The Midnight Eye Guide To New Japanese Film

Thanks to directors such as Kitano, Miike and Miyazaki, Japanese cinema has recently undergone something of a resurgence. This title profiles the work of these established film-makers, as well as looking at the creations of new, up-and-coming directors.

The cinema of Japan predates that of Russia, China, and India, and it has been able to sustain itself without outside assistance for over a century. Japanese cinema's long history of production and considerable output has seen films made in a variety of genres, including melodramas, romances, gangster movies, samurai movies, musicals, horror films, and monster films. It has also produced some of the most famous names in the history of cinema: Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Beat Takeshi, Toshirô Mifune, Godzilla, The Ring, Akira, Rashomon, and Seven Samurai. The Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema is an introduction to and overview of the long history of Japanese cinema. It aims to provide an entry point for those with little or no familiarity with the subject, while it is organized so that scholars in the field will also be able to use it to find specific information. This is done through a detailed chronology, an introductory essay, and appendixes of films, film studios, directors, and performers. The cross-referenced dictionary entries cover key films, genres, studios, directors, performers, and other individuals. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Japanese cinema.

This comprehensive look at Japanese cinema in the 1990s includes nearly four hundred reviews of individual films and a dozen interviews and profiles of leading directors and producers. Interpretive essays provide an overview of some of the key issues and themes of the decade, and provide background and context for the treatment of individual films and artists. In Mark Schilling's view, Japanese film is presently in a period of creative ferment, with a lively independent sector challenging the conventions of the industry mainstream. Younger filmmakers are rejecting the stale formulas that have long characterized major studio releases, reaching out to new influences from other media—television, comics, music videos, and even computer games—and from both the West and other Asian cultures. In the process they are creating fresh and exciting films that range from the meditative to the manic, offering hope that Japanese film will not only survive but thrive as it enters the new millennium.

"In this volume, expert Tom Mes takes us through the extraordinary career of this Japanese actess, whose commanding screen presence and piercing gaze defined an entire age of Japanese cinema from the 1960s onwards. From her early years in the wildly popular films of the Nikkatsu studio to career-defining roles in Lady Snowblood and Female Prisoner Scorpion, Tom als explores Kaji's many collaborations with master film-makers such as Kinji Fukasaku and Kon Ichikawa and delves into her twilight reign on the television screens of Japan, as well as spolighting Meiko Kaji the singer. Unchained Melody profiles her collaborating directors and looks at the varied cinematic tastes of Japanese film audiences over a period of several decades, providing an intriguing snapshot not only iinto Meiko Kaji's career and the film industry of the time, but also of Japanese culture itself"--Page 4 of cover.

An encyclopedia of Japanese animation and comics made since 1917.

Re-Agitator. collects more than ten years' worth of Tom Mes' writing on respected Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike. From dusty film sets in Japan to festival intrigue on the Riviera, and from the straight-to-video ghetto to the stage, Mes covers the full scope of this unclassifiable filmmaker's life and work - with the kind of detail and intimacy that only an insider can provide. This luxurious coffee-table hardback also contains previously unpublished material and explores the background and development of the Japanese film industry over the past 20 years.

While most people associate Japanese film with modern directors like Akira Kurosawa, Japan's cinema has a rich tradition going back to the silent era. Japan's "pure film movement" of the 1910s is widely held to mark the birth of film theory as we know it and is a touchstone for historians of early cinema. Yet this work has been difficult to access because so few prints have been preserved. Joanne Bernardi offers the first book-length study of this important era, recovering a body of lost film and establishing its significance in the development of Japanese cinema. Building on a wealth of original-language sources-much of it translated here for the first time-she examines how the movement challenged the industry's dependence on pre-existing stage repertories, preference for lecturers of intertitles, and the use of female impersonators. Bernardi provides in-depth analysis of key scripts-The Glory of Life, A Father's Tears, Amateur Club, and The Lust of the White Serpent-and includes translations in an appendix. These films offer case studies for understanding the craft of screenwriting during the silent era and shed light on such issues as genre, authorship and control, and gender representation. Writing in Light helps fill important gaps in the history of Japanese silent cinema. By identifying points at which "pure film" discourse merges with changing international trends and attitudes toward film, it offers an important resource for film, literary, and cultural historians.

Takes the reader on a wild joy ride deep into the hinterlands of Japanese culture, society and radical politics by way of the weird and wonderful world of the country's distinctive sex film movements. Focusing on one of the most notorious secrets of Japanese filmmaking, the erotic Pink Film (or pinku eiga) genre, Behind the Pink Curtain features numerous interviews with leading figures in the field and offers an exhaustive, yet colourful, trawl through Japan's most vibrant and prolific film sector.

The Paths of Zatoichi charts the history and influence of the Japanese film and television franchise about Zatoichi the blind swordsman. The franchise is comprised of 29 films and 100 TV episodes (starring the famous Shintaro Katsu, who starred in 26 of the 29 feature films). They all follow the adventures of a blind masseur in medieval Japan, who wanders from village to village and often has to defend himself with his deadly sword skills. The first film was released in 1962 and the most recent in 2010. These dates demonstrate how the franchise can be used as a means of charting Japanese cinema history, via the shifts in production practices and audience preferences which affected the Zatoichi series and numerous other film and TV texts. Zatoichi signifies a huge area of Japanese film history which has largely been ignored in much existing scholarly research, and yet it can reveal much about the appeal of long-running characters, franchises, and their constant adaptation and influence within global popular culture.

Japanese film director Seijun Suzuki began his career making increasingly outrageous B movies for Nikkatsu Studios in the 1950s and 1960s (he was eventually fired for his stylistic excesses). More than 10 years later, he reinvented himself as an independent filmmaker with a uniquely eccentric vision. He remains a cult figure outside of Japan and his influence can be seen in the work of directors as diverse as Jim Jarmusch, Baz Luhrmann, and Quentin Tarantino. This study aims to enhance the appreciation of his films by analysing them in light of the cultural and political turmoil of post-WWII Japan and the aesthetic traditions that inform them.