Killers, Clients and Kindred Spirits
The Taboo Cinema of Shohei Imamura
Edited by Lindsay Coleman, David Desser
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.
Key features- The first book to look at the entire career of Imamura Shohei
- Incorporates the work of top Japanese Cinema scholars from the US, UK, Australia, Canada and Japan
- Organised by thematic concerns that cut across Imamura’s career
- John Berra, Renmin University of China
- Adam Bingham, SOAS, University of London
- Bianca Briciu, Carleton University and St. Paul University, Ottawa
- Jennifer Coates, University of East Anglia
- Lindsay Coleman, independent scholar
- David Deamer, Manchester Metropolitan University
- Rayna Denison, University of East Anglia
- David Desser, University of Illinois
- Timothy Iles, University of Victoria, Canada
- Mats Karlsson, University of Sydney
- Hiroshi Kitamura, College of William and Mary
- Lauri Kitsnik, Kyoto University
- Diane Wei Lewis, Washington University in St. Louis
- Dolores P. Martinez, SOAS, University of London and University of Oxford
- Joan Mellen, Emerita, Temple University
- Bill Mihalopoulos, University of Central Lancaster
- Michael Raine, Western University, Canada
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: Shōhei 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: Shōhei 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
