Problem: Applying western theories on japanese films

[Robert.Geib at gmx.de]

Dear subscribers of KineJapan,

First, I want to introduce myself: I’m a young scholar of media studies from Jena, Germany. I’m currently preparing my dissertation on body & memory in contemporary japanese cinema. I want to show that current japanese films (Kurosawa, Tsukamoto, Oshii and others) contribute aesthetically to a broad debate about body and memory in cultural- and media studies. 

Drawing on the works of film phenomenology, the writings of Foucault and Deleuze and recent trauma theory, I want to articulate a specific view of the body and memory that emerge through close analysis of these films. Of course I’m just in the first steps of my research and I have a lot more preliminary research on the topic to do, but a certain problem has already occured and I wonder if some of you could help me out.

The reemergence of the body and memory particular in film practice and theory since the late 1980s is closely linked to a criticism of the dominance of ocular vision in certain branches of film theory. These theories are based on certain assumptions, stated by Jonathan Crary and Donald Lowe among others, that ocular centrism is a distinctive feature of modern (western) societies. This mode of perception that can be traced back to philosophical belief systems of the Enlightment, the invention of single-point perspective in the Renaissance and technological changes of the media landscape (namely photography and cinema).

Now I’m a little reluctant to apply these models of a history of perception and subject formation on japanese cinema; models that are based on the analysis of specific historic, aesthetic and social circumstances in western europe. Although many ideas of the Enlightment were adopted in the Meiji restauration and technologies like photography and cinema were quickly imported and assimilated, I’m not sure if the implicit hierarchy of the senses (which can be broken down to a slogan like 'seeing equals knowing') has found it's way into the modern japanese society (given the complex nature and history of japanese adaptation of foreign ideas). 

Do you suggest, that japanese cinema is a 'special case' and cannot be approached by models and theories based on western thought? Should they be used reflectively, assuming the role of a distant observer, always insisting on the 'special case' of the japanese history of art and perception? Or should I take a more postmodern approach, where I don’t really care about the 'otherness' of japanese cinema (thereby also circumventing the notion of the 'exotic') and simply apply these theories if they seem viable? 

I really hope that I’m not beating any dead horses here, but I would very much appreciate if some of you could comment on my problem and suggest further literature on that issue.

Thanks in advance and greetings from Germany,
Robert Geib

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