Course Proposal Details for - Contemporary Japanese Cinema (Course code not assigned)
School
School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Course Description
This course will explore Japanese contemporary film in the context of sociopolitical change since the bursting of the 1980s economic bubble.
Attention will be paid to locating cinema within the debate on the many social
issues to have emerged since 1989, including but not limited to: Japanese national
identity, migration and multiculturalism, economic restructuring, tradition and
aesthetics, consumption and the virtual, minorities and youth culture.
Therefore, as well as developing a critical appreciation of contemporary Japanese
cinema, the course acts as an approach to thinking about more general issues
facing Japanese contemporary society. As such, students will be expected to draw
upon the wide literature in English on both Japanese cinema and contemporary
Japanese society, and demonstrate this knowledge through discussion, debate,
presentations and written work.
Normal Year Taken
Year 4 Undergraduate
Course Level (PG/UG)
UG
Visiting Student
Availability
Not available to visiting students
SCQF Credits
20
Credit Level (SCQF)
SCQF Level 10
Home Subject Area
Asian Studies
Other Subject Area
Course Organiser
Christopher Perkins
Course Secretary
David Horn
% not taught by this
institution
0
Collaboration
Information (School /
Institution)
Total contact teaching
hours
Any costs to be met by
LLC BoS 18 January 2012
22
students
Pre-requisites
There are no specific pre-requisites although some knowledge of Japanese
language will be useful.
Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations
Visting Student Prerequisites
Keywords
Japan Cinema Contemporary Theory
Fee Code (if invoiced at
course level)
Proposer
Christopher Perkins
Default Mode of Study
Classes & Assessment excl. centrally arranged exam
Default delivery period
Semester 1
Marking Scheme to be
employed
Common Marking Scheme - UG Honours Grade Only
Taught in Gaidhlig?
No
Course Type
Standard
Summary of Intended
Learning Outcomes/L01
Students who have completed this course successfully will have:
Watched, analysed and discussed a range of key films representative of
contemporary Japanese cinema
Reviewed theoretical approaches to reading and interpreting film
Acquired knowledge of social issues in contemporary Japanese society
Presented a critical reading of one or more films that deal with a particular social
theme in Japan
Produced rigorously researched and theoretically informed written work in the
form of a 3,500 word essay
Learning Outcome 2
Students who have completed this course successfully will be able to:
Critically analyse contemporary Japanese Cinema and apply this knowledge
elsewhere
Identify key directors, their works and stylistic approach
Identify themes in contemporary Japanese cinema and relate them to ‘real world’
social issues.
Critically integrate contemporary Japanese film into discourses on the postmodern / late modern condition.
LLC BoS 18 January 2012
Apply different theoretical perspectives to reading Japanese film
Engage in informed debate over major issues in contemporary Japanese society
Learning Outcome 3
Learning Outcome 4
Learning Outcome 5
Special Arrangements
Components of
Assessment
1 x 3,500 word essay (85%)
1 x Presentation Project (15%)
Exam Information
Syllabus
Week
Week
Week
Week
Week
Week
Week
Week
Week
Week
Week
1 - Introduction: Texts and Contexts
2 - The Wild Child (1)
3 - The Wild Child (2)
4 - Gender: Violence and Masculinities
5 - Gender: Women, commodities and the gaze
6 - The Family (1)
7 - The Family (2)
8 - Horror (1)
9 - Horror (2)
10 - Anime, Technology and the end of the world
11 - Japan in the eyes of the West.
Academic Description
This course will explore Japanese contemporary film in the context of sociopolitical change since the bursting of the 1980s economic bubble.
Attention will be paid to locating cinema within the debate on the many social
issues to have emerged since 1989, including but not limited to: Japanese national
identity, migration and multiculturalism, economic restructuring, tradition and
aesthetics, consumption and the virtual, minorities and youth culture.
Therefore, as well as developing a critical appreciation of contemporary Japanese
cinema, the course acts as an approach to thinking about more general issues
facing Japanese contemporary society. As such, students will be expected to draw
upon the wide literature in English on both Japanese cinema and contemporary
Japanese society, and demonstrate this knowledge through discussion, debate,
presentations and written work.
Study Pattern
Transferable Skills
Analytical skills
Essay writing
Presentation skills
Group work and debate
Study Abroad
None
LLC BoS 18 January 2012
Reading Lists
Abe, C. 2004. Beat Takeshi Vs. Takeshi Kitano, New York: Kaya Press.
Arai, A. G. 2000. ‘The Wild Child of 1990s Japan’, The South Atlantic Quarterly,
Vol. 99 (4): 841 – 863.
Balmain, C. 2008. Introduction to Japanese Horror Film, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Barrett, G. 1989. Archetypes in Japanese Film: the socio-political and religious
significance of the principal heroes and heroines, Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna
University Press.
Best, S. 1991. Postmodern Theory: critical interrogations, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Bolton, C., Csicsery-Ronay, I. and Tatsumi, T. eds. 2007. Robot Ghosts and Wired
Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from Origins to Anime, London: University of
Minnesota Press.
Broderick, M. 1996. Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image
in Japan, London: Kegan Paul International.
Brown, S. T. ed. 2006. Cinema Anime: Critical Engagements with Japanese
Animation, New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Cazadyn, E. 2003. The Flash of Capital: Film and Geopolitics in Japan, Durham:
Duke University Press.
Craig, T. J. ed. Ed. 2000. Japan Pop!: Instide the World of Japanese Popular
Culture, New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Chris D. 2005. Outlaw Masters of Japanese Film, London: IB Tauris.
Davis, D. 1996. Picturing Japaneseness: monumental style, national identity,
Japanese film, New York: Columbia University Press.
Desser,D. 1988. Eros plus Massacre: an introduction to Japanese New Wave
cinema, Bloomington and Indianapolis Indiana University Press.
Eagleton, T. 2003. After Theory, London: Allen Lane, the Penguin Press.
Eagleton, T. 1997. The Illusions of Postmodernism, Oxford: Blackwell.
Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self Identity, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Featherstone, M. 1991. Consumer culture and postmodernism, London: SAGE
Publications.
Iida, Y. 2000. ‘Between the Technique of Living an Endless Routine and the
Madness of Absolute Degree Zero: Japanese Identity and the Crisis of Modernity in
the 1990s’, positions, Vol. 8 (2): pp.
Iles, T. 2008. The Crisis of Identity in Contemporary Japanese Film: personal,
cultural, national, Leiden: Brill.
Iles, T. 2007. ‘Families, fathers, film: Changing images from Japanese Cinema’.
[Online]. Accessed 9th March 2011 from:
http://www.dijtokyo.org/doc/JS19_Iles.pdf
Iles, T. 2005. ‘The Problem of Identity in Contemporary Japanese Horror Films’,
ejcjs, Discussion Paper 4. [Online]. Accessed 9th March 2011 from:
http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/discussionpapers/2005/Iles2.html
Ivy, M. 1995. Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity Phantasm Japan, Chicago:
Chicago University Press.
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Jameson, F. 1991. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,
London: Verso. (An extract can be found here:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm)
Ko, M. 2009. Japanese Cinema and Otherness: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and
the Problem of Japanessness, London: Routledge.
Ko, M. 2004. ‘The Break-up of the national body: cosmetic multiculturalism and
films of Miike Takashi,’ New Cinemas, Vol. 2(1): 29 – 39.
McDonald, K. 2006. Reading a Japanese Film: Cinema in Context, Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i Press.
McGuigan, J. 2006. Modernity and Postmodern Culture, 2nd Edition, Maidenhead:
Open University Press.
MacWilliams, M. ed. 2008. Japanese Visual Culture: explorations in the world of
manga and anime, New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Mes, T. and Sharp, J. 2004. The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film,
Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press.
Mes. T. 2003. Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike, London: FAB Press.
Miyoshi, M. and Harootunian, H. D. eds. 1989. Postmodernism and Japan, Durham:
Duke University Press.
McRoy, J. 2008. Nightmare Japan: contemporary Japanese Horror Film,
Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Napier, S. J. 2005. Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle: Experiencing
Contemporary Japanese Animation, New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Napier, S. J. 1993. ‘Panic Sites: The Japanese Imagination of Disaster from
Godzilla to Akira’, Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 19 (2): 327 – 351.
Nelson, J. K. 2000. Enduring Identities: The Guise of Shinto in Contemporary
Japan, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Nornes, A. M. and Gerow, A. 2009. Research Guide to Japanese Film Studies,
Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan.
Nygren, S. 2007. Time Frames: Japanese Cinema and the Unfolding of History,
London: Minnesota Press.
Philips, A. and Stringer, J. eds. 2007. Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts,
London: Routledge.
Rose, G. 2001. Visual Methodologies: an introduction to the interpretation of
visual materials, London: SAGE Publications.
Richie, D. 1971. Japanese Cinema: Film Style and National Character, New York:
Anchor Books.
Richie, D. 2005. A Hundred Years of Japanese Film, London: Kodansha
International.
Shilling, M. 1999. Contemporary Japanese Film, New York: Weatherhill.
Shuk-Ting Yau, K. ‘Imagining Others: A Study of the “Asia” Presented in Japanese
Cinema’, in D. M. Nault, ed. Development in Asia: interdisciplinary, postneoliberal and transnational perspectives, Boca Raton: BrownWalker Press.
Smith, A. 2000. ‘Images of the Nation: Cinema, Art and National Identity,’ in M.
Hjort and S. MacKenzie, eds. Cinema and Nation, London: Routledge.
LLC BoS 18 January 2012
Sontag, S. 193. ‘Against Interpretation’, in A Susan Sontag Reader, New York:
Vintage Books.
Standish, I. 2006. A New History of Japanese Cinema, London: Continuum.
Standish, I. 2000. Myth and Masculinity in the Japanese Cinema: towards a
political reading of the ‘Tragic Hero’, Richmond: Routledge/Curzon.
Standish, I. 1998. ‘Akira: Postmodernism and Resistance’, in D.P. Martinez, ed.
The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender Shifting Boundaries and Global
Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vlastos, S. 1998. ‘Tradition: Past/Present Culture and Modern Japanese History’,
in S. Vlastos, ed. Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan,
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Useful websites:
Midnight Eye: http://www.midnighteye.com/
Japanese Directors: http://www.japanesedirectors.com/
LLC BoS 18 January 2012