Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925
Japan has done marvelous things with cinema, giving the world the likes of Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Ozu. But cinema did not arrive in Japan fully formed at the end of the nineteenth century, nor was it simply adopted into an ages-old culture. Aaron Gerow explores the processes by which film was defined, transformed, and adapted during its first three decades in Japan. He focuses in particular on how one trend in criticism, the Pure Film Movement, changed not only the way films were made, but also how they were conceived. Looking closely at the work of critics, theorists, intellectuals, benshi artists, educators, police, and censors, Gerow finds that this trend established a way of thinking about cinema that would reign in Japan for much of the twentieth century.
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Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925
Japan has done marvelous things with cinema, giving the world the likes of Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Ozu. But cinema did not arrive in Japan fully formed at the end of the nineteenth century, nor was it simply adopted into an ages-old culture. Aaron Gerow explores the processes by which film was defined, transformed, and adapted during its first three decades in Japan. He focuses in particular on how one trend in criticism, the Pure Film Movement, changed not only the way films were made, but also how they were conceived. Looking closely at the work of critics, theorists, intellectuals, benshi artists, educators, police, and censors, Gerow finds that this trend established a way of thinking about cinema that would reign in Japan for much of the twentieth century.
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Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925

Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925

by Aaron Gerow
Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925
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Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925

Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895-1925

by Aaron Gerow

Overview

Japan has done marvelous things with cinema, giving the world the likes of Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Ozu. But cinema did not arrive in Japan fully formed at the end of the nineteenth century, nor was it simply adopted into an ages-old culture. Aaron Gerow explores the processes by which film was defined, transformed, and adapted during its first three decades in Japan. He focuses in particular on how one trend in criticism, the Pure Film Movement, changed not only the way films were made, but also how they were conceived. Looking closely at the work of critics, theorists, intellectuals, benshi artists, educators, police, and censors, Gerow finds that this trend established a way of thinking about cinema that would reign in Japan for much of the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780520256729
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication date: 05/14/2010
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 344
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Aaron Gerow is Associate Professor of Japanese Cinema in the Film Studies Program and East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University. He is the author of Kitano Takeshi, A Page of Madness: Cinema and Modernity in 1920s Japan, and Reference Guide to Japanese Film Studies, coauthored with Abé Mark Nornes.

Table of Contents

Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Motion Pictures as a Problem
2. Gonda Yasunosuke and the Promise of Film Study
3. Studying the Pure Film
4. The Subject of the Text: Benshi, Authors, and Industry
5. Managing the Internal

Conclusion: Mixture, Hegemony, and Resistance

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The author offers not just a history of early Japanese cinema but also a history of Japanese film studies that describes the struggles to define cinema, control spectatorship, and articulate modernity."—Choice

"Remarkable for it breadth and precision."—Sight & Sound Magazine

"The book has a wealth of information."—Akirakurosawa.info

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