By studying Japanese films and their associated literature, Tamae K. Prindle reveals the covert stories of Japanese women versus orthodox history. Fifteen films bring this theme into focus. Imamura Shohei's The Ballad of Narayama , Naruse Mikio's Mother, Idemitsu Mako's Great Mother , Kinugasa Teinousuke's Gate of Hell , Kurosawa Akira's No Regrets for Our Youth , Kuwabata Kagenobu's Love and Lie , Toyoda Shiro's The Mistress , Kumai Kei's Sandakan Brothel 8, Takahashi Banmei's Le Nouveau Monde Amoureux, Nishikawa Katsumi's A Dancing Girl in Izu , Obayashi Nobuhiko's Chizuko's Younger Sister , Ichikawa Jun's Tsugumi , Mizoguchi Kenji's Life of Oharu, Itami Juzo's Tampopo , and Ishikawa Jun's Grass Fish on a Tree. "Mother," "Wife," "Whore," "Girl" and "Woman," represent categories the public used to code Japanese women in the pre-feminist age. Each chapter features three films depicting women in the premodern age, in the World War II period, and in late twentieth century Japan, and each embraces the three films within the perspective of ecological feminism, sexuality, alienation, illusion, and power-over/power-to. Shedding light on cultural, historical, and/or ideological backgrounds of the films under study in important new ways, this book breaks new ground in the study of women in Japanese culture. Book jacket.

By studying Japanese films and their associated literature, Tamae K. Prindle reveals the covert stories of Japanese women versus orthodox history. Fifteen films bring this theme into focus. "Mother," "Wife," "Prostitute," "Girl," and "Woman," represent categories the public used to code Japanese women in the pre-feminist age. Each chapter features three films depicting women in the premodern age, in the World War II period, and in late twentieth-century Japan, and each embraces the three films within the perspective of ecological feminism, sexuality, alienation, illusion, and power-over/power-to. Shedding light on cultural, historical and/or ideological backgrounds of the films under study in important new ways, this book breaks new ground in the study of women in Japanese culture.--Adapted from page 4 of cover.

One of the most prolific and respected directors of Japanese cinema, Naruse Mikio (1905–69) made eighty-nine films between 1930 and 1967. Little, however, has been written about Naruse in English, and much of the writing about him in Japanese has not been translated into English. With The Cinema of Naruse Mikio, Catherine Russell brings deserved critical attention to this under-appreciated director. Besides illuminating Naruse’s contributions to Japanese and world cinema, Russell’s in-depth study of the director sheds new light on the Japanese film industry between the 1930s and the 1960s. Naruse was a studio-based director, a company man renowned for bringing films in on budget and on time. During his long career, he directed movies in different styles of melodrama while displaying a remarkable continuity of tone. His films were based on a variety of Japanese literary sources and original scripts; almost all of them were set in contemporary Japan. Many were “women’s films.” They had female protagonists, and they depicted women’s passions, disappointments, routines, and living conditions. While neither Naruse or his audiences identified themselves as “feminist,” his films repeatedly foreground, if not challenge, the rigid gender norms of Japanese society. Given the complex historical and critical issues surrounding Naruse’s cinema, a comprehensive study of the director demands an innovative and interdisciplinary approach. Russell draws on the critical reception of Naruse in Japan in addition to the cultural theories of Harry Harootunian, Miriam Hansen, and Walter Benjamin. She shows that Naruse’s movies were key texts of Japanese modernity, both in the ways that they portrayed the changing roles of Japanese women in the public sphere and in their depiction of an urban, industrialized, mass-media-saturated society.

This book provides a multifaceted single-volume account of Japanese cinema. It addresses productive debates about what Japanese cinema is, where Japanese cinema is, as well as what and where Japanese cinema studies is, at the so-called period of crisis of national boundary under globalization and the so-called period of crisis of cinema under digitalization.

The Japanese Cinema Book provides a new and comprehensive survey of one of the world's most fascinating and widely admired filmmaking regions. In terms of its historical coverage, broad thematic approach and the significant international range of its authors, it is the largest and most wide-ranging publication of its kind to date. Ranging from renowned directors such as Akira Kurosawa to neglected popular genres such as the film musical and encompassing topics such as ecology, spectatorship, home-movies, colonial history and relations with Hollywood and Europe, The Japanese Cinema Book presents a set of new, and often surprising, perspectives on Japanese film. With its plural range of interdisciplinary perspectives based on the expertise of established and emerging scholars and critics, The Japanese Cinema Book provides a groundbreaking picture of the different ways in which Japanese cinema may be understood as a local, regional, national, transnational and global phenomenon. The book's innovative structure combines general surveys of a particular historical topic or critical approach with various micro-level case studies. It argues there is no single fixed Japanese cinema, but instead a fluid and varied field of Japanese filmmaking cultures that continue to exist in a dynamic relationship with other cinemas, media and regions. The Japanese Cinema Book is divided into seven inter-related sections: · Theories and Approaches · * Institutions and Industry · * Film Style · * Genre · * Times and Spaces of Representation · * Social Contexts · * Flows and Interactions

Since the death of his wife seven years ago, documentary maker Aoyama has not dated anyone else. Now even his teenage son, Shige, thinks that he should remarry and his best friend Yoshikawa comes up with a plan: to hold fake film auditions from which, he can choose a new bride. Of the thousands who apply, it is a beautiful ballerina, Yamasaki Asami, who captivates Aoyama. Infatuated by her fragile nature and nervous smile, he ignores his increasing sense of unease, putting aside his doubts about his new love, until it may be too late... In Audition, Ryu Murakami delivers his most subtly disturbing novel yet, confirming him as Japan's master of the psycho-thriller.