Anthology Articles

This is a list of my English articles that have appeared in anthologies and reference books. Some I have uploaded to my page on the Yale repository. You can find out more about the books or purchase them at Powell's Books (where I've shopped since I was a kid) via my Powell's Bookshelf.

“The Past of Japanese Science Fiction and Fantasy Movies.” Beyond Godzilla: Alternative Futures and Fantasies in Japanese Cinema. Ed. Mark Schilling. Udine: Centro Espressioni Cinemtatografiche, 2016. Pp. 33–40, 151–155. (On the Yale repository)

A short history of prewar Japanese science fiction, fantasy, and special effects films, focusing on their culturally marginal status. Tsuburaya Eiji appears as a recurring character.

"War and Nationalism in Recent Japanese Cinema: Yamato, Kamikaze, Trauma, and Forgetting the Postwar.” Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia. Eds. Chiho Sawada and Michael Berry. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016. Pp. 196-219.

An article on on Yamato (Otokotachi no Yamato, 2005), Sato Jun’ya’s box office hit that was produced by the maverick Kadokawa Haruki about the ill-fated battleship Yamato. Taking into consideration not only the long history of films on the Yamato, but also some contemporary kamikaze war films, I argued that the film is not just reworking wartime memory for the sake present-day historical revisionism towards WWII, but that it is utilizing its own depiction of violence to create a kind of “vicarious trauma” whose main effect is a forgetting of the postwar and its own traumatic history of the Cold War.

"Critical Reception: Historical Conceptions of Japanese Film Criticism." The Oxford Handbook to Japanese Cinema. Ed. Miyao Daisuke. Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. 61–78. (On the Yale repository)

Surveys the major trends in the history of Japanese film criticsm from the Pure Film Movement to Hasumi Shigehiko by focusing on criticism's tense relationship with theory and politics. (Buy at Powell's.)

"Retrospective Irony: Film Festivals and Japanese Cinema History." Film Festival Yearbook 5: Archival Film Festivals. Ed. Alex Marlow-Mann. St Andrews Film Studies, 2013. Pp. 189–199. (On the Yale repository)

Examines the lack of serious examinations of film history in Japan through film festival retrospectives and what that means about the ideologies of nation and cinema. Uses as examples the retrospectives organized by the Kawakita Institute and Tokyo Filmex. (Buy at Powell's.)

"The Japanese Film Musical." The International Film Musical. Eds. Corey K. Creekmur and Linda Y. Mokdad. Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Pp. 157-170. (On the Yale repository)

Considers the phenomenon of musicals in Japanese cinema by focusing on the problem of genre, both in terms of the general issue of the structure of genre in the Japanese film industry and the specific problem Japanese musicals have faced in trying to pursue what is often perceived as a Hollywood genre. (Buy at Powell's.)

"Japanese Film and Television." Routledge Handbook of Japanese Culture and Society. Eds. Victoria Lyon Bestor and Theodore C. Bestor, with Akiko Yamagata. London: Routledge, 2011. Pp. 213-225. (On the Yale repository)

A concise and critical history of film and television in Japan, focusing in particular on they articulated and were shaped within the struggle over meaning in a modern mass culture society. (Buy at Powell's.)

Aoyama Shinji." Fifty Contemporary Film Directors. Ed. Yvonne Tasker. London: Routledge, 2010. Pp. 27-38. (On the Yale repository)

An analysis of the director’s work up until Sad Vacation. (Buy at Powell's.)

"Kind Participation: Postmodern Consumption and Capital with Japan's Telop." Television, Japan, and Globalization. Ed. Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Eva Tsai, JongBong Choi. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2010. (On the Yale repository)

Analyses the phenomenon of subtitles (more properly called "telop") on Japanese television, especially variety programming. Critically using Ota Shoichi's work on owarai (especially the boke and tsukkomi in manzai) and Azuma Hiroki's work on database consumption, I argue about how Japanese TV not only reads itself, but encourages viewers to contribute their labor as readers to enhance the value of the televisual commodity. (Buy at Amazon.)

"Narrating the Nation-ality of a Cinema: The Case of Japanese Prewar Film." The Culture of Japanese Fascism. Ed. Alan Tansman. Duke University Press, 2009.

Complicates the description of prewar Japanese film as an ultra-nationalist cinema by elucidating the complex and contradictory process of that cinema becoming "nation-al." (Buy at Powell's.)

"Playing with Postmodernism: Morita Yoshimitsu’s Family Game." Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts. Eds. Alastair Phillips and Julian Stringer. Routledge, 2007. (On the Yale repository)

An analysis of Morita’s film in relation to its contemporary context, especially discussions of postmodernism. (Buy at Powell's.)

"Wrestling with Godzilla: Intertextuality, Childish Spectatorship, and the National Body." In Godzilla’s Footsteps. Eds. William Tsutsui and Michiko Ito. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Pp. 63-81. (On the Yale repository)

Critiques the view that the 1960s Godzilla is but kiddie fare by linking the Big Lizard with Rikidozan, Sugiura Shigeru and national irreverency in an atomic age. (Buy at Powell's.)

"Nation, Citizenship and Cinema." A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan. Ed. Jennifer Robertson. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2005. Pp. 400-414.

An introduction to theories of the nation in Japan, using the example of film to complicated notions of a “national cinema.” (Buy at Powell's.)

"From the National Gaze to Multiple Gazes: Representations of Okinawa in Recent Japanese Cinema." Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power. Eds. Laura Hein and Mark Selden. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield , 2003. Pp. 273-307. (On the Yale repository)

Analyses a range of films from Sayonara Nippon and Free and Easy 11, to works by Sai Yoichi, Kitano Takeshi and Takamine Go. (Buy at Powell's.)

"The Industrial Ichikawa: Ichikawa Kon after 1976." Kon Ichikawa. Ed. James Quandt. Ontario: Cinematheque Ontario, 2001. Pp. 385-397. (On the Yale repository)

Uses Ichikawa’s later works to discuss problems in the Japanese film industry from the 1970s to the 1990s. (Buy at Powell's.)

"The Word Before the Image: Criticism, the Screenplay, and the Regulation of Meaning in Prewar Japanese Film Culture." Word and Image in Japanese Cinema. Eds. Carole Cavanaugh and Dennis Washburn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. 3-35. (On the Yale repository)

Considers how Japanese filmmakers and critics tried to contain the problem of the image—and its potential proliferation of meaning—by tying it to the word. (Buy the book at Powell's; get the full text of the article here)

"Consuming Asia, Consuming Japan: The New Neonationalist Revisionism in Japan." Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States. Eds. Mark Selden and Laura Hein. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000. Pp. 74-95.

An analysis of recent neo-nationalist cultural trends, focusing particular on a “consumer nationalism” evident in such films as Iwai Shunji’s Swallowtail Butterfly. (Buy the book at Powell's.)


Also check out my entries in the following encyclopedias and film guides:

City Secrets Movies: The Ultimate Insider's Guide to Cinema's Hidden Gems (World of Geisha)

Defining Moments in Movies: The Greatest Films, Stars, Scenes and Events that Made Movie Magic (Takadanobaba Duel, Tokyo Drifter, Cure, etc.)

Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World: 1750 to the Present (anime and Japanese film)

Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film (Kawase, Koreeda, etc.)

Encyclopedia of Early Cinema (the Japan entry, etc.)

Censorship: A World Encyclopedia (on film censorship in Japan)

The Encyclopedia of Contemporary Japanese Culture (the Japanese film entry, etc.)


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