[KineJapan] So I wrote a book review...

[Markus Nornes]

Hello all,

I wrote a book review. I jotted down my thoughts about the recent slew of
handbooks on Japanese cinema. I couldn't help thinking about my first
encounter with Japanese cinema scholarship, so it begins...

Thirty-five years ago I was browsing through the stacks of a used bookstore
> in Boulder, Colorado, when I stumbled on a cache of Japanese cinema books.
> Having just discovered Mizoguchi and Kurosawa, I impulsively bought the
> lot. In an instant, I had acquired most of the English-language literature
> on this national cinema that had been published over various years, which
> now sit at the corner of a shelf in my office. Today I am amazed by the
> fact that a slew of newly released Japanese cinema anthologies take up
> roughly the same amount of space....That they all arrive more or less at
> once suggests they are symptomatic of an important moment—of an inflection
> point, a bottleneck, or even a crisis.

If you want to read more, head to your library. If your library doesn't
have FQ, drop me a line off stage and I'll help.

I must apologize to Daisuke, Julian and Nikki. I initially pitched a review
that would include the Oxford handbook and the Routledge 4-volume set
retrospective of the field. However, FQ wouldn't let me because they were
"too old." I hope everyone reads them all.

There are some 111 essays between all these new handbooks. It's rather
astounding that there's basically no overlapping or redundancies. Japanese
cinema presents that rich a topic, and you folks are just so impressive.

Markus

===================================
The Japanese Cinema Book
, edited by Hideaki Fujiki and Alastair Phillips
Routledge Handbook of Japanese Cinema
, edited by Joanne Bernardi and Shota T. Ogawa
A Companion to Japanese Cinema
, edited by David Desser
Markus Nornes

BOOK DATA Hideaki Fujiki and Alastair Phillips, eds., The Japanese Cinema
Book. London: Bloomsbury/BFI, 2020. $121.50 cloth, $44.95 paper, $40.45
e-book. 624 pages.

Joanne Bernardi and Shota T. Ogawa, eds., Routledge Handbook of Japanese
Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2020. $250 cloth. 382 pages.

David Desser, ed., A Companion to Japanese Cinema. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley
Blackwell, 2022. $185 cloth. 736 pages.
Film Quarterly (2022) 75 (3): 89–92.
https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2022.75.3.89











---

*Markus Nornes*
*Professor of Asian Cinema*
*Interim Chair, Dept. of Asian Languages and Culture*

Department of Film, Television and Media, Department of Asian Languages and
Cultures, Penny Stamps School of Art & Design




*Homepage: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nornes/
<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nornes/>*
*Department of Film, Television and Media*
*6348 North Quad*
*105 S. State Street**Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285*
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