New Oshima Book

[Abe-Nornes]

The UC California Press catalog arrived to today with an announcement about
Maureen Turim's book on Oshima. This book has been in the works for many
years, and I'm glad to see it coming out. It will be available in January.
Until then, here is what the catalog says:

Turim, Maureen. The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of  Japanese Iconoclast
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 

This study of the films of Oshima Nagisa is both an essential introduction
to the work of a major postwar director of Japanese cinema and a
theoretical exploration of strategies of filmic style. For almost forty
years, Oshima has produced provocative films that have received wide
distribution and international acclaim. Formally innovative as well as
socially daring, they provide a running commentary on postwar Japan.

Best known today for his controversial films In the Realm of the senses and
The Empire of Passion, Oshima engages issues of sexuality and power,
domination and identity, themes that Maureen Turim explores in relation to
psychoanalytic and postmodern theory. The films' complex representation of
women in Japanese society reveives detailed and casreful scrutiny, as does
their political engagement with the Japanese student movement, postwar
anti-Ameri an sentimetns, and critiques of Stalinist tendencies of the
Left. Turim also considers Oshima's surprising comedies, his
expe4imentation with Brechtian and avant-garde theatricality, and more.

"Turim raises criticaslly important issues that the existing literature on
Japanes cinema has been loath to address. [Now what do you suppose these
are?!!?!?---AMN Through thoughtful and sensitive readings of Oshima's
films, she acknowledges the problematic nature of categoeies such as
culture, subjectivity, and identity." ---William Haver  

$50 cloth; $20 paperback /// 317 pages with 66 photos