Book on Kitano Takeshi

[Aaron Gerow]

I have received a number of inquiries over the last couple of years 
about my long-delayed book on the Japanese film director, Kitano 
Takeshi (the delays are wholly my fault). I now, finally, can announce 
that it is out from the BFI as part of the World Directors series. Here 
is the blurb from the British Film Institute website:

	Aaron Gerow. Kitano Takeshi. London: British Film Institute, 2007.

The award-winning art film Hana-Bi, the stoic gangster elegy Sonatine, 
the surfer romance A Scene at the Sea, the absurdist comedy Getting 
Any?, the entertainment samurai spectacle Zatoichi-very different films 
made under one name "Kitano Takeshi." Who is this varied and sometimes 
elusive "Kitano Takeshi"? What relationship does he have to "Beat 
Takeshi," the name he also uses as an actor and immensely popular media 
personality in Japan? Is he an artistic auteur in the traditional 
sense, offering a singular vision easily identifiable in all his work, 
or a new kind of star who manages multiples identities, strategically 
changing them from film to film and situation to situation? This book 
will explore these issues of auteurship and stardom in the films of 
Kitano Takeshi especially as they relate to problems of personal and 
national identity in a Japan confronting an age of globalization. 
Starting in his early days as one side of a stand-up comedy duo, Kitano 
has used pairs throughout his films to deftly play out a liminal space 
between cinema and television, traditional and modern, Japan and the 
world. Combining a detailed account of the situation in Japanese film 
and criticism with unique close analyses of Kitano's films from Violent 
Cop to Takeshis, the author, a renowned expert on Japanese cinema who 
himself participated in the debates about Kitano in Japan, relates the 
director to issues of contemporary cinema, Japanese national identity, 
and globalism.

Paperback ISBN: 1844571661
Hardback ISBN: 1855471653

Apologies to everyone for the delay (it was supposed to be out about 3 
years ago, but Kitano kept making films and I kept getting busy). It's 
ended up the longest of the World Directors books, even though I had to 
cut about 1/4th of the manuscript to get it down to size.

Aaron Gerow
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu