Picturing Japaneseness

Film scholars often think of movies as cultural mirrors, reflections of their audience's dreams and beliefs. But in this accessible and absorbing book, Darrell William Davis argues that movies can also be an active force, contributing to and even helping to create a nation's sense of its own identity. Concentrating on the Japanese cinema of the 1930s and '40s, particularly on early works by the great director Kenji Mizoguchi, Davis shows how these movies distinguished Japanese culture from all others. Here, Davis argues, were a group of distinctly Eastern craftsmen who created a nationalistic art out of an essentially Western medium. This book provides an excellent and compelling analysis of the cinema, culture, and politics of Japan.