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A thorough exploration of the work of one of Japan's most controversial directors
The only Japanese director to have won the Palme d'Or from Cannes more than once, and second only to Ozu Yasujiro in the number of times he has won the prestigious Kinema Jumpo Best One award, the late Imamura Shohei was one of Japan's leading and most controversial film directors. This book is one of the first to study all of Imamura's major films alongside his television and theatrical documentaries, focusing on his major themes and concerns. By giving shape to Imamura's career, the book positions him as a stylistic innovator as well as an ethnographic investigator into Japanese culture and tradition; the preeminent examiner of the hidden, barely repressed underpinnings of Japanese society.
Professor David Desser is Professor Emeritus of Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois and Dean of Anaheim University Akira Kurosawa School of Film.
Lindsay Coleman is a writer and educator, and is completing his PhD thesis at the University of Melbourne
Cover image: Shoichi Ozawa in The Pornographers (1966 Japan), directed by Shohei Imamura © East-West Classics/Photofest
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edinburghuniversitypress.com
ISBN 978-1-4744-1181-3
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List of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction; Chapter 2: The Making of An Auteur: The Early Films (1958-1959), Jennifer Coates; Section I: Killers; Chapter 3: Confronting America: Pigs and Battleships and the Politics of US Bases in Postwar Japan, Hiroshi Kitamura; Chapter 4: Insect Men and Women: Gender, Conflict and Problematic Modernity in Intentions of Murder, Adam Bingham; Chapter 5: Hidden in Plain Sight: The False Leads and True Mysteries of Vengeance Is Mine, John Berra; Chapter 6: The Eel: Trauma Cinema, David Desser; Section II: Clients; Chapter 7: The Insect Woman, or: The Female Art of Failure, Michael Raine; Chapter 8: The Obscene in the Everyday: The Pornographers, Lindsay Coleman; Chapter 9: Shohei Imamura's Profound Desire for Japan's Cultural Roots: Critical Approaches to Profound Desires of the Gods, Mats Karlsson; Chapter 10: 'Products of Japan': Karayuki-san, The Making of a Prostitute, Joan Mellen; Chapter 11: The Female Body as Transgressor of National Boundaries: The History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess, Bianca Briciu; Part III: Kindred Spirits; Chapter 12: Better off Being Bacteria: Adaptation and Allegory in Dr Akagi, Lauri Kitsnik; Chapter 13: Time out of Joint: Shohei Imamura and the Search for an 'Other' Japan, Bill Mihalopoulos; Chapter 14: Promotional Discourses and the Meanings of The Ballad of Narayama, Rayna Denison; Chapter 15: Boundary Play: Truth, Fiction, and Performance in A Man Vanishes, Diane Lewis; Chapter 16: Why Not? - Imamura, Nietzsche and the Untimely, David Deamer; Chapter 17: Kuroi ame: An Anthropology of Suffering, Dolores Martinez; Chapter 18: The Symbolic Function of Water, Tim Iles; Notes on Contributors
About the author
Lindsay Coleman is an independent film producer, and is completing his phD thesis at the University of MelbourneProfessor David Desser is Professor Emeritus of Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois and Dean of Anaheim University Akira Kurosawa School of Film
Summary
By giving shape to Imamura Shohei's career, this collection positions him as a stylistic innovator as well as an ethnographic investigator into Japanese culture and tradition; the preeminent examiner of the hidden, barely repressed underpinnings of Japanese society.
