New Publication

[Mark Nornes]

I had a chance to read this ahead of time, and I must say it was a  
very eye opening book. Aaron does some inspired detective work here,  
some of the most thorough research on a single film we've seen in  
Japanese film studies. You'll never look at Page of Madness in quite  
the same way!

Markus



On Feb 24, 2009, at 11:46 AM, bew wrote:

> A Page of Madness: Cinema and Modernity in 1920s Japan
>
> by Aaron Gerow
>
> Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, No. 64
> x + 130 pp., 2008, 22 illustrations
> ISBN 978-1-929280-51-3, cloth, $50.00
> ISBN 978-1-929280-52-0, paper, $22.00
>
> Kinugasa Teinosuke’s 1926 film, A Page of Madness (Kurutta  
> ichipeiji), is celebrated as one of the masterpieces of silent  
> cinema. It was an independently produced, experimental, avant-garde  
> work from Japan whose brilliant use of cinematic technique was equal  
> to if not superior to that of contemporary European cinema. Those  
> studying Japan, focusing on the central involvement of such writers  
> as Yokomitsu Riichi and the Nobel Prize winner Kawabata Yasunari,  
> have seen it as a pillar of the close relationship in the Taishō era  
> between film and artistic modernism, as well as a marker of the  
> uniqueness of prewar Japanese film culture.
>
> But is this film really what it seems to be? Using meticulous  
> research on the film’s production, distribution, exhibition, and  
> reception, as well as close analysis of the film’s shooting script  
> and shooting notes recently made available, Aaron Gerow draws a new  
> picture of this complex work, one revealing a film divided between  
> experiment and convention, modernism and melodrama, the image and  
> the word, cinema and literature, conflicts that play out in the  
> story and structure of the film and its context. These different  
> versions of A Page of Madness were developed at the time in varying  
> interpretations of a film fundamentally about differing perceptions  
> and conflicting worlds, and ironically realized in the fact that the  
> film that exists today is not the one originally released. Including  
> a detailed analysis of the film and translations of contemporary  
> reviews and shooting notes for scenes missing from the current  
> print, Gerow’s book offers provocative insight into the fascinating  
> film A Page of Madness was—and still is—and into the struggles  
> over this work that tried to articulate the place of cinema in  
> Japanese society and modernity.
>
>
> THE BOOK WILL BE AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.COM IN A FEW DAYS. YOU MAY  
> ORDER NOW DIRECTLY FROM THE CENTER FOR JAPANESE STUDIES, THE  
> UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, VIA FAX, PHONE, OR POST. PREPAYMENT REQUIRED  
> BY CHECK OR CC.
>
> Bruce Willoughby
> Executive Editor
> Center for Japanese Studies
> The University of Michigan
> 1007 E. Huron St.
> Ann Arbor MI 48104-1690
> ph 734-647-1199
> fax 734-647-8886
> bew at umich.edu
>
>
>