OSU Recent PhD Lecture Series

[Naoki Yamamoto]

Hi KineJapaners,

I'm going to give a talk on May 10 at the Ohio State University, as  
part of Recent PhD Lecture series. Please join me if you happen to be  
around Columbus on that date!

Best,
Naoki

Date: May 10, 2012
Time: 5:30 PM
Place: Psychology Building, Room 0014
Speaker: Naoki Yamamoto (Yale, PhD 2012)
Title: Documenting the War Effort: Imamura Taihei and Wartime Japanese  
Film Theory

Abstract:
This lecture examines the work of Imamura Taihei (1911-1986) in an  
attempt to illuminate the complex nature of mass culture in wartime  
Japan. One of the most acclaimed theorists in the history of Japanese  
cinema, Imamura’s writings are marked by his dual interest in  
animation and documentary, the two “marginalized” genres that garnered  
greater popularity in the period following Japan’s participation in  
the war against China in 1931. In contrast to the commonplace  
assumption that treats these genres as the opposite poles of film  
practice at large, Imamura shrewdly redefined them as sharing the same  
mission of offering animated documentations of the world in motion,  
and, by extension, documentations of history-in-the-making. Equally at  
stake in his theorization was the increasingly significant role that  
cinema, especially those made in the format of news films, began to  
play this period in mediating the masses and their everyday life. By  
providing a close reading of his two seminal books—Kiroku eigaron (On  
Documentary Film, 1940) and Manga eigaron (On Animation, 1941)—this  
lecture seeks to elucidate the continuing relevance of Imamura’s film  
theory to our current mediascape. At the same time, it also specifies  
the perplexing discursive context of wartime Japan wherein Imamura’s  
seemingly “liberal” call for the socialization of the mass medium  
seamlessly became part of the official discourse of Japanese fascism  
as it was mobilized for war.