Japanese Cinema in the Digital Age by Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano (review)
2015; Volume: 45; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1548-9922
Autores Tópico(s)Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics
ResumoJapanese Cinema in the Digital Age Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano. University of Hawaii Press, 2012. $47.00 hardcover. 178 pages.In Japanese Cinema in the Digital Age, Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano assesses the impact of digital technology on filmmaking in Japan over the past two decades. Wada-Marciano contends that Japanese cinema has shifted production practices, increasing its affinity with other visual media and industries (16). She cites three central components as the reason for these changes: industry in the post-studio era, technological transformation, and the cultural imagination of the transnational. As the author states in the introduction, Koichi Iwabuchi's Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism informs the conceptual framework of her argument. In particular, she cites the idea of 'glocalization': that film production, distribution, and consumption are now more tailored to specific markets. In addition, the absence of a studio system has provided a space for filmmakers to return to a more personalized form of production similar to new wave movements of the past. Using lighter, more compact production technology combined with easily produced digital formats (DVD, VOD), filmmakers have more control over the creation and diffusion of their works, allowing them to eschew the traditional power dynamics of popular media. In this sense, the author's use of the term 'digital' is liberally applied to refer to content production, editing, and reception technologies.Over the course of five chapters and a conclusion the author deftly moves through disparate topics including genre specific studies of J-Horror and anime, developments in documentary through digital technology, representations of the transnational, and the cultural imagination of ethnic cinema focusing on the Resident Korean community. Each provides a balance of historical contextualization, industrial, and aesthetic analysis. However, the chapters do not conform to a chronological or linear narrative. In this respect the book's organization mirrors edited volumes on Japanese cinema like Arthur Nolletti and David Desser's Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History (Bloomington, 1992) that emphasize specific topics over a sweeping survey. The book's content is more in line with the style of industry studies like Douglas Gomery's Hollywood Studio System (London, 2005) or Thomas Schatz's Genius of the System (Minnesota, 2010) that emphasize production factors through examples of significant films.Chapter 1, focusing on J-Horror, pays significant attention to the industrial factors that the author posits as central to the success of films including Ringu (1998), Ju-on (2002), and Marebito (2004). She suggests that the primary role of film studios have shifted from filmmaking to the distribution of films in multimedia formats, such as DVD and cable television. For that reason, an inherent collaboration develops between independent filmmakers, where J-horror thrives, and major studios that possess the means to distribute content on a large scale and in multiple formats. Additionally, the narrative of these films speak to audiences steeped in digital technology by incorporating elements of modularity, such as Ju-on, which resemble the chapter format of DVDs, or manipulating digital video and/or closed circuit television within the narrative space of a film like Ringu.In Chapter 2, the author argues that digital technologies have provided filmmakers an opportunity to create a level of personal documentary not possible in previous generations. The author cites most prominently the works of Koreeda Hirokazu, Kawase Naomi, and Tsuchiya Yutaka, which blur the line between narrative and documentary filmmaking to create immensely personal works. Similar to filmmaker Hara Kazuo's penetration of the private, these films reveal intimate portraits that claim an authenticity by reconstructing reality on the smaller scale of everyday life. …
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