Ichikawa Book

[Peter M. Grilli]

James Quandt's book on ICHIKAWA KON is first rate!  It's a superb
compilation of material about Ichikawa, his films, and their source-material
by a broad range of Japanese and international film historians, scholars,
and essayists, including documentary information, filmography, film reviews
and evaluative essays, etc.  It also inclues several interesting short
pieces by Ichikawa himself and by his late wife, scenarist Wada Natto.

The book is available (@ $29.95) online from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and
other booksellers.  It's probably also available at each of the venues where
the Ichikawa retrospective film series is being shown (though quantities are
probably in fairly short supply).

The Boston screenings of the Ichikawa retrospective (26 films) just finished
earlier this month at the Museum of Fine Arts, and it is midway through its
run at MoMA in New York.  It is a magnificent series, representing the very
best of Ichikawa's work:  many great old favorite films, many beautiful new
prints, and many rarely seen masterworks.  Everyone involved with organizing
this film series or supporting it deserves our thanks and congratulations.
As the Ichikawa retrospective continues its run at other cities across North
America, please spread the word: This program should NOT BE MISSED by anyone
interested in Japanese film!

Peter Grilli
President, Japan Society of Boston
One Milk Street,  Boston, MA 02109
Tel:  617-451-0726
Fax:  617-415-1191
E-mail:  grilli at us-japan.org


-----Original Message-----
From: grilli at us-japan.org [mailto:grilli at us-japan.org]On Behalf Of A. M.
Nornes
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 3:09 PM
To: grilli at attglobal.net
Subject: Ichikawa Book


Here is some information on the Ichikawa book someone was asking about. It's
a very hefty, very good book. I wish I could go to the retrospective!

Markus

----------------

"Kon Ichikawa is one of Japan's greatest directors" - Yukio Mishima

"Indispensable. Expertly researched, packed with information, and
consistently insightful, this anthology draws together over two dozen
articles, including interviews with the director, personal accounts by him
and his collaborators, and, most important, critical essays, some of them
specifically commissioned for this volume. Few anthologies convey such a
palpable sense of a director's work and modus operandi; fewer still attain
such breadth and depth. This anthology will make readers want to rush out
and see the films."

	* Arthur J. Nolletti, Jr., co-editor of Reframing Japanese Cinema:
Authorship, Genre, History (Indiana University Press, 1992).


Kon Ichikawa has long been internationally acknowledged as one of the most
important and prolific masters of Japanese cinema. Celebrated for his many
adaptations of famous Japanese novels, such as Fires on the Plain, Harp of
Burma, Kagi, Conflagration, and The Makioka Sisters, Ichikawa is an artist
with an astounding command of many genres, forms and tones, from ferociously
humanist war films to sophisticated social satires, formalist documentaries
(the acclaimed Tokyo Olympiad) to extravagant period pieces (An Actor's
Revenge). He is both the "deadpan sophisticate" whom Pauline Kael prized,
with his elegant compositional style, venomous wit, and tonal daring, and a
crafty master of populist entertainments.

This volume spans Ichikawa's entire career, with over twenty essays and
commentaries by such leading scholars of Japanese cinema as Donald Richie,
Tadao Sato, Max Tessier, David Desser, Linda C. Ehrlich, and Keiko McDonald.
Excerpts from the prodigious study of the director by film historian Yuki
Mori are augmented by an illuminating article by Ichikawa's wife and
scenarist, Natto Wada, and a selection of the director's own treasurable
essays. A new career interview with Ichikawa conducted by critic Mark
Schilling, and trenchant appraisals by his once assistant director Yasuzo
Masumura, novelist Yukio Mishima, and critic Pauline Kael, round out this
complex portrait of one of the most controversial and accomplished artists
of the Japanese cinema.


464 pages
45 black-&-white stills
6 1/4 x 9 ?
ISBN 0-9682969-3-9

The retrospective includes twenry-six of Ichikawa's films, most of them in
new prints made by The Japan Foundation, and is organized by Cinematheque
Ontario. The tour dates are:

July - Cinematheque Ontario
July / August - Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley
July / August - Museum of Fine Art, Boston
September 6 - October 14 - Cin?ath?ue Qu??oise,
Montreal
September / October - Museum of Modern Art, New York
September 29 - October 31 - Cleveland Cinematheque, Cleveland
October 26 - December 31 -  National Gallery of Art, Washington; Freer
Gallery
November - December - UCLA Film Archive, Los Angeles
November - December - Pacific Cinematheque, Vancouver
November 16 - December 16 - Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
January - February - College of Moving Images, Santa Fe
January / February - The Gene Siskel Film Centre, Chicago
February - Wexner Centre for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio