Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
Introduction: The Auteur as Salaryman 1
1. The Silent Films: Women in the City, 1930-1934 39
2. Naruse as P.C.L.: Toward a Japanese Classical Cinema, 1935-1937 81
3. Not a Monumental Cinema: Wartime Vernacular, 1938-1945 131
4. The Occupation Years: Cinema, Democracy, and Japanese Kitsch, 1945-1952 167
5. The Japanese Woman's Film of the 1950s, 1952-1958 226
6. Naruse in the 1960s: Stranded in Modernity, 1958-1967 315
Conclusion 398
Notes 405
Filmography 431
Bibliography 435
Index 447

Promotional Information

The first English-language book dedicated to an analysis of Naruse Mikio, one of Japan's most prolific directors

About the Author

Catherine Russell is Professor of Film Studies at Concordia University. She is the author of Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video, also published by Duke University Press, and Narrative Mortality: Death, Closure, and New Wave Cinemas.

Reviews

"Even for those who read Japanese and are familiar with Naruse Mikio's work, Catherine Russell's book contributes to a new understanding of his cinema. Russell shows how Naruse's films participated in and contributed to Japanese modernity as a cultural movement, and, using feminist film criticism and Miriam Hansen's influential concept of 'vernacular modernism,' she traces how his films illuminate female subjectivity throughout the studio era." Daisuke Miyao, author of Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom "The Cinema of Naruse Mikio presents not only a deft and subtle run-through of the world of an important auteur but a virtual encapsulation of the intellectual history of Japanese cinema during its most important period, the 1930s-60s. Catherine Russell contextulizes Naruse in the commercial situation in which he worked and in the historical, social, political, and intellectual project of mid-twentieth-century Japan. I came away firmly believing that Naruse was more attuned to how modernity was leaving its indelible marks on Japanese women than any other director of classical Japanese cinema. For students of feminist film criticism, Russell's book is an absolute must." David Desser, author of Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to Japanese New Wave Cinema "Looking closely at Naruse Mikio's extraordinary body of films, Catherine Russell has discovered a critical framework that provides us solid footing for exploring Naruse's modern world. Working meticulously through all sixty-seven extant films, Russell gradually reveals a director and team of technicians and actors exploring the contradictions, hopes, and disappointments of modern Japan--particularly for women, who participate in and contribute to modernity both on and off Naruse's screen. The Cinema of Naruse Mikio is a vivid and long-needed survey of the director's life work and the everyday landscape of twentieth-century Japan."--Abe Mark Nornes, author of Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary "With The Cinema of Naruse Mikio, Catherine Russell brings deserved critical attention to this under-appreciated director...Russell shows that Naruse's portrayals of the changing roles of Japanese women in the public sphere and his depictions of an urban, industrialised, mass-media saturated society make his films keys texts of Japanese modernity." International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter, Autumn 2008 "[A]n exhaustive study of this brilliant, oft-overlooked Japanese filmmaker who always made women and the woman's perspective central to his films. Well contextualised and full of the kind of details anyone interested in Naruse's work would want, Russell's book is a delight"-List, 19th Feb 2009