Into the Picture Scroll: The Tale of Yamanaka Tokiwa (Haneda Sumiko, 2004) - Film Screening and Q&A
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 pm to 8:00 pm
- Venue
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Room
- Khalili Lecture Theatre (KLT)
- Event type
- Film screening
About this event
Into the Picture Scroll: The Tale of Yamanaka Tokiwa (山中常盤ー牛若丸と常盤御前 母と子の物語ー) is an extraordinary film that presents Japanese classical scroll paintings as never before. Released in 2004, it was directed by Haneda Sumiko (b. 1926), one of Japan's most prolific documentary filmmakers.
The film brings to life the celebrated Yamanaka Tokiwa picture scrolls, a set of twelve paintings by Iwasa Matabei, created in the seventeenth century and designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan. The scrolls recount a story once popular in joruri puppet theatre: Lady Tokiwa is attacked and murdered by bandits while travelling to visit her samurai son. After her spirit reveals her fate to him, he sets out to avenge her death.
Through skilful framing, rhythmic pacing, and a newly composed joruri score (ballad singing accompanied by the shamisen), Haneda transforms these historical artworks into a captivating cinematic experience, allowing contemporary audiences to engage with Japan's cultural heritage while demonstrating the enduring power of visual storytelling across centuries.
The event will include a brief introduction, film screening (100 minutes, in Japanese with English subtitles), and Q&A with Marcos Centeno-Martín, Irene González-López, and Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández, editors of the book The Documentary Cinema of Haneda Sumiko: Japan in Transition through Gender, Arts, Nature and Society (Routledge, 2026).
A free public lecture on the life and career of Haneda Sumiko will be presented by The Japan Society on 16 November 2026 at 6.45 pm at the Swedenborg Society. For more information and to book please visit The Japan Society website.
Copyright credit for images: © Haneda Sumiko and Kanatasha, Inc.
About the speakers
Marcos Centeno-Martín is Associate Professor at the University of Valencia in Spain, where he teaches Film and Japanese Studies. Previously, Centeno held positions in the UK, as the Japanese Programme director at Birkbeck, University of London, and as lecturer for the Department of Japan and Korea at SOAS University of London, where he coordinated the MA Global Cinemas and the Transcultural. His main research interests revolve around Japanese documentary film, transculturality, minorities and memory. He is PI of the research project TRAMEVIC (Transnational Memories in East Asian Visual Culture), and member of the project NUREVIO: New Paradigms in the Cultural Representation of Spaces of Mass Violence: Viewing and Narrating the Twentieth Century from the Twenty-First, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
Irene González-López is Lecturer in Japanese Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research focuses on postwar cinema and issues related to gender and sexuality, both in front and behind the camera. Irene has published widely on the representation of sex work, on women authorship, and on adaptations and remakes in Japanese cinema. Recent publications include: ‘How to sell a remake: The Gate of Flesh media franchise” (2023); “‘Female Director’: Discourses and Practices in Contemporary Japan” (co-authored, 2022); and Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom and Female Subjectivity (Edinburgh University Press, co-edited, 2018).
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández holds a PhD from the University Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, Spain, where she completed a dissertation on female authorship and representation in the films directed by Tanaka Kinuyo. She has been a visiting researcher at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo and at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research spans women filmmakers in Japan, gender representations in East Asian cultures and transnational film exchanges between Japan and Latin America. She works at The Japan Society.
