Cinema and Society: Post-War Japan 1945-present Jennifer Coates Undergraduate level course
Instructor: Jennifer Coates Class meetings: Tuesday and Thursday 1:10-2:40pm
How does cinema engage with social issues? We often look to popular films to illustrate a particular social problem or historical situation, but how can we critically understand the relationship between cinema and everyday life?
This course offers students an introduction to Film Studies, through examining film representations of key social issues in post-war Japan. Using critical film analysis, we will examine how social change has been represented on screen in Japan from 1945, a period often understood as the ‘golden age’ of classical narrative cinema. While popular cinema is never a true reflection of a period in time, films, and the discourse around films, can tell us much about the concerns of a particular era. At the same time, critical analysis of a film must account for the socio-political and historical context in which it was made. This course examines how film plays a part in our understanding of our everyday worlds.
Each week introduces a particular social issue through a popular film text. Progressing chronologically, reading materials from the fields of Film Studies and History are juxtaposed to generate an understanding of post-war Japanese cinema deeply grounded in the social, political, and historical context. The course is intended for any undergraduate student in any department interested in Japanese cinema and its history. Students wishing to audit this class are welcome to do so. No prior knowledge of the Japanese language is required; all film texts are subtitled and readings are in English. Students are welcome to expand their independent reading to include Japanese sources, and will be supported in class to share this research with classmates.
Assignments 1. Each student taking this class for credit is required to prepare 1 in-class presentation (maximum 10 minutes) for 20% of the final grade. Presentations can summarize and assess an assigned reading, or demonstrate an in-depth visual analysis of a short film clip. 2. Each student taking this class for credit is required to write an original research essay on a topic of their choice (maximum 3000 words) for 60% of the final grade. 3. Attendance and participation in class discussion will make up 20% of the final grade.
Course Goals • To acquire Film Studies terminology to critically analyze film texts • To become familiar with the key social issues in post-war Japan and popular discourse surrounding these issues • To build research skills to produce a final paper generated from class presentations and discussions
Grading policy: Students will receive letter grades in all courses for which they are registered. Grades are assigned on the basis of in-class presentations, written papers, attendance, and preparation. A final grade cannot be improved by reexamination or additional work. The grading system is as follows: A excellent (thorough mastery of course material & concepts) B good (proficient grasp of most course material & concepts) C fair (general understanding of principal course material & concepts) D poor but passing (superficial familiarity with some course material) (credit toward degree is determined by home school) F failure (the grade of F is a final grade and is not subject to reexamination)
Accommodating students with disabilities If you are a student with a disability and have a DS-certified ‘Accommodation Letter’ please see the KCJS resident director to confirm your accommodation needs. If you believe that you have a disability that requires accommodation, you can contact your home school's Disability Services. The Office of Global Programs (OGP) can also assist you to connect with Columbia University’s Disability Services.
Course Schedule Tuesday 4 September Introduction to Japanese Cinema Core topics of the class will be introduced and readings for presentation assigned. Film: 100 Years of Japanese Cinema (Nihon eiga no hyaku nen), Ōshima Nagisa, 1995
Thursday 6 September Post-war Japan and Defeat on Film Themes: Japan’s defeat in the Asia Pacific War and World War II Readings: Dower, John W. “Introduction” Embracing defeat: Japan in the wake of World War II. WW Norton & Company, (2000): 19-30. Film: No Regrets for Our Youth (Waga seishun ni kui nashi), Kurosawa Akira, 1946
Tuesday 11 September ‘Hansei’ Cinema Themes: ‘hansei’ (self-reflection), and film as ‘reflexive horizon’ for social change Reading: Hansen, Miriam Bratu. “Fallen women, rising stars, new horizons.” Film Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2000): 10-22. Film: Drunken Angel (Yoidore tenshi), Kurosawa Akira, 1948
Thursday 13 September Cinema and Occupation Themes: The Allied Occupation of Japan (1945-1952) Reading: Saito, Ayako. “Occupation and Memory: The Representation of Woman’s Body in Postwar Japanese Cinema.” The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema, edited by Daisuke Miyao. Oxford University Press (2014): 327-362. Film: Carmen Comes Home, Kinoshita Keisuke, 1951
Tuesday 18 September Censorship and the Cinema Themes: censorship practice and ‘democratization cinema’ Reading: Kitamura, Hiroshi. “Contested Terrains: Occupation Censorship and Japanese Cinema.” Screening enlightenment: Hollywood and the cultural reconstruction of defeated Japan. Cornell University Press, (2010): 42-61 Film: One Wonderful Sunday (Subarashiki nichiyōbi), Kurosawa Akira, 1947
Thursday 20 September Minority Representation on Film (1) Themes: Buraku representation Reading: Bondy, Christopher. “Understanding buraku inequality: Improvements and challenges.” Contemporary Japan 22, no. 1-2 (2010): 99-113. McDonald, Keiko I. “The Modern Outcast State: Ichikawa’s Hakai.” Kon Ichikawa, edited by James Quant. Cinemathetique Ontario (2001): 141-154. Film: Apostasy (Hakai), Ichikawa Kon, 1948
Tuesday 25 September Gender and the New Constitution Themes: Japan’s 1947 Constitution, gender equality, and the star system Reading: Coates, Jennifer. “Postwar Stars and the Japanese Studio System.” Making Icons: Repetition and the Female Image in Japanese Cinema, 1945–1964. Hong Kong University Press (2016): 33-68. Film: The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice (Ochazuke no aji), Ozu Yasujirō, 1952
Thursday 27 September The Post-war Family Themes: War memory and the generational gap Readings: Yoneyama, Lisa. “Introduction.” Hiroshima traces: Time, space, and the dialectics of memory. University of California Press (1999): 1-26. Coates, Jennifer. “The Fragmented Family on Film: Kinoshita Keisuke's Nihon no Higeki (The Tragedy of Japan)(1953) and the Antecedents of the Contemporary Fragmented Family in Japan.” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, 30. Film: The Tragedy of Japan (Nihon no higeki), Kinoshita Keisuke, 1953
Tuesday 2 October Field trip Kyoto city cinema sites (walking tour)
Thursday 4 October Youth Culture and the Taiyōzoku Genre Film Themes: Teenage culture, leisure, and sexuality Reading: Raine, Michael. “Ishihara Yujiro: Youth, Celebrity and the Male Body in Late 1950s Japan.” Word and Image in Japanese Cinema, edited by Dennis Washburn. Cambridge University Press (2001): 202-25. Film: Crazed Fruit (Kurutta kaji), Nakahira Kō, 1956
Tuesday 9 October ‘Income-Doubling’ and the Middle-Class Themes: Post-occupation prosperity, consumerism Reading: Yoshimi, Shunya. “‘Made in Japan’: the cultural politics of home electrification in postwar Japan.” Media, Culture & Society 21, no. 2 (1999): 149-171. Film: Good Morning (Ohayo), Ozu Yasujirō, 1959
Thursday 11 October Nuclear Imaginaries Themes: Memories of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear testing, and US-Japan relations Readings: Noriega, Chon A. “Godzilla and the Japanese Nightmare: When Them! is US.” Hibakusha Cinema; Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film, edited by Mick Broderick. Kegan Paul (2013): 54-74. Jacobs, Robert. “Reconstructing the Perpetrator's Soul by Reconstructing the Victim's Body.” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, 24 Film: Lucky Dragon Number 5 (Daigo fukuryū maru), Shindō Kaneto, 1959
Tuesday 16 October Masculinity and Modern Japan Themes: Changing masculine performances and ideologies Reading: Standish, Isolde. “Facts, Fictions, and Fantasy.”Myth and masculinity in the Japanese cinema: towards a political reading of the tragic hero. Routledge (2013): 158-192. Neale, Steve. “Masculinity as spectacle.” The sexual subject: a Screen reader in sexuality, edited by Steven Cohen and Ina Rae Hark. Routledge (1992): 277-287. Film: Abashiri Prison (Abashiri Bangaichi), Ishii Teruo, 1965
Thursday 18 October The Long Defeat Themes: ‘Post-war’ discourse in 1960s Japan, new documentary film styles, ethnofiction Reading: Casebier, Allan. “Images of irrationality in modern Japan: the films of Shohei Imamura.” Film Criticism 8, no. 1 (1983): 42-49. Film: A Man Vanishes (Ningen johatsu), Imamura Shōhei, 1967
Tuesday 23 October Minority Representation on Film (2) Themes: Gender, early understandings of ‘trans’ in post-war Japan Reading: Ko, Mika. “‘Neo-documentarism’in Funeral Parade of Roses: the new realism of Matsumoto Toshio.” Screen 52, no. 3 (2011): 376-390. Maree, Claire. “Grrrl-queens: One-kotoba and the negotiation of heterosexist gender language norms and lesbo (homo) phobic stereotypes in Japan.” Asiapacific queer: Rethinking genders and sexualities, edited by Fran Martin, Peter A. Jackson, Mark McLelland and Audrey Yue. University of Illinois Press (2008): 67-84. Film: Funeral Parade of Roses (Bara no soretsu), Matsumoto Toshio, 1969
Thursday 25 October Genre and Gender: The Yakuza Film Themes: The development of the yakuza film gender, and performances of gender tropes Reading: Coates, Jennifer. “Gambling with the Nation: Heroines of the Yakuza Film, 1955-1975.” Japanese Studies (2017) Film: The Red Peony Gambler: To Side with Duty (Hibotan bakuto: jingi tooshimasu), Buichi Saitō, 1972
Tuesday 6 November Documentary Film and the Women’s Movement Themes: Feminism, ‘woman’s lib’, and documentary cinema Reading: Shigematsu, Setsu. “Intimacies of Imperialism and Japanese-Black Feminist Transgression: Militarised Occupations in Okinawa and Beyond.” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, no. 37 (2015). Film: Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (Gokushiteki eros: Renka 1974) Hara Kazuo, 1974
Thursday 8 November War Memory in Post-war Japan Themes: War memories, victimhood, animation Reading: Goldberg, Wendy. “Transcending the Victim's History: Takahata Isao's Grave of the Fireflies.” Mechademia 4, no. 1 (2009): 39-52. Film: Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no haka) Takahata Isao, 1988
Tuesday 13 November Images of Migration in East Asia Themes: Migration, race politics, futures Reading: Pollack, David. “The Revenge of the Illegal Asians: Aliens, Gangsters, and Myth in Kon Satoshi's World Apartment Horror.” positions 1, no. 3 (1993): 677-714. Film: World Apartment Horror, Otomo Katsuhiro, 1991
Thursday 15 November Minority Representation on Film (3) Themes: Representing Okinawa Gerow, Aaron. “From the national gaze to multiple gazes: Representations of Okinawa in recent Japanese cinema.” Islands of discontent: Okinawan responses to Japanese and American power, edited by Laura Elizabeth Hein and Mark Selden. Rowman and Littlefield (2003): 273-307. Film: Sonatine (Sonatine), Kitano Takeshi, 1993
Tuesday 20 November Field trip Kyoto Uzumasa Eigamura
Thursday 22 November J-horror and ‘hype’ Themes: Exploring how Japanese cinema met new audiences around the world Reading: Dew, Oliver. “‘Asia Extreme’: Japanese Cinema and British Hype.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 5:1 (2007): 53-73. Film: Ringu (The Ring), Nakata Hideo, 1998
Tuesday 27 November International Co-Productions and National Identity Themes: International filmmaking collaborations, nostalgia, and national identity Reading: Ogawa, S. 2009. Hou Hsiao-Hsien in Japan: From Taiwan Trilogy to Café Lumiere. In: J. Gimenez ed., Asian Connection. Lyon, France: Asiexpo Edition, 150- 161. Film: Café Lumiere (Kōhi jiko) Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2003
Thursday 29 November Single-Parent Families and the Working Class Themes: Family, single-parents, working-class issues, outsider issues Readings: Jacoby, Alexander. “Why Nobody Knows-Family and Society in Modern Japan.” Film Criticism 35, no. 2/3 (2011): 66-83. Schilling, Mark. “Kore-eda Hirokazu Interview.” Film Criticism 35, no. 2-3 (2011): 11-21. Film: Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai), Koreeda Hirokazu, 2004.
Tuesday 4 December Precarious Families in Modern Japan Themes: Employment uncertainty and family life Reading: Rosenbaum, Roman. “From the traditions of J-horror to the representation of kakusa shakai in Kurosawa's film Tokyo Sonata.” Contemporary Japan 22, no. 1-2 (2010): 115-136. Film: Tokyo Sonata (Tokyo sonata), Kurosawa Kiyoshi, 2008
Thursday 6 December Disaster Imaginaries Themes: Post-Fukushima future imaginaries Reading: Grăjdian, Maria. “The precarious self.” Visions of Precarity in Japanese Popular Culture and Literature (2014): 117. Film: Your Name (Kimi no na wa), Shinkai Makoto, 2016