attitudes to Ozu

[Aaron Gerow]

> Could the?increasing availablity of Ozu?outside of Japan (particularly 
> on DVD)?eventually challenge some of these domestic attitudes to 
> foreign audiences/scholarship?

I think one big question is the availability of foreign film 
scholarship in Japan. Richie, Schrader and Bordwell have been 
translated, but not Burch. Not a small amount of other interesting 
scholarship, on Japanese film or not, has been virtually ignored in 
Japan. At the same time, a rather mediocre book like Frodon's work on 
cinema and the nation was quickly translated into Japanese because 
Hasumi pushed it, even though there are far better examples of the 
study of the relation of film and the nation out there.

So even if the greater availability of Ozu DVDs can end up changing 
foreign scholarship, one still wonders how much will ever be introduced 
back into Japan.
>
> By the way Aaron: "Just look at Umemoto Yoichi's review of Bordwell's 
> Ozu book and you can see this attitude persisting"
>
> - Is this available online anywhere?

I don't know if it is online anywhere. It was published in Shukan 
dokushojin in January 1996.

Aaron Gerow
Film Studies and East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University