Japanese Identities and Cinema: Some Guiding Questions and Resources
Ted Hovet, Western Kentucky University
PART I: BACKGROUND
A) Key Terms: What Japanese Words are Frequently Used
in Discussions of Japanese Cinema?
Some Japanese terms, like anime, samurai, and yakuza, are commonly used in
English language discussions of Japanese films. Others are more specialized to the history
and criticism of Japanese cinema.
The distinction between gendaigeki and jidaigeki films is of particular interest. At
one point after the great Kanto earthquake of 1923, all movie production in Kyoto focused on
the production of historical jidaigeki films, while studios in Tokyo made contemporary
gendaigeki. This split illustrates one of the fundamental tensions in Japanese cinema, that
between fascination with the past (almost all jidaigeki were set in the Edo period of 16151868, before Japan fully opened itself up to Western influence) and a careful scrutiny of the
present.
Terms: (definitions below adapted from Richie, 296-98).
Anime: General term for Japanese animated films with a futuristic setting or theme.
Benshi or Katsuben: A narrator who explained/commented on (and/or performed
dialogue during) screenings of films in Japan; active until the 1930s.
Bungei-eiga: Film based on a “literary” novel
Chambara: The sword fights in plays or film; later a term for any samurai film.
Eiga: Film, cinema.
Gendaigeki: Term to describe films set in the present or about contemporary life.
Jidaigeki: Originally a used to describe films based on Kabuki drama, eventually a term
for any period film.
Keiko-eiga: Films with overt, usually leftist, political aims; “tendency films.”
Oyama: Male actors who play female roles; used in film into the 1920s.
Ronin: Masterless samurai; popular heroes of Jidaigeki films
Shomingeki: Films, usually in a serio-comic vein, about the salaried class.
Yakuza: Generic term for gangsters; popular film genre especially in 1970s & 1980s.
B) History: What genres, periods, themes and figures have
shaped cinema in Japan?
Dividing up the history of Japanese cinema into distinct periods or genres is, like any
such endeavor, rather arbitrary. Important directors like Mizoguchi and Ozu worked
across several of these periods. Trends in one period invariably overlap with (and
influence) others. Some individual films can be placed in multiple genres. Even the
seemingly clear split between jidaigeki and gendaigeki becomes fuzzy when period films
take on obvious metaphorical references to contemporary issues and concerns—a
phenomenon dubbed as “gendaigeki with samurai topknots.” This term was coined in the
1920s, but is still applicable to recent films like The Twilight Samurai (2002).
Genres
The resources below offer introductions and approaches to some commonly identified
genres of Japanese cinema:
Samurai
Desser, David, “Toward a Structural Analysis of Postwar Samurai Films,” in Reframing
Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History, ed. Arthur Nolletti, Jr. and David Desser
(Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992).
Rucka, Nicholas “Samurai Cinema 101”
http://www.midnighteye.com/features/samurai_cinema_101.shtml
Yakuza
McDonald, Keiko Iwai, “The Yakuza Film: An Introduction,” in Reframing Japanese
Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History, ed. Arthur Nolletti, Jr. and David Desser
(Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992).
Schilling, Mark The Yakuza Movie Book: A Guide to Japanese Gangster Films, Stone
Bridge Press.
Anime
Clements, Jonathan and Helen McCarthy, The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese
Animation since 1917, Stone Bridge Press, 2001.
Drazen, Patrick, Anime Explosion! The What? Why? Wow! Of Japanese Animation
Stone Bridge Press.
Napier, Susan J. Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononke (Palgrave, 2001).
Comedy
Barrett, Gregory, “Comic Targets and Comic Styles: An Introduction to Japanese Film
Comedy,” in Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History, ed. Arthur
Nolletti, Jr. and David Desser (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992).
Documentary
Nornes, Abe Mark, Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era Through Hiroshima,
(Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 2003).
New Wave
Desser, David, Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema
(Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988).
In terms of periods, three chronological eras in the first half-century of Japanese cinema
stand out:
 During the period from the introduction of cinema in 1896 to the introduction
of sound technology around 1930, Japanese cinema may have been at its most
distinct from other national models of cinema with its borrowings from
traditional Japanese drama and its use of the benshi. However, films from
France, Germany, and the U.S. also exerted influence on Japanese filmmakers
and audiences during this era.
 The 1930s saw the emergence of prominent figures like Ozu and Mizoguchi,
many scholars have designated the decade as the first “Golden Age” of
Japanese cinema. At this time Japan produced more films than any country
outside of the U.S. Of course the cinema of this period did not escape the
increasingly martial atmosphere that pervaded Japanese society during the
start of the Pacific War.
 As with most countries involved in the conflict, direct government control of
the film industry during World War II (by its own government) and in its
immediate aftermath (by the American occupying forces) colored the
production of all movies in Japan.
The sources below help to reveal the trends and tensions in each of these three periods.
Early and Silent Cinema
Komatsu, Hiroshi, “Some Characteristics of Japanese Cinema Before World War I,” in
Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History, ed. Arthur Nolletti, Jr. and
David Desser (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992).
Komatsu, Hiroshi, “Japan—Before the Great Kanto Earthquake,” in The Oxford History
of World Cinema, ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (Oxford UP 1996), 177.
Komatsu, Hiroshi and Frances Loden, “Mastering the Mute Image: The Role of the
Benshi in Japanese Cinema,” Iris 22 (Autumn, 1996).
“Masterpieces of Japanese Silent Cinema” (review of DVD-ROM)
http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/31/japanesesilent.html
Sharp, Jasper and Mike Arnold “Forgotten Fragments: An Introduction to Japanese Silent
Cinema,” http://www.midnighteye.com/features/silentfilm_pt2.shtml
Shunsui, Matsuda, The Benshi: Japanese Silent Film Narrators, Urban Connections
1930s/“Prewar”
Davis, D. William. “Back to Japan: Militarism and Monumentalism in Prewar Japanese
Cinema,” Wide Angle: A Film Quarterly of Theory, Criticism, and Practice, 11 (3): 1625.
Gerow, Aaron, “The Word Before the Image: Criticism, the Screenplay, and the
Regulation of Meaning in Prewar Japanese Film Culture,” in Dennis Washburn and
Carole Cavanaugh, eds., Word and Image in Japanese Cinema (Cambridge UP, 2001).
Iwamoto, Kenji, “Sound in the Early Japanese Talkies,” Reframing Japanese Cinema:
Authorship, Genre, History, ed. Arthur Nolletti, Jr. and David Desser (Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 1992).
Kirihara, Donald, Patterns of Time: Mizoguchi and the 1930s (Madison: U of Wisconsin
P, 1992).
Spalding, Lisa, “Period Films in the Prewar Era,” in Reframing Japanese Cinema:
Authorship, Genre, History, ed. Arthur Nolletti, Jr. and David Desser (Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 1992).
Wada-Marciano, Mitsuyo, “The Production of Modernity In Japanese National Cinema:
Shochiku Kamata Style in the 1920s and 1930s” Asian Cinema Vol. 9, No. 2, Spring
1998.
World War II and its Aftermath
Abe, Mark Nomes and Fukushima Yukio, The Japan/America Film Wars: WWII
Propaganda and its Cultural Constructs (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic
Publishers, 1974).
Desser, David, “From the Opium War to the Pacific War: Japanese Propaganda Films of
World War II,” Film History 7.1 (1995).
Hirano, Kyoko. Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Cinema Under the American Occupation,
1945-1952 (Washington: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1992).
Hauser, William B., Fires on the Plain: The Human Cost of the Pacific War,” in
Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History, ed. Arthur Nolletti, Jr. and
David Desser (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992).
Masters, Patricia Lee. “Warring Bodies: Most Nationalistic Selves,” in Wimal
Dissanayake, ed. Colonialism and Nationalism in Asian Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana
UP, 1994).
Morimoto, Marie Thorsten, “The ‘Peace Dividend’ in Japanese Cinema: Metaphors of a
Demilitarized Nation,” in Wimal Dissanayake, ed. Colonialism and Nationalism in Asian
Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994).
Shapiro, Jerome, “1945 to 2001: Japan’s Atomic Bomb Cinema,” in Atomic Bomb
Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2002).
Post-1951
Another date that serves as a key marker in the study of Japanese cinema is 1951, when
Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon won several international awards. In something of a
reversal of Perry’s black ships forcing Japan to open to the West almost 100 years earlier,
the success of Rashomon opened up the world to Japanese movies. Since then Japan has
been a major force in world cinema—almost certainly the most internationally influential
non-Western film industry.
At this point, scholars around the world began to investigate Japanese cinema, attempting
to define its qualities and to explore its distinction from other cinemas. Rather than
organizing the post-1951 era around chronological periods, I have done so by some broad
themes and issues that have interested scholars and historians of Japanese film. I have
also included resources that examine pre-1951 cinema in ways that relate to these larger
themes.
C) The Form and Style of Japanese Film: What formal or narrative devices (if any)
are characteristic of Japanese cinema as distinct from other cinemas?
A common distinction made between Japanese and Western (especially Hollywood)
cinema has been that Japanese cinema is more presentational than representational. That
is, Japanese films are less concerned with displaying reality (representation) than with
nurturing particular styles that present a story or theme in more symbolic or indirect
ways. This division is explored in depth in Burch and in Richie. As both of these authors
note, this is a problematic division (for instance the representation of reality in cinema is
itself a highly manipulated style). A strong summary and critique of Burch’s view can be
found in Yoshimoto, especially the opening chapter “Japanese Cinema in Search of a
Discipline.”
Resources
Bordwell, David, “A Cinema of Flourishes: Japanese Decorative Classicism of the
Prewar Era,” in Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History, ed. Arthur
Nolletti, Jr. and David Desser (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992).
Burch, Noel, To The Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema
(Berkeley: U of California P, 1973).
Freiberg, Freda, “Japanese cinema,” in John Hill, and Pamela Church Gibson, eds. World
Cinema: Critical Approaches. New York: Oxford U P, 2000.
Grindon. Leger, “In the Realm of the Censors: Cultural Boundaries and the Poetics of the
Forbidden,” in Dennis Washburn and Carole Cavanaugh, eds., Word and Image in
Japanese Cinema (Cambridge UP, 2001).
Richie, Donald, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (Tokyo: Kodansha International,
2001).
Schilling, Mark, Contemporary Japanese Film (New York: Weatherhill, 1999).
Stephens, Chuck “Japanese Cinema Now: A User's Guide,” Film Comment, Jan/Feb2002,
Vol. 38 Issue 1,
Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro, Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema (Durham: Duke
UP, 2000).
D) What elements of traditional Japanese arts have been especially influential in
Japanese cinema?
Is there even such a thing as “Japanese cinema”--that is, a cinema that exists only in/for
Japan and that can only be understood in a Japanese context? While some critics may
embrace the universal and humanistic elements of major Japanese films without taking
into account their cultural context, the answer to this is surely no (just as there is no one
“Hollywood cinema”); at best one might be able to identify multiple Japanese cinemas
with multiple influences.
All of the resources in section C address this issue to some extent, but the following look
in particular at elements of Japanese cinema that emerged not from western influence, but
traditional Japanese arts.
Anderson, J.L., “Spoken Silents in the Japanese Cinema; or, Talking to Pictures:
Essaying the Katsuben, Contextualizing the Texts,” in Reframing Japanese Cinema:
Authorship, Genre, History, ed. Arthur Nolletti, Jr. and David Desser (Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 1992).
Asanuma, Keiji, “A Theory of Cinema and Traditional Aesthetic Thought in Japan”
Iconics 16 (Spring 1993).
Bernardi, Joan, Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film
Movement (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2001).
McDonald, Keiko I., Japanese Classical Theater in Film, Associated University Presses,
1994.
Sato, Tadao, “Japanese Cinema and the Traditional Arts: Imagery, Technique, and
Cultural Context,” in Linda C. Ehrlic and David Desser, Cinematic Landscapes:
Observations on the Visual Arts and Cinema of China and Japan. Austin: U of Texas P,
1994.
PART II: IDENTITY
To what extent does cinema reflect contemporary Japanese identities in a
meaningful way and how? Further, can cinema, through the power of its images,
explicitly or subtly shape identity?
Just as there is no one “Japanese cinema,” there is no one “Japanese identity.” As the
titles of the resources below suggest, factors like race, region, gender, and national
history are among the factors that contribute to the projection of Japanese identities in
cinema.
Resources
Broderick, Mick, ed. Hibakusha cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Nuclear Image in
Japanese Film (New York: Kegan Paul International, 1996).
Davis, Darrell William, Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity,
Japanese Film (New York: Columbia UP, 1996).
Ehrich, Linda, “Internationalization and Orientalism in Japanese Cinema” Synthesis 2.1
(1995).
Gerow, Aaron, “From the national gaze to multiple gazes: representations of Okinawa in
recent Japanese cinema,” in Laura Hein and Mark Selden, eds. Islands of Discontent:
Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2003).
Hyland, Robert, “Hybridity in Contemporary Japanese Cinema: Heterogenity in a
Homogenous Society” Asian Cinema (Drexel Hill, PA) 13, no.2 (Fall-Win 2002).
Izbicki, Joanne, “The Shape of Freedom: The Female Body in Post-Surrender Japanese
Cinema” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 12 (1997).
Napier, Susan J., “The Frenzy of Metamorphosis: The Body in Japanese Pornographic
Animation,” in Dennis Washburn and Carole Cavanaugh, eds., Word and Image in
Japanese Cinema (Cambridge UP, 2001).
Raine, Michael, “Ishihara Yujiro: Youth, Celebrity and the Male Body in late 1950s
Japan,” in Dennis Washburn and Carole Cavanaugh, eds., Word and Image in Japanese
Cinema (Cambridge UP, 2001).
Wawrytko Sandra A., “The Murky Mirror: Women and Sexual Ethics as Reflected in J
apanese Cinema,” in: Fu, Charles Wei-hsun and Steven Heine, eds. Japan in Traditional
and Postmodern Perspectives (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
Yomota, Inuhiko. “Stranger Than Tokyo: Space and Race in Postnational Japanese
Cinema,” in Jenny Kwok Wah Lau, ed, Multiple Modernities: Cinema and Popular
Media in Transcultural East Asia (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2003).
Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro, “Melodrama, Postmodernism, and Japanese Cinema,” in Wimal
Dissanayake, ed. Melodrama and Asian Cinema (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1993).
PART III: TEACHING RESOURCES
For a list of specific films that take place in various periods of Japanese history, see
http://library.kcc.hawaii.edu/external/asdp/biblio/film/easian/japan/jpfilm.html
This site also includes a very useful list of distributors of these and other Japanese films.
Kinema Club, a website from Ohio State University devoted to the study of Japanese
Cinema, includes a link to teaching resources with sample syllabi and other materials:
http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html
Another website, Midnight Eye, includes up-to-date reviews of Japanese films, books on
Japanese cinema, and interviews with actors and directors. The “features” link includes
good introductory essays on several major figures and trends in Japanese cinema:
http://www.midnighteye.com/index.php
Gamm, Kate. Teaching World Cinema (Berkeley: U of California P, 2004).
McDonald, Keiko I. “Teaching Japan Through Cinema” Asian Cinema
Vol. 11 No, 1, Spring/Summer 2000.