Class meetings: Tues/Thur. 3:00-4:15 PM
Weekly Film Viewings:  Wed. starting 5:30 PM
Location: Art Building room 132 (Auditorium)
professor: John Szostak <szostak@hawaii.edu>

Bangoro

1/17 Genre: Samurai Films, Part I: Chanbara Films
Film: Shibukawa Bangoro (1922)
Director: Tsukiyama Kokichi

Weekly Description: One of the first identifiable film genres to emerge in Japan is the chanbara (“sword-fight”) films, focusing on samurai sword-wielding heroes.  The film for this week is an example of this genre, a silent film, with dialogue supplied by a traditional benshi (narrator).

Yojimbo

1/24 Genre: Samurai Films, Part II: Nostalgia
Film: Yojimbo (1961)
Director: Kurosawa Akira

Description: This week continues with a discussion of the samurai film. It is with this genre that most non-Japanese cultures associate the cinema of Japan, and we will explore the ways in which many of these films evoke a nostalgia for a Japan that in fact probably never existed.

Seppuku

1/31 Genre: Samurai Films, Part III: Anti-Feudal Reaction
Film: Seppuku (1962)
Director: Kobayashi Masaki

In the aftermath of WWII, the businessman was named the “new samurai,” and a new kind of feudalism emerged. Some directors reacted to this new development, as well as to the damage wrought on the national psyche by Japan’s war of aggression, with “anti-samurai” themes.

Godzilla

2/7 The Atomic Bomb, Part I – Fallout
Film: Godzilla (1954)
Director: Ishiro Honda

Description: "As crass as it is visionary, Godzilla belongs with --
and might well trump -- the art films Hiroshima Mon Amour and Dr.
Strangelove as a daring attempt to fashion a terrible poetry from the
mind-melting horror of atomic warfare." --- J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

The Man Who Stole the Sun

2/14 The Atomic Bomb, Part II – The Cold War
Film: The Man Who Stole the Sun (1979)
Director: Hasegawa Kazuhiko

Description: To deal with the crushing anonymity of contemporary
Japanese society, a high school science teacher constructs an atomic
bomb. Part black comedy, part thriller, an off-beat commentary on
the dangers of nuclear proliferation.

Tokyo Drifter

2/21 Genre: Yakuza Films, Part I – Gangster Rhapsodies
Viewing: Tokyo Drifter (1966)
Director: Suzuki Seijun

Description: Directed by Suzuki Seijun, whose bizarre visual style
often got him into trouble with baffled studio executives, Suzuki
reached new heights of strangeness and surrealism with this film. A
romantic celebration of a mythic code of honor among Japan's gangsters

Battles Without Honor and Humanity

1/31 Genre: Yakuza Films, Part II – Nihilism and Realism
Viewing: Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973)
Director: Fukasaku Kinji

Description: Countering the chivalric image of the yakuza as
proffered by Suzuki and others, Fukasaku's ultraviolent, documentary-
style film stripped crime films of all their glamour and laid bare
the true roots of organized crime: poverty, humiliation and greed.

Life of Oharu

3/7 Genre: Literary Adaptations, Part I: Saikaku Ichidai Onna
Viewing: Life of Oharu (1952)
Director: Mizoguchi Kenji

Description: Based on Saikaku Ihara's novel, Life Of Oharu charts
the tragic demise of a lady of the court in 17th century Japan.
Oharu, an imperial attendant, is exiled to the countryside with her
parents for the crime of falling in love with a commoner, who
suggests she should marry out of love, not duty.

Throne of Blood

3/14 Genre: Literary Adaptations, Part II: Macbeth
Viewing: Throne of Blood (1957)
Director: Kurosawa Akira

Description: Throne of Blood transposes the plot of William
Shakespeare’s play Macbeth to medieval Japan. The influence of
traditional Noh theater is also an important part of the film's
staging, direction, and characterizations.

Naruse Woman

3/21 Genre: Melodrama - Social Critique
Viewing: When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1963)
Director: Naruse Mikio

Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is an exquisite character study about a woman caught in a trap of financial obligations, forced to perform a job she dislikes in order to stay afloat. The life of a bar hostess is examined as well as the way in which the system traps and sometimes kills those in it.

Bara No Soretsu

4/4 Genre: Experimental Film – Oedipus with a Transgendered Face
Viewing: Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)
Director: Matsumoto Toshio

Peter (stage name for Japan’s most famous drag queen) stars as Eddie, a flamboyant young man who works Tokyo’s queer night club scene. An update of the Oedipal tragedy with bizarre visual values and
experimental editing strategies, Matsumoto’s film has been cited as a source for Stanley Kubrick s A Clockwork Orange.

Akira

4/11 Genre: Anime, Part One: The New Japanism
Viewing: Akira (1988)Director: Katsuhiro Otomo

Adapted from a graphic novel of post-apocalyptic Tokyo, Akira led the way for the popularity of Japanese animation (anime) in the West. Prior to this film, most anime was notorious for cutting production corners, but Akira broke from this trend by featuring graphic values that captured the look and feel of cinema.

Spirited Away

4/18 Genre: Anime, Part Two – The World of Miyazaki
Viewing: Spirited Away (2001)
Director: Miyazaki Hayao

Winner of the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, Spirited Away is a representative film from Miyazaki Hayao, considered by many critics to be the finest director of animation in the history of the genre.
The film follows the adventures of Chihiro, who discovers a world inhabited by Japanese nature spirits, dragons and a sorceress who seeks to prevent her from returning to the human realm.

Throne of Blood

4/25 Genre: “J-Horror”
Viewing: Uzumaki (2000)
Director: Higuchi Akihiro

In the past decade East Asian cinema has experienced an explosive run of international commercial success with horror films. Uzumaki, while never becoming a box office hit in the West, demonstrates the ways in which Japanese directors have taken this popular genre and reinterpreted it to make it their own.

Maboroshi

5/2 Genre: Japan’s New Cinema
Viewing Maboroshi (1995)
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda

A young woman's husband commits suicide without warning or reason, leaving behind his wife and infant. Yumiko remarries and moves from Osaka to a small fishing village, yet continues to search for meaning
in a lonely world. The sparing dialogue and exquisite camerawork, while marking a new age for Japanese art film, also pays homage to the tour-de-force cinematic craftsmanship Yasujiro Ozu.