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Bringing together a range of Japanese and western scholars, this is the first book in English dedicated to Tanaka Kinuyo - praised as one of the greatest artists in the history of Japanese cinema.
Tanaka's career in acting and directing spanned the industrial development of cinema; from silent to sound, monochrome to colour. In addition to featuring in films by Ozu, Mizoguchi, Naruse and Kurosawa, Tanaka was the only female Japanese filmmaker active between 1953 and 1962, and her films tackled distinctly feminine topics such as prostitution and breast cancer.
Her career overlapped with a transformative period in Japanese history. This close analysis of her fascinating life and work offers new perspectives, subjectivities and modes of analysis for the classical era of Japanese cinema.
Irene González-López is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Visual and Material Culture Research Centre at Kingston University, London. Michael Smith was awarded his PhD from the University of Leeds in 2013.
Cover image: © Tanaka Kinuyo Memorial Hall, Shimonoseki Memorial Museum of Modern Forerunners
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ISBN 978-1-4744-0969-8 [PPC]
List of contents
Preface, Furukawa Kaoru; Introduction: Onna Monogatari, Irene González-López and Michael Smith; 1: Dancer, Doctor, Virgin, Wife: Tanaka Kinuyo's Early Star Image, Lauri Kitsnik; 2: Meetings and Partings: How Tanaka's Films End, Alexander Jacoby; 3: Tanaka and Mizoguchi: Politics and Rebellion in the Early Postwar Era, Michael Smith; 4: The First Female Gaze at Postwar Japanese Women: Tanaka Kinuyo Film Director, Irene González-López and Ashida Mayu; 5: Kinuyo and Sumie: When Women Write and Direct, Ayako Saito; 6: Female Authorship, Subjectiviy and Colonial Memory in Tanaka Kinuyo's The Wandering Princess (1960), Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández; 7: Panpan Girls, Lesbians and Postwar Women's Communitites: Girls of Dark (1961) as Women's Cinema, Yuka Kanno
About the author
Irene González-López is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Visual and Material Culture Research Centre, Kingston University (London). Irene's research interests are Cinema, Gender Studies, Popular Visual Culture, and Stardom. In addition, she is a translator and has worked with several film festivals in Japan and Europe.Michael Smith was awarded his PhD from University of Leeds in 2013. His research looked at the representation of women in early postwar Japanese cinema, particularly focusing on how the key political and social issues of the period affected their onscreen portrayal. Michael's main research interests are Classical-era Japanese cinema, women directors and 1990s American independent cinema.
Summary
This is the first book in English dedicated to the actress and director Tanaka Kinuyo. Her career overlapped with a transformative period in Japanese history, and this close analysis of her fascinating life and work offers new perspectives, subjectivities and modes of analysis for the classical era of Japanese cinema.
