[KineJapan] Hasumi's Ozu book

Ryan Cook mauvaischat77 at gmail.com
Sat Nov 25 10:07:47 EST 2023


Thanks very much for the gracious endorsements and interest in this
translation (a product of a lot of time spent at home during the
pandemic...).

Mathieu: yes, this is based on the definitive edition and includes the
three chapters that were added in 2003 (there is also a Chinese
translation). The new English edition does include the interview with
Atsuta that appears as an appendix in the Japanese. (There is a French
translation of this interview that appeared somewhere at some point long
ago, but it is completely rearranged and hardly resembles the original.)
Unfortunately we were not able to print the interview with Yukiko Inoue
that also appears in the Japanese edition due to what I understood would be
a strict word limit. I also decided against asking Hasumi to write a
foreword for this reason, though in retrospect I wonder if we couldn't have
stretched the word limit since we seem to have blown through it anyway.
Maybe we can find another venue for Hasumi to comment in English on the
occasion of the translation, which comes just about 20 years after he last
expanded the book, on its 20th anniversary (and the Ozu centenary).

Ryan Cook (the translator)
Honolulu

On Sun, Nov 26, 2023 at 4:25 PM Mathieu Capel via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

> This English version is long overdue, needless to say, since the book was
> only translated to French and Korean, if I am not wrong (all apologies if I
> am).
> Actually, there are some embarrassing mistakes in the French translation,
> even though it was reviewed by Hasumi himself (and, according to French
> speaking Japanese friends, it is far from good, to what I would agree to
> some extent...). And if I were to add an ironical kind of mixed-feelings
> remark, despite what Frodon and Eisenschitz says, I am pessimistic somehow
> how far Hasumi's view has changed in depth the way French viewers see Ozu's
> films: if you check the literature that was published this year related to
> the 60th/120th birthday events, I can't remember one quote of
> Hasumi's text, and most texts etc. seem to rely upon the same old
> clichés...
> Anyway, is Ryan's version based on the Japanese definite edition ? Even
> Cahiers du cinéma Publishing, who don't seem to care so much about the book
> actually, have apparently not a single clue that there are three chapters
> missing in the French version (the interviews at the end of the original
> book were also scrapped from the Cahiers du cinéma translation).
>
> Best regards,
>
> Mathieu Capel
> Tokyo
>
>
> Le lun. 27 nov. 2023 à 10:58, Markus Nornes via KineJapan <
> kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> a écrit :
>
>> Erice wrote a lovely blurb for the cover.
>>
>> Markus
>>
>>
>> ---
>>
>> *Markus Nornes*
>> *Professor of Asian Cinema*
>>
>> 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*
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 10:50 AM LCE via KineJapan <
>> kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> This is indeed a difficult book in Japanese, as are all of
>>> Hasumi-sensei's essays about film. In the description of the author, they
>>> omitted his close ties to Spanish director Víctor Erice (the two men
>>> communicate in French). I have been with them in Japan.
>>>
>>> I'm rooking forward to this translation when it appears in March. Thanks
>>> for the notice.
>>>
>>> On Sun, Nov 26, 2023 at 6:53 PM Markus Nornes via KineJapan <
>>> kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> We get so few translations in American film studies, it feels like a
>>>> grand occasion when a classic like this appears:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520396722/directed-by-yasujiro-ozu?fbclid=IwAR2dmRTnFeQhALbmMCromyUU-BVXWlFXXadXuSFJVDOmRvq1iR5R6mKcgnY
>>>>
>>>> As anyone who has cracked this book knows, it was a bear to translate.
>>>> Kudos to Ryan!
>>>>
>>>> Markus
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan
>>>>
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