History of Japanese Film Censorship (E+J)

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

Makino Mamoru's long-awaited Nihon eiga ken'etsushi (History of Japanese 
Film Censorship) has finally been published. For a long time, the failure 
to publish this manuscript has stood as a marker of the sorry state of 
academic film research in Japan. It was actually scheduled to be 
published more than a decade ago (the publisher even printed advertising 
handbills), but the publisher backed out in fear that this "unexciting" 
topic would not sell (something which symbolized how hard it was to 
publish serious historical research on film).

But finally Pandora, a company which does both film distribution and 
publishing, decided to pick up the book, in part as a statement against 
the censorship that still continues today. Even so, it is only publishing 
200 copies, and the price is quite high (22,000 yen).

The book is 700 pages long and only covers the period up to 1945. It is 
first divided into five historical periods: 1) the early period of 
censorship (1896-1916); 2) the period from the Tokyo film regulations 
(1916-1925); 3) the period after the nationalization of film censorship 
(1925-1931); 4) the period of censorship of sound films and new film 
formats (1932-1938); 5) the period from the Film Law on (1939-1945). The 
book concludes with a historical discussion of the bibliography on film 
censorship and a 150 page appendix reprinting the full text of many of 
the major laws concerning film regulation. As with much of Makino's work, 
part of the value lies simply in his dedicated effort to make available 
many of the documents and discourses about film before the war.

The price is a bit high for all but the most dedicated film scholars, but 
I urge everyone to have their library purchase it. (If this becomes a 
small success, maybe it won't take 10 years to publish serious work like 
this again!)

The bibliographic information is as follows:

Makino Mamoru
Nihon eiga ken'etsushi
Tokyo: Pandora (hakko); Gendai Shokan (hatsubai), 2003.
ISBN 476847814X
Price: 22000 yen

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ISBN 476847814X
22000?

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
Yokohama National University