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Book Chapter

“What is contemporary Japanese Cinema?”. Questioning the answers, answering with questions

  • Giacomo Calorio

The English title of a recent book by renowned film scholar Yomota Inuhiko reads: “What is Japanese Cinema?”. In the preface to the English edition Yomota states that the direction we might take, should we try to provide an answer to the question, changes according to which word, “Japanese” or “Cinema” we choose to emphasize. When his survey reaches the recent past, the Japanese scholar describes the 2000s as “an era of chaos”. Starting from these questions and affirmations, and combining them with others made by scholars such as David Bordwell, Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, Andrew Dorman and Mori Naoyuki, the following article attempts to explore a more specific doubt: “What is contemporary Japanese cinema”? In so doing, however, other questions arise, as we need to define when contemporaneity starts and what makes it different both from previous eras, and from the contemporaneity of other national cinemas. The further we probe, the more complex our definition becomes.

  • Keywords:
  • contemporary Japanese cinema; Japanese film theory; visual culture; digital culture,
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Giacomo Calorio

University of Turin, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0002-8750-9453

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  • Publication Year: 2020
  • Pages: 11-27
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2020 Author(s)

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  • Publication Year: 2020
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

“What is contemporary Japanese Cinema?”. Questioning the answers, answering with questions

Authors

Giacomo Calorio

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-260-7.01

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2020

Copyright Information

© 2020 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Tracing Pathways 雲路

Book Subtitle

Interdisciplinary Studies on Modern and Contemporary East Asia

Editors

Diego Cucinelli, Andrea Scibetta

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

156

Publication Year

2020

Copyright Information

© 2020 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-260-7

ISBN Print

978-88-5518-259-1

eISBN (pdf)

978-88-5518-260-7

Series Title

Studi e saggi

Series ISSN

2704-6478

Series E-ISSN

2704-5919

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