New Publication

[bew]

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