Salt's book

[Junko Tanaka]

I read a few dozens of books over the break, one of which was Barry Salt's
_Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis_ (London: Starword, 1983).
I'd like to quote a part of his preface, which goes:

This book is basically concerned with mainstream fictional cinema, and most
truly avant-garde films are excluded from consideration in it. This is
because there is a very real separation between these two bodies of cinema.
.. . . Japanese cinema is also excluded for rather similar reasons. Until
fairly recently there have been influences on Japanese cinema from Western
cinema, but no influences going the other way. Also, the large number of
films that are necessary to get a clear and accurate picture of overall
developments within which individual films are placed has not been
available to me in the case of Japanese cinema, nor has a complete
knowledge of the very different social and cultural background to Japanese
films.

Was I shocked - not only by the statement itself and assumptions beneath
it, but also the fact that this was published as recent as fifteen years
ago. Mainstream cinema and Japanese film are similar in many ways, Japanese
cinema did influence Western cinema (of course to a lesser extent), no one
can have a "complete" knowledge of any culture, and Japan is not "very
different" from the West socially or culturally - I do hope in 1998 more
people are aware of all that.

I just wanted to share this with you, because if you did a subject or
keyword search under "motion pictures--Japan", a book like this would never
come up.

Junko Tanaka