Book Launch: Companion to Japanese Cinema

David Desser (ed.) Companion to Japanese Cinema. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2022

This book offers an up-to-date and rigorous examination of historical and modern Japanese cinema edited by the distinguished scholar David Desser, Emeritus Professor from University of Illinois, which counts on thirty contributors by leading scholars in the field of Japanese Film.

The book delivers insightful new material on the History, Ideology, and Aesthetics of Japanese cinema including under-appreciated directors, little-known stars and genres as well as innovative approaches to gender issues, intermediality, documentary film and modernity among others. This publication is part of the Wiley Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas series. The event counts on presentations by some of the US and UK/Europe-based contributors of the book.

Speakers and chapter presentations

• Welcome
  Fabio Gygi, Chair, Japan Research Centre, SOAS University of London
• Introduction
  By editor David Desser (University of Illinois)
• Mad, Bad, and Beautiful: Revisiting Kurosawa’s Women
  Dolores P. Martinez (SOAS, University of London. University of Oxford)
• Yoshimura Kozaburo and the Working Woman in the Old Capital
  Alexander Jacoby (Oxford Brookes University)
• Biographies of Loss: The Cinematic Melancholy of Kawase Naomi
  Erin Schoneveld (Haverford College)
• Ainu in Documentary Films: Promiscuous Iconography and the Absent Image
  Marcos P. Centeno-Martín (University of Valencia. Birkbeck, University of London)
• “Female Director”: Discourses and Practices in Contemporary Japan
  Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández (University Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid) and Irene González-López (Birkbeck, University of London)
• ’Scope and the City: Reframing a Modern Metropolis
  Jasper Sharp (Midnight Eye)

Coordinated by Dr Marcos Centeno m.centeno@bbk.ac.uk.

Event hosted in partnership with the Japan Foundation.