One of the most prolific and respected directors of Japanese
cinema, Naruse Mikio (1905-69) made eighty-nine films between 1930
and 1967. Little, however, has been written about Naruse in
English, and much of the writing about him in Japanese has not been
translated into English. With "The Cinema of Naruse Mikio,"
Catherine Russell brings deserved critical attention to this
under-appreciated director. Besides illuminating Naruse's
contributions to Japanese and world cinema, Russell's in-depth
study of the director sheds new light on the Japanese film industry
between the 1930s and the 1960s.
Naruse was a studio-based director, a company man renowned for
bringing films in on budget and on time. During his long career, he
directed movies in different styles of melodrama while displaying a
remarkable continuity of tone. His films were based on a variety of
Japanese literary sources and original scripts; almost all of them
were set in contemporary Japan. Many were "women's films." They had
female protagonists, and they depicted women's passions,
disappointments, routines, and living conditions. While neither
Naruse or his audiences identified themselves as "feminist," his
films repeatedly foreground, if not challenge, the rigid gender
norms of Japanese society. Given the complex historical and
critical issues surrounding Naruse's cinema, a comprehensive study
of the director demands an innovative and interdisciplinary
approach. Russell draws on the critical reception of Naruse in
Japan in addition to the cultural theories of Harry Harootunian,
Miriam Hansen, and Walter Benjamin. She shows that Naruse's movies
were key texts of Japanese modernity, both in the ways that they
portrayed the changing roles of Japanese women in the public sphere
and in their depiction of an urban, industrialized,
mass-media-saturated society.
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