Killers, Clients and Kindred Spirits: The Taboo Cinema of Shohei Imamura

Description

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. Figures Notes on the Contributors Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 The Making of an Auteur: The Early Films (1958–1959) PART I KILLERS Chapter 3 Confronting America: Pigs and Battleships and the Politics of US Bases in Postwar Japan Chapter 4 Insect Men and Women: Gender, Conflict, and Problematic Modernity in Intentions of Murder Chapter 5 Hidden in Plain Sight: The False Leads and True Mysteries of Vengeance Is Mine Chapter 6 The Eel: Trauma Cinema PART II CLIENTS Chapter 7 The Insect Woman, or: The Female Art of Failure Chapter 8 The Obscene in the Everyday: The Pornographers Chapter 9 Shohei Imamura’s Profound Desire for Japan’s Cultural Roots: Critical Approaches to Profound Desires of the Gods Chapter 10 “Products of Japan”: Karayuki-san, The Making of a Prostitute Chapter 11 The Female Body as Transgressor of National Boundaries: The History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess PART III KINDRED SPIRITS Chapter 12 Better Off Being Bacteria: Adaptation and Allegory in Dr. Akagi Chapter 13 Time Out of Joint: Shohei Imamura and the Search for an “Other” Japan Chapter 14 Promotional Discourses and the Meanings of The Ballad of Narayama Chapter 15 Boundary Play: Truth, Fiction, and Performance in A Man Vanishes Chapter 16 Why Not? Imamura, Nietzsche, and the Untimely Chapter 17 Kuroi Ame: An Anthropology of Suffering Chapter 18 The Symbolic Function of Water Index