Kinema Club Workshop: Kato Mikiro abstract

Abe-Nornes amnornes
Sun Dec 6 01:54:52 EST 1998


JAPANESE CINEMA STUDIES, SUCH AS IT IS---SOME TENDENCIES OF THE DISCIPLINE
IN JAPAN 

by
Kato Mikiro
University of  Kyoto

ABSTRACT
As long as it is called an object of study, Japanese cinema studies must be
also a part
of an institutional formation. In this respect I would like to investigate the
current changes in the discipline's environment, and deliver a
vision for a potentially new formation for cinema studies in Japan.  A task
force,
working for the Ministry of Education in Japan, has recently published a
report on education and research at universities.  According to their findings,
academic institutes in Japan will have to undergo drastic changes in the
next four years.  This is partly because the population of university age
will diminish,  and partly because both university professors and tax
payers have realized that they have to survive the academic and economical
"big bang" in order to keep up with what they call "global standards." 
In the present situation in Japanese national or prefectural
universities there are neither units of Japanese cinema studies nor independent
film societies.  And yet we have dozens of graduate students who are
conducting research on Japanese cinema.  There is also a growing demand
among middle-aged people to study films in extension courses, a demand which no
national universities have met. All these things taken into consideration,
it would be obvious that we will be able to make use of the current changes
in educational policy to establish institutional units for Japanese cinema
studies. Indeed Yomota Inuhiko, a leading film critic-scholar, recently
declared at an international conference on Mizoguch in Tokyo that he would
establish a society of Japanese cinema studies. I will also consider other
aspects of the institutional crises of universities and research institutes in
Japan.





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