The book approaches Japanese cinema as an industry closely modelled on Hollywood. The classical period refers to the years in which the studio system dominated all film production in Japan, from roughly 1930 to 1960. My approach to the most well known films of this period situates them within Japanese society and culture, the star system, the genre system and the film industry. While I am respectful and well-informed about the aesthetics and critical values of the canon, I am also critical of some of the ideological tendencies of this cinema, and my analyses tend to comment on class and gender dynamics. In this sense, this book is arguably a departure from the usual line of criticism on Japanese cinema. In my view Japanese Classical Cinema has had enormous influence on other Asian cinemas, especially in TV broadcast form, and it is important that the industrial production context be accounted for in discussions of the films.
This book collects eight DVD reviews that I have published in Cineaste since 2002, including one feature article on Kurosawa. I will add an introduction and five or six additional chapters, in consultation with an editor. In my Cineaste reviews of titles such as Tokyo Story, Ugetsu and Kurosawa’s films, my critical approach is to highlight the “everydayness” of Japanese studio-era cinema. The canon of great Japanese cinema has tended to be approached by Western and Japanese critics as an art cinema with auteurist, and at times, Orientalist, assumptions. This volume demystifies the films, while providing concise analyses of them.
Description
Catherine Russell’s highly accessible book approaches Japanese cinema as an industry closely modeled on Hollywood, focusing on the classical period – those years in which the studio system dominated all film production in Japan, from roughly 1930 to 1960.
Respectful and thoroughly informed about the aesthetics and critical values of the Japanese canon, Russell is also critical of some of its ideological tendencies, and her analyses provide new insights on class and gender dynamics. Russell locates Japanese cinema within a global system of reception, and she highlights the importance of the industrial production context of these films.
Including studies of landmark films by Ozu, Kurosawa and other directors, this book provides a perfect introduction to a crucial and often misunderstood area of Japanese cultural output. With a critical approach that highlights the “everydayness” of Japanese studio-era cinema, Catherine Russell demystifies the canon of great Japanese cinema, treating it with fewer auteurist and Orientalist assumptions than many other scholars and critics.
Table of Contents
1. The Classical, the Modern, and Japanese Cinema in the Global System
2. Yasujiro Ozu: A Short History of the Home Drama
3. Kenji Mizoguchi and his Women
4. Men with Swords and Men with Suits: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa
5. Mikio Naruse: A Japanese Woman’s Cinema
6. Remembering the War: Three Postwar War Films
Praise
Catherine Russell offers a refreshing reconsideration of classic works of Japanese Cinema from the 1930s to the 1950s. Arguing for a nuanced application of the concept of “modern classicism” and foregrounding the centrality of melodrama to the study of well-crafted, studio-era films by canonical filmmakers including Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kurosawa and Naruse, Classical Japanese Cinema Revisited moves elegantly between insightful reviews of individual films and a critical contextualization of the historical reception of these films in the West. Eminently readable and accessible, the book provides an excellent introduction to the golden era of Japanese cinema. –Yuriko Furuhata, Assistant Professor, Department of East Asian Studies, McGill University
“This book is not a history of Japanese cinema,” says Catherine Russell. But Russell is too modest. Classical Japanese Cinema Revisited is a concise but inspiring book that invites the readers into the rich history of Japanese cinema and Japanese film studies. Even though the major focus is on the films of the “big four” directors (Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, Naruse) and beyond (Ichikawa and Kobayashi), this book is not simply an auteurist study, either. Critically engaging with such prominent concepts in film scholarship as “classical cinema,” “vernacular modernism,” and “melodrama,” and recounting such areas of architecture, fashion, and urban space without restraint, Russell examines the tensions and contradictions of Japanese modernity displayed in these films. Classical Japanese Cinema Revisited will be a stylish companion when you watch DVDs of these filmmakers and a significant textbook for introductory courses on Japanese cinema. –Daisuke Miyao, Assistant Professor of Japanese Literature and Film at the University of Oregon, and author of Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom
Japanese Classical Cinema Revisited sends us back to a set of great films we have begun to take for granted. Catherine Russell’s guide to these classics offers provocative new routes we might take to re-visit this era of Japanese cinema. Rather than focus on a “classical style” that coheres around a set of conventions or ideological positions, Russell poses Japanese classical cinema as a stylish cinema of incomparable riches that served as a site for negotiating and exploring the massive transformations filmmakers and audiences experienced in the mid-20th century. –Abé Mark Nornes, Professor of Asian Cinema, University of Michigan; and author of Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema
