question/favour

[Juan Pablo Vieytes]

Dear Kinejapaners

My name is Juan Pablo Vieytes and I am a fourth year student from Chile at 
the faculty of letters at Osaka University. I am doing a degree on Japanese 
Studies and I am trying to write my thesis on the topic of gViolence and 
Japanese Filmh. I am specially considering films from the period between 
1958 to 1977 (mainly yakuza films and the new wave directors), and comparing 
the kind of violence on those films with the one we see in more recent films 
(such as Miike, Kitano, Tsukamoto, Sabu) When I first started watching 
Japanese films I was impressed by the way violence is portrayed. From the 
dance-like killing of the jidaigeki, the gero-guroh of so many yakuza and 
pinku-eiga, to all the blood we see on Miikefs and Tsukamotofs films. 
Although I thought it was gcoolh@and personally became very interested in 
Japanese movies, I also found it was a bit of an excess at times, and I 
always wondered why the Japanese being a quite gnon-violenth society, 
could take the kind of gory excesses depicted on the screen. I was also 
impressed by the way this kind of violence has become popular among 
non-Japanese Japanese cinema fans. From Tarantino (especially Kill Bill) to 
the success of Japanese animation.
I would like to ask you what your impressions are on the kind of violence 
that is presented on Japanese films. Do you think itfs something particular 
of Japanese cinema? How important do you think it is the role of aesthetics 
in the way violence is shown on Japanese films? I know there are people from 
many countries on this mailing list, how would you compare with the film 
culture closest to you? I ask this because one of the main things I want to 
talk about on my thesis is how the violence portrayed on Japanese film 
affects peoplefs impression of Japan (what in Japanese would be nihon ni 
okeru ime-ji)
Also if anyone has any advice on literature, films that I should consider, 
ideas or criticism (also questions about this e-mail) I would greatly 
appreciate it.

Thank you very much in advance
Sincerely

Juan Pablo Vieytes



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Juan Pablo Vieytes
Osaka University, faculty of letters, Japanese studies department.
http://www.k2.dion.ne.jp/~holachao/