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.
Catherine Russell is Professor of Film Studies at Concordia University. She is the author of Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video, also published by Duke University Press, and Narrative Mortality: Death, Closure, and New Wave Cinemas.
Acknowledgments ix Preface xi Introduction: The Auteur as Salaryman 1 1. The Silent Films: Women in the City, 1930-1934 39 2. Naruse as P.C.L.: Toward a Japanese Classical Cinema, 1935-1937 81 3. Not a Monumental Cinema: Wartime Vernacular, 1938-1945 131 4. The Occupation Years: Cinema, Democracy, and Japanese Kitsch, 1945-1952 167 5. The Japanese Woman's Film of the 1950s, 1952-1958 226 6. Naruse in the 1960s: Stranded in Modernity, 1958-1967 315 Conclusion 398 Notes 405 Filmography 431 Bibliography 435 Index 447
The first English-language book dedicated to an analysis of Naruse Mikio, one of Japan's most prolific directors
"Even for those who read Japanese and are familiar with Naruse Mikio's work, Catherine Russell's book contributes to a new understanding of his cinema. Russell shows how Naruse's films participated in and contributed to Japanese modernity as a cultural movement, and, using feminist film criticism and Miriam Hansen's influential concept of 'vernacular modernism,' she traces how his films illuminate female subjectivity throughout the studio era." Daisuke Miyao, author of Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom "The Cinema of Naruse Mikio presents not only a deft and subtle run-through of the world of an important auteur but a virtual encapsulation of the intellectual history of Japanese cinema during its most important period, the 1930s-60s. Catherine Russell contextulizes Naruse in the commercial situation in which he worked and in the historical, social, political, and intellectual project of mid-twentieth-century Japan. I came away firmly believing that Naruse was more attuned to how modernity was leaving its indelible marks on Japanese women than any other director of classical Japanese cinema. For students of feminist film criticism, Russell's book is an absolute must." David Desser, author of Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to Japanese New Wave Cinema "Looking closely at Naruse Mikio's extraordinary body of films, Catherine Russell has discovered a critical framework that provides us solid footing for exploring Naruse's modern world. Working meticulously through all sixty-seven extant films, Russell gradually reveals a director and team of technicians and actors exploring the contradictions, hopes, and disappointments of modern Japan--particularly for women, who participate in and contribute to modernity both on and off Naruse's screen. The Cinema of Naruse Mikio is a vivid and long-needed survey of the director's life work and the everyday landscape of twentieth-century Japan."--Abe Mark Nornes, author of Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary "With The Cinema of Naruse Mikio, Catherine Russell brings deserved critical attention to this under-appreciated director...Russell shows that Naruse's portrayals of the changing roles of Japanese women in the public sphere and his depictions of an urban, industrialised, mass-media saturated society make his films keys texts of Japanese modernity." International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter, Autumn 2008 "[A]n exhaustive study of this brilliant, oft-overlooked Japanese filmmaker who always made women and the woman's perspective central to his films. Well contextualised and full of the kind of details anyone interested in Naruse's work would want, Russell's book is a delight"-List, 19th Feb 2009
