battle about whether anime can be taken and discussed seriously. Scholarship is still striving to come to terms with what anime is or could be used for. Interpreting Anime by Christopher Bolton and The Anime Ecology by Thomas Lamarre aim to advance the subfield and surpass previous work; despite differences in purpose and scope, both treat anime seriously and often playfully too. Inasmuch as these efforts come from the two editors of the long-running Mechademia series (since 2006 also published by University of Minnesota Press, arguably the pioneer in the field of anime studies), the establishment of authority is also at stake here. Arguably, contrasting these two major contributions to anime scholarship will help elucidate their respective ambitions and achievements, insights and blind spots
Talamaika võltskatkendid
No full textA translation of Tanikawa Shuntarō's collection Forged Fragments of the Talamaika Trib
Kahtlased kujud öises rongis
No full textA translation of Tawada Yōko's novel Suspects on the Night Trai
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