Chika Kinoshita Self-Introduction

[Chika Kinoshita]

Antoine, thank you for sharing my interest.
Marc Menish was a classmate of mine at the University of Tokyo. Actually I
initially recommended Hasumi Shigehiko's _Naruse Miko no sekkei_, and 
Michel Chion's books on sound and image to him, and read some papers of
his, which I believe became part of his dissertation. So, I feel I know
what his argument is like (which, of course, doesn't mean I don't have to
look at the final version). Thanks for mentioning his work, anyway.
I wrote a seminar paper on Mizoguchi's _The Crucified Lovers_, focusing on
how power relations are laid out in the domestic space of the Kyoto
merchant's household. My sense was that the film mobilized sociocultural
meanings the domestic space bears to give a concrete shape to "feudal"
relationships between the genders, and the servant and the master.
Fortunately, Naito Akira, a set designer who worked as an assistant to
Mizuno Hiroshi, "Mizoguchi's" set designer, for the film at the time,
presents a fairly detailed layout of the set in his book, _Eiga bijutsu no
jonen_, which helped me enormously. Although my research at the time was
limited, I am hoping to develop it in the future. It seems to me that
representation of space in film is a topic on which genre conventions, film
techniques, the mode of film production, socio-historical factors converge.
Kato Mikiro's essay in _Mizoguchi the Master_ talks about the setting in
_Uwasa no onna_, and Saso Tsutomu's book, _1923 Mizoguchi Kenji: Chi to
rei_, devotes pages to its set designer, Kubo Hisao. On Kurosawa, the set
designer Muraki Yoshiro's book came out last year. If your interest
includes literature, you may want to read Maeda Ai's _Toshi kukan no naka
no bungaku_ (I believe it's been translated into English).
As you can see, my current concern is stuck with the setting and the
domestic space, but I am interested in the city and the landscape, too. Do
you, or any other KineJapan members, have suggestions about readings on
architecture, city and the cinema?

Thanks,

Chika