Survival as a brutal process: Violence in contemporary Japanese cinema

African and Asian Studies, 1984

The Asian Conference on Film and Documentary 2014: Official Conference Proceedings, 2015

Children and adolescents have been a prominent subject for Japanese cinema in recent years. From the viewpoint of the proposed thematic scope of “Individual, Community & Society: Conflict, Resolution & Synergy”, the non-adult characters and its conflict are a privileged theme. Cinema, as a popular culture manifestation, contributes to the discourses on construction of the sense of community, belonging –or lack of it– and identity. This paper approaches the depiction of conflictive childhood and adolescence in recent films, its significance and its fitting in the stream of Japanese cinema history. This historic approach is not intended to be a comprehensive account, but a tour across selected moments and films of Japanese cinematographic culture. The aim is to draw a map on some connections that can shed some light on the contemporary filmmakers –including names such as Miike Takashi, Nakashima Tetsuya, Sono Sion or Iwai Shunji–, tendencies and films.

2020

2014

The article deals from few thematic fields: sociology, education and cultural studies with a topic that is ijime – bullying in Japanese schools. The definitions of the phenomenon, its types and possible causes will be followed by analysis of a few chosen works of Japanese film and television production. I will analyse the way ijime is depicted in these works. The following findings are an effect of research conducted during a 6-month scholarship funded by Japan Foundation in Kansai Institute in Japan in the academic year 2013–2014. Ijime is a significant element of Japanese school reality and one of the main problems still corroding the education system. What I found especially interesting was the regularity with which this motif appeared in various works of Japanese popular culture. It might even seem that if there is a school-themed story or a story about youth/school-children, there is very big chance that there will appear ijime. It might be a main theme but usually it is a side...

Violence in anime has often been stigmatized as cheap, sensational and incapable of discussing complex ideas. By using Joseph Carroll’s The Extremes of Conflict in Literature: Violence, Homicide and War (2012) and Violence in Literature: An Evolutionary Perspective (2014), as well as Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, this paper examines the cinematographic portrayal of violence through popular Japanese Anime series Tokyo Ghoul with reference to Yale Film Studies (2002). As various characters seek to find and express their identities, as a human whose socialisation and enculturation prescribe a life of compassion and non-aggression, or a ghoul whose community demands a predatory-prey worldview, violence is employed as a form of struggle for survival of the self and resistance of circumstances at large. This paper pioneers an unprecedented psychoanalytic model for anime literature commonly perceived to be filled with violence, and ascribes academic rigor to the genre.

Film Quarterly, 2022

Daito Bunka University, Graduate School of Asian Area Studies Journal (大東アジア学論集), 2022

This essay explores representations of Japanese contemporary society in a trilogy of Hollywood films spanning a period of 46 years: Sayonara (1957), Black Rain (1989), and Lost in Translation (2003). By performing a close reading of the central themes, characters, and norms presented in these works, it is clearly observable that each film locates Japan and the ideas of Japaneseness within a very particular locus and frame. From such a standpoint it is easy to see that a substantive shift has occurred over time in how Japan and the concept of Japaneseness are both depicted and interpreted by America through Hollywood, if not by Japan itself. In this trilogy, this shift has largely been influenced by perceived or relative distances between the two cultures (American and Japanese), and places the films in the loci of: acceptance, rejection, and ambivalence. Each of the three films are taken individually and in turn, annotated, read, and presented with commentary so as to establish their relative position as a singular text. Following this there follows a brief discussion where the trilogy are compared, contrasted, and examined as a collective body of work on a given theme (Japan) over a longitudinal time-frame. Finally, this essay ends with concluding remarks and comments which examine the core constructs presented in these films against a backdrop of contemporary Japanese society and notions of Japanese cultural identity.