broad request for suggestions: recent Japanese films

[SYBIL.THORNTON at asu.edu]

Quoting Lewis Cook <lcoqc at earthlink.net>:

> 
> After a deliberate hiatus of a few years I'm teaching an informal  
> (non-technical) course on Japanese film and modern fiction (by  
> popular demand, in effect). Some of my students are asking why I'm  
> not screening any films made after around 1970. The answer may very  
> well be that I haven't been paying enough attention, but I'm not  
> aware of any films produced in Japan in the past 30 some years that  
> are of comparable stature to the best of Mizoguchi, Ozu, Kurosawa,  
> Kobayashi, et al. What am I missing and what should I be seeing? I  
> don't mean this as a provocation, just asking for suggestions.
> 
> 
> Lewis Cook
> Associate Professor, Japanese Literature
> Queens College, CUNY 
> 

Well, here is the time for my two cents.

Lewis, you are right:  there are very few if any films of the standard or 
quality of the films produced 1970 and before.  The masters kept on making 
films, but, as with the preceding generation, the films were not their best 
work. Film began to reemerge in Japan in the '90s.  Others can speak for the 
last thirty years.  But if you want a really good film based on popular 
literature, get Yamada Youji's _Tasogare Seibei_ based on stories by Fujisawa 
Shuhsei.  One of them, "The Bamboo Blade," has been translated and is 
available in an anthology from Tuttle.
I'll be including a very long chapter on traditional narrative in TS in my 
upcoming book, which I promise to send to the publisher at the end of the 
month.
Cheers,
Sybil Thornton
Associate Prof., Premodern Japanese History
ASU