Nippon Modern

Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s

Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano

"Devastated by the 1923 earthquake, Tokyo re-built itself in symbiosis with an image of modernity concocted by its own film studios. Nippon Modern renders that image, aspect after fascinating aspect, in sharp detail." —Dudley Andrew, Yale University

"Nippon Modern will be recognized as one of the core books of Japanese film studies." —Abe Mark Nornes, University of Michigan

Nippon Modern is the first intensive study of Japanese cinema in the 1920s and 1930s, a period in which the country's film industry was at its most prolific and a time when cine­ma played a singular role in shaping Japanese modernity. Shochiku Kamata Film Studios (1920-1936), the focus of this study, was the only studio that continued filmmak­ing in Tokyo following the city's complete destruction in the 1923 earthquake. Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano points to the influence of the new urban culture in Shochiku's interwar films, acclaimed as modan na eiga, or mod­ern films, by and for Japanese.

Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano is assistant pro­fessor of film studies at Carleton University, Canada.

FILM STUDIES JANUARY 2008

6X9, 200PP, 30 ILLUS 978-0-8248-3182-0 CL $50.00s

(University of Hawai’i Press)