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Nippon Modern : Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s / Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, [2008]Copyright date: ©2008Description: 1 online resource (224 p.) : 26 b&w illustrationsContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780824831820
  • 9780824863746
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 791
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Note on Transliteration -- Introduction -- 1. The Creation of Modern Space -- 2. Vernacular Meanings of Genre: The Middle-Class Film -- 3. Embodying the Modern -- 4. Imaging Modern Girls in the Japanese Woman's Film -- 5. The Japanese Modern in Film Style -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author
Summary: "Devastated by the 1923 earthquake, Tokyo re-built itself in symbiosis with an image of modernity concocted by its own film studios. Nippon Modern renders that image, aspect after fascinating aspect, in sharp detail. Scores of films make up that image, a few resurrected in this volume for intense and delightful analysis. A sensitive viewer and an honest resourceful historian, Wada-Marciano lays out what she's found in relation to other studies of this precious period, and she does so without hyperbole and without a glaring agenda. She makes you understand how, after Tokyo would again be devastated in 1945, these 'modern' films could become objects of nostalgia. Such is the care she gives her subject and such the fragility of that subject." -Dudley Andrew, Yale University "Nippon Modern will be recognized as one of the core books of Japanese film studies, a must-read for anyone interested in Japanese cinema. Because it brings Japanese cinema study into dialogue with important debates in history, area studies, and post colonial studies, it should have a wide and heterogeneous readership that will be attracted to its compelling analysis of important films and straightforward narration of biographies and studio history." -Abé Mark Nornes, University of MichiganNippon Modern is the first intensive study of Japanese cinema in the 1920s and 1930s, a period in which the country's film industry was at its most prolific and a time when cinema played a singular role in shaping Japanese modernity. During the interwar period, the signs of modernity were ubiquitous in Japan's urban architecture, literature, fashion, advertising, popular music, and cinema. The reconstruction of Tokyo following the disastrous earthquake of 1923 high lighted the extent of this cultural transformation, and the film industry embraced the reconfigured space as an expression of the modern. Shochiku Kamata Film Studios (1920-1936), the focus of this study, was the only studio that continued filmmaking in Tokyo following the city's complete destruction. Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano points to the influence of the new urban culture in Shochiku's interwar films, acclaimed as modan na eiga, or modern films, by and for Japanese. Wada-Marciano's thought-provoking examinations illustrate the reciprocal relationship between cinema and Japan's vernacular modernity-what Japanese modernity actually meant to Japanese. Her thorough and thoughtful analyses of dozens of films within the cultural contexts of Japan con tribute to the current inquiry into non-Western vernacular modernities.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780824863746

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Note on Transliteration -- Introduction -- 1. The Creation of Modern Space -- 2. Vernacular Meanings of Genre: The Middle-Class Film -- 3. Embodying the Modern -- 4. Imaging Modern Girls in the Japanese Woman's Film -- 5. The Japanese Modern in Film Style -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

"Devastated by the 1923 earthquake, Tokyo re-built itself in symbiosis with an image of modernity concocted by its own film studios. Nippon Modern renders that image, aspect after fascinating aspect, in sharp detail. Scores of films make up that image, a few resurrected in this volume for intense and delightful analysis. A sensitive viewer and an honest resourceful historian, Wada-Marciano lays out what she's found in relation to other studies of this precious period, and she does so without hyperbole and without a glaring agenda. She makes you understand how, after Tokyo would again be devastated in 1945, these 'modern' films could become objects of nostalgia. Such is the care she gives her subject and such the fragility of that subject." -Dudley Andrew, Yale University "Nippon Modern will be recognized as one of the core books of Japanese film studies, a must-read for anyone interested in Japanese cinema. Because it brings Japanese cinema study into dialogue with important debates in history, area studies, and post colonial studies, it should have a wide and heterogeneous readership that will be attracted to its compelling analysis of important films and straightforward narration of biographies and studio history." -Abé Mark Nornes, University of MichiganNippon Modern is the first intensive study of Japanese cinema in the 1920s and 1930s, a period in which the country's film industry was at its most prolific and a time when cinema played a singular role in shaping Japanese modernity. During the interwar period, the signs of modernity were ubiquitous in Japan's urban architecture, literature, fashion, advertising, popular music, and cinema. The reconstruction of Tokyo following the disastrous earthquake of 1923 high lighted the extent of this cultural transformation, and the film industry embraced the reconfigured space as an expression of the modern. Shochiku Kamata Film Studios (1920-1936), the focus of this study, was the only studio that continued filmmaking in Tokyo following the city's complete destruction. Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano points to the influence of the new urban culture in Shochiku's interwar films, acclaimed as modan na eiga, or modern films, by and for Japanese. Wada-Marciano's thought-provoking examinations illustrate the reciprocal relationship between cinema and Japan's vernacular modernity-what Japanese modernity actually meant to Japanese. Her thorough and thoughtful analyses of dozens of films within the cultural contexts of Japan con tribute to the current inquiry into non-Western vernacular modernities.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 02. Mrz 2022)