Word and Image in Japanese Cinema examines the complex relationship between the temporal order of linguistic narrative and the spatiality of visual spectacle, a dynamic that has played an important role in much of Japanese film. In exploring the rift between word and image, the essays in this volume clarify the cultural imperatives that Japanese cinema reflects, as well as the ways in which the dialectic of word and image has informed the understanding and critical reception of Japanese cinema in the West.

Kenji Mizoguchi's masterpiece Sansho Dayu (1954) retells a classic Japanese folktale about an eleventh-century feudal official forced into exile by his political enemies. In his absence, his children fall under the corrupting influence of the malevolent bailiff Sansho. In their study of the film, film scholar Dudley Andrew and Japanese literature professor Carole Cavanaugh highlight the cultural, aesthetic and social contexts of this film which is at once rooted in folk legend and a modern artwork released in the aftermath of World War II. This edition includes a new foreword by the authors in which they consider the film's contemporary parallels in modern slavery and children torn from their families by malevolent authorities.

Word and Image in Japanese Cinema examines the complex relationship between the temporal order of linguistic narrative and the spatiality of visual spectacle, a dynamic that has played an important role in much of Japanese film. The tension between the controlling order of words and the liberating fragmentation of images has been an important force that has shaped modern culture in Japan and that has also determined the evolution of its cinema. In exploring the rift between word and image, the essays in this volume clarify the cultural imperatives that Japanese cinema reflects, as well as the ways in which the dialectic of word and image has informed the understanding and critical reception of Japanese cinema in the West.