Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2019.1600699
M. Downing Roberts
ABSTRACT Over the past eight years, independent documentary filmmakers in Japan have produced over one hundred works concerning the 3/11 disaster in Tōhoku. Since the controversy over Mori Tatsuya's film 311, the issue of documentary ethics has loomed large in the discussion of these films. Specifically: how may we understand the filmmaker's social and ethical responsibility in documenting a disaster such as 3/11? Despite the importance of this sensitive issue for audiences, it has received little scholarly attention. In this article, I analyse three exemplary films which are directly concerned with 3/11: Ōmiya Kōichi’s The Sketch of Mujō, Fujiwara Toshi's No Man’s Zone, and Funahashi Atsushi's Nuclear Nation. While all three films focus on the survivors of the disaster, each takes a distinctive approach: Ōmiya reflects on the interplay between impermanence [mujō] and collective memory; Fujiwara queries our presuppositions and place as spectators of disaster; and Funahashi explores the system of power that maintains the nuclear village. I propose an axiographic analysis of these films as a contribution to our understanding of the disaster, shedding light on not only the ethical stance of the filmmakers, but also on the mechanisms of the larger, mass-mediated image regime in contemporary Japan.
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Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2019.1586068
Mio Hatokai
ABSTRACT The subject of this article, Tani Naomi, is one of the most famous stars of Roman Porno, appearing in 30 films in its heyday in the 1970s. Nicknamed the ‘Queen of SM’, she is still remembered for her performances in SM-mono, that is, SM-themed films. Academically, however, she has never received the attention she deserves. This article is arguably the first attempt to shed light on Tani as a unique star of Roman Porno. It first focuses on her early career development as she had been a prominent figure in pink films since the late 1960s with a strong connection to Japan’s underground SM circle. It then discusses her first two SM-mono in Roman Porno, namely, Flower and Snake and Wife to Be Sacrificed (both 1974), arguing that the screen persona she created through these two films constitute a substantial part of her star image. Close reading of both films and analysis of pink film/Roman Porno paratexts will give an account of how her star image as the ‘Queen of SM’ was constructed.
{"title":"The ‘Queen of SM’ is Born: the star image of Tani Naomi in Nikkatsu Roman Porno","authors":"Mio Hatokai","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2019.1586068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2019.1586068","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The subject of this article, Tani Naomi, is one of the most famous stars of Roman Porno, appearing in 30 films in its heyday in the 1970s. Nicknamed the ‘Queen of SM’, she is still remembered for her performances in SM-mono, that is, SM-themed films. Academically, however, she has never received the attention she deserves. This article is arguably the first attempt to shed light on Tani as a unique star of Roman Porno. It first focuses on her early career development as she had been a prominent figure in pink films since the late 1960s with a strong connection to Japan’s underground SM circle. It then discusses her first two SM-mono in Roman Porno, namely, Flower and Snake and Wife to Be Sacrificed (both 1974), arguing that the screen persona she created through these two films constitute a substantial part of her star image. Close reading of both films and analysis of pink film/Roman Porno paratexts will give an account of how her star image as the ‘Queen of SM’ was constructed.","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"11 1","pages":"14 - 32"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17564905.2019.1586068","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49080057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-09-19DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2018.1520781
C. Shin
ABSTRACT This article considers the South Korean auteur director Park Chan-wook’s latest film The Handmaiden, which is the film adaptation of British writer Sarah Waters’s third novel Fingersmith. Transporting the story of love and deception from Victorian England to 1930s Korea under Japanese colonial rule, the film offers a compelling case of transnational or cross-cultural adaptation. In the process of cultural relocation, the film gives prominence to the ethnic identities and hierarchies in colonial Korea, and in recounting the unfolding lesbian love story between a petty-thief-disguised-as-maid and a noble lady, the film provides a spectacular, visual ‘translation’ of the novel’s approach to the story of same-sex desire. Despite all the changes the film makes to the original novel, the author Waters claims that the film is ‘faithful’ to her work. Taking her comments as a framework, the article explores the ways in which the film carries over the transgressive allure of the original story, while addressing the issues of history and identity in another time and place.
{"title":"In another time and place: The Handmaiden as an adaptation","authors":"C. Shin","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2018.1520781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2018.1520781","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article considers the South Korean auteur director Park Chan-wook’s latest film The Handmaiden, which is the film adaptation of British writer Sarah Waters’s third novel Fingersmith. Transporting the story of love and deception from Victorian England to 1930s Korea under Japanese colonial rule, the film offers a compelling case of transnational or cross-cultural adaptation. In the process of cultural relocation, the film gives prominence to the ethnic identities and hierarchies in colonial Korea, and in recounting the unfolding lesbian love story between a petty-thief-disguised-as-maid and a noble lady, the film provides a spectacular, visual ‘translation’ of the novel’s approach to the story of same-sex desire. Despite all the changes the film makes to the original novel, the author Waters claims that the film is ‘faithful’ to her work. Taking her comments as a framework, the article explores the ways in which the film carries over the transgressive allure of the original story, while addressing the issues of history and identity in another time and place.","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"11 1","pages":"1 - 13"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17564905.2018.1520781","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43387366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2018.1518690
Steve Choe
The philosophical and theoretical approaches utilized toward understanding Korean cinema have developed rapidly in the past 10 years. We have seen scholarly writing take up discursive tools derived from psychoanalytic theory, critiques of ideology and neoliberalism, theories of globalization and transnationalism, affect theory, Deleuzian philosophy, the phenomenology of ethics, and posthuman critiques. While these and other philosophical tools roughly correspond to contemporaneous trends taking place more broadly in film and media theory, their deployment has been closely tied to the particular concerns of Korean cinema. Today the student of Korean film will discover a wide range of critical models for thinking about these concerns, a range that is reflected in the essays that have been published in the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema since its inception in 2007. In what follows, I would like to try and provide a rough overview of the critical trends that have helped us articulate the aesthetic and political aims of Korean cinema. Before we try and understand the past 10 years or so, it would be helpful to be reminded of some of the discourses deployed by scholars in the years leading up to 2007 so that we can make sense of how recent scholarship responds to them. The 1990s in Korean cinema cannot be separated from active measures taken by Kim Young-sam’s government to globalize and liberalize the national economy. American films flooded the local market and forced local production practices to adapt, particularly around approaches to funding and the relaxation of censorship. Meanwhile the rising importance of chaebol conglomerates in the 1980s provided opportunities for new forms of investment in film production, while the global spectacle of the Summer 1988 Olympics in Seoul seemed to inspire confidence that projects featuring local content could be fuelled by bigger budgets. Films such as Marriage Story (1992), Two Cops (1993), Sopyonje (1993), and Shiri (1999) did well at the box office and proved that this funding model could not only produce films in various genres, but also a return on investment. At the same time, other more challenging films began to address the question of historical trauma, inspiring scholars to take interest in this so-called New Wave in Korean cinema. Films such as Kuro Arirang (1989), Chilsu and Mansu (1988), and A Single Spark (1995) emerged as representatives of a new aesthetic of realism, particularly in the representation of the working class which is often disavowed by the commercial cinema. Psychoanalytic concepts such as mourning and melancholy quickly became important for explaining how these films disclose traumatic memory and reveal the fissures of national
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Pub Date : 2018-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2018.1513302
Shota Ogawa
{"title":"Zainichi cinema: Korean-in-Japan film culture","authors":"Shota Ogawa","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2018.1513302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2018.1513302","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"10 1","pages":"181 - 184"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17564905.2018.1513302","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48772602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2018.1517711
Junko Yamazaki
ABSTRACT Reflecting on the aftermath of WWII in the emerging Cold War context of Japan’s compromised sovereignty, members of the intellectual group Science of Thought (Shisō no kagaku) sought possibilities of ‘thought’ (shisō) in ‘the people’ and turned their attention to the production and reception of mass culture. Jidaigeki (Japanese period films) presented a unique challenge for envisioning postwar modernity and democracy in Japan. US Occupation censors and progressive Japanese critics alike regarded jidaigeki with suspicion, calling into question its relationship to the past. This paper focuses on the group’s founder Tsurumi Shunsuke’s review of 1952 jidaigeki The Mad Woman in Kimono (Furisode kyōjo) and examines his populist defense of jidaigeki. Born into one of Japan’s most politically and intellectually prominent families and educated in the philosophy department at Harvard, Tsurumi struggled to define the significance and political utility of jidaigeki by negotiating his own position in relation to not only ‘the people’, but also with regard to the compromised sovereignty of occupied and post-occupation Japan. By unpacking interrelated negotiations in Tsurumi’s review and the film itself, I argue for the utility of jidaigeki as an analytical lens through which we begin to understand the dynamic historicity of postwar Japanese cinema.
{"title":"Embedded film, embodied reception: Tsurumi Shunsuke’s autobiographical film criticism","authors":"Junko Yamazaki","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2018.1517711","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2018.1517711","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Reflecting on the aftermath of WWII in the emerging Cold War context of Japan’s compromised sovereignty, members of the intellectual group Science of Thought (Shisō no kagaku) sought possibilities of ‘thought’ (shisō) in ‘the people’ and turned their attention to the production and reception of mass culture. Jidaigeki (Japanese period films) presented a unique challenge for envisioning postwar modernity and democracy in Japan. US Occupation censors and progressive Japanese critics alike regarded jidaigeki with suspicion, calling into question its relationship to the past. This paper focuses on the group’s founder Tsurumi Shunsuke’s review of 1952 jidaigeki The Mad Woman in Kimono (Furisode kyōjo) and examines his populist defense of jidaigeki. Born into one of Japan’s most politically and intellectually prominent families and educated in the philosophy department at Harvard, Tsurumi struggled to define the significance and political utility of jidaigeki by negotiating his own position in relation to not only ‘the people’, but also with regard to the compromised sovereignty of occupied and post-occupation Japan. By unpacking interrelated negotiations in Tsurumi’s review and the film itself, I argue for the utility of jidaigeki as an analytical lens through which we begin to understand the dynamic historicity of postwar Japanese cinema.","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"10 1","pages":"130 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17564905.2018.1517711","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45336698","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2018.1519958
Mats Karlsson
ABSTRACT The 1958 film The Eternal Rainbow stands out in renowned director Kinoshita Keisuke’s oeuvre. Set entirely on location at the huge Yahata Steel Works, the film explores the lives of workers at the onset of Japan’s economic miracle before problems associated with the GDP-boosting polices appeared, when the pillars of smoke rising from the plant were still perceived as a sign of hope and prosperity. The film exposes the conflict between privileged regular employees and subcontracted workers, mirroring a basic social inequality that has resurfaced during Japan’s recent ‘lost decades’. A further theme running through the film is the existential question of the alienating effects of wage labour. In privileging problems identified with social maladies of decades to come, the film reminds us that Japan’s narrative of discontent might not be such a recent phenomenon. The film became variously praised for its ambitious approach, incorporating stylistic features borrowed from documentary film, and innovative exploration from the inside of the microcosm of a steel works; as well as criticized for its propagandistic features, and for its non-committal attitude towards the social conflict foregrounded by the film. While discussing its aesthetic and thematic features, this article explores critical responses to the film in mainstream newspapers and film publications, as well as commentary by workers in minor non-academic journals.
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Pub Date : 2018-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2018.1517637
C. Exley
ABSTRACT This paper examines the evolution of Hokkaido as a frontier space in the Japanese western, looking in particular at Yurusarezaru mono (Lee Sang-il, 2013). Drawing closely on Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992), the work has been recognized as a faithful remake of Eastwood’s iconic last western. At the same time, Lee reframes the western to focus on displacement and calls attention in particular to the repression of political and ethnic ‘others’ in the acquisition of Hokkaido in the 1860s. This rewriting of the western is inspired in part by manga artist Tezuka Osamu’s Shumari, a work set at the same early Meiji moment which explores the Imperial origins of the frontier in Hokkaido. Lee’s reinterpretation of Hokkaido as colonial space raises questions about established perceptions of nationhood, identity, and imperial origins.
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Pub Date : 2018-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2018.1520479
Jinhee Choi
The current issue marks the tenth year of the publication of the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema. This Journal has been shaped and reshaped since it was founded by David Desser and Francis Gateward. It has witnessed a transfer of publishing house and changes in editorship, first to Hye Seung Chung and David Scott Diffrient, most recently to Jinhee Choi and Michael Raine. We have also established a record of working with guest editors to produce special issues. The Journal has indeed contributed to widening the scope and depth of scholarship on Japanese and Korean cinema. Topics include welland lesser-known film authors, genres, experimental and documentary films, regulations and censorship in the film industry, exhibition, adaptation, space, and more. The following three pieces in this special section will examine the changes and transformation of scholarship on Korean cinema, focusing, in particular, on the shifting methodologies in the study of Korean film, an emerging area in Korean language film studies (colonial cinema), and a neglected area of study (Korean animation). Steve Choe artfully traces some of the key concepts and methodologies employed in the development and widening the scope of Korean film studies, which is still an emerging area of study compared to other national cinemas in the global scene. His contribution shows how the dominant paradigm has shifted from an idea of national psyche that is closely tied to the historiography of modern Korea, to transnationalism and globalization, and to ideas of affect and (extreme) expressivity that raise and invite philosophical consideration on the (pro-)filmic reality as well as spectatorship. Moonim Baek introduces the vibrant postcolonial study of Korean/Joseon cinema in Korean language film studies that is inspired both by the discovery of the prints of Joseon cinema (the official name of Korean cinema during the colonial era (1910–1945)), which had long been presumed to be lost, and the postcolonial turn in Korean Humanities among scholars residing in Korea. Archiving, digitizing, and compilation of film prints and primary discursive sources necessary for the rigorous study of Korean cinema, culture and Korean film theories during the colonial era, have resulted in a substantial body of study on the local specificity of that cinema as well as the negotiation required for local filmmakers and producers in order to survive and navigate through the complex regulations and constraints imposed by the empire. A supplementary list of scholarship on the colonial cinema of Korea in Korean language compiled by Baek indeed will further initiate fruitful dialogues among scholars in and outside of Korea, with shared research interests in the colonial Korea/Joseon cinema or depiction of colonial Korea. The Journal has published a wide range of scholarship on and analysis of genres such as Korean action, crime films, blockbusters, horror films and romantic comedy, as well as internationally ac
{"title":"In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","authors":"Jinhee Choi","doi":"10.1080/17564905.2018.1520479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2018.1520479","url":null,"abstract":"The current issue marks the tenth year of the publication of the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema. This Journal has been shaped and reshaped since it was founded by David Desser and Francis Gateward. It has witnessed a transfer of publishing house and changes in editorship, first to Hye Seung Chung and David Scott Diffrient, most recently to Jinhee Choi and Michael Raine. We have also established a record of working with guest editors to produce special issues. The Journal has indeed contributed to widening the scope and depth of scholarship on Japanese and Korean cinema. Topics include welland lesser-known film authors, genres, experimental and documentary films, regulations and censorship in the film industry, exhibition, adaptation, space, and more. The following three pieces in this special section will examine the changes and transformation of scholarship on Korean cinema, focusing, in particular, on the shifting methodologies in the study of Korean film, an emerging area in Korean language film studies (colonial cinema), and a neglected area of study (Korean animation). Steve Choe artfully traces some of the key concepts and methodologies employed in the development and widening the scope of Korean film studies, which is still an emerging area of study compared to other national cinemas in the global scene. His contribution shows how the dominant paradigm has shifted from an idea of national psyche that is closely tied to the historiography of modern Korea, to transnationalism and globalization, and to ideas of affect and (extreme) expressivity that raise and invite philosophical consideration on the (pro-)filmic reality as well as spectatorship. Moonim Baek introduces the vibrant postcolonial study of Korean/Joseon cinema in Korean language film studies that is inspired both by the discovery of the prints of Joseon cinema (the official name of Korean cinema during the colonial era (1910–1945)), which had long been presumed to be lost, and the postcolonial turn in Korean Humanities among scholars residing in Korea. Archiving, digitizing, and compilation of film prints and primary discursive sources necessary for the rigorous study of Korean cinema, culture and Korean film theories during the colonial era, have resulted in a substantial body of study on the local specificity of that cinema as well as the negotiation required for local filmmakers and producers in order to survive and navigate through the complex regulations and constraints imposed by the empire. A supplementary list of scholarship on the colonial cinema of Korea in Korean language compiled by Baek indeed will further initiate fruitful dialogues among scholars in and outside of Korea, with shared research interests in the colonial Korea/Joseon cinema or depiction of colonial Korea. The Journal has published a wide range of scholarship on and analysis of genres such as Korean action, crime films, blockbusters, horror films and romantic comedy, as well as internationally ac","PeriodicalId":37898,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema","volume":"10 1","pages":"77 - 78"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17564905.2018.1520479","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44612600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17564905.2018.1512396
Alexander Zahlten
ABSTRACT This essay explores the work of the legendary Japanese documentary film collective Nihon Documentarist Union (NDU) through their writings and their provocative film Asia is One (1973). It interprets NDU’s uncompromising approach to the aesthetics and politics of documentary film as a variation of archipelagic thought – emphasizing flows, interactions, and hybridity over fixed personal and national boundaries. Asia is One maps the radically heterogeneous space of Okinawa just around the time of its ‘reversion’ to Japan. By engaging with former labourers from the horrific wartime coal mines – many of which were born in other parts of East Asia – as well as migrant workers, fishermen, Taiwanese smugglers and Atayal villagers in Taiwan NDU redefines the region as deeply, sometimes disturbingly, but also promisingly networked. Shooting films on Korean victims of the atomic bombs in Busan, or in later incarnations travelling to Micronesia or Palestine, NDU searched for a new kind of cosmopolitanism through an emphasis on ‘fluidity’ and ‘place’. Highly influential in their time, NDU was nearly erased from Japanese documentary history. This essay aims to build on recent attempts in Japan to re-introduce their work and to understand their redefinition of documentary film and of the geopolitical imagination.
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