Tag: books

March 3, 2018 · 0 comments

By Jasper Sharp. If nothing else, Tom Mes’ Unchained Melody: The Films of Meiko Kaji is a timely reminder that in the ever-burgeoning field of books on Japanese cinema, there has been precious little on the stars and sirens who have provided such a large part of the onscreen magic. Only two previous such book-length […]

February 2, 2018 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Staking a claim for Japanese animation as one of the world’s “richest and most interesting artistic forms”, Maria Roberta Novielli’s Floating Worlds: A Short History of Japanese Animation briskly chronicles the last hundred years of the medium, from its first, scrappy screenings in 1917, through its uses in wartime propaganda, post-war artistic […]

January 15, 2018 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. “I think it’s time we blow this scene. Get everybody and the stuff together. Okay: 3-2-1, let’s jam.” Admit it, you’re already hearing those brass notes as the theme song kicks in. As Rose Bridges argues in her lively, smart and revealing book Yoko Kanno’s Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack, it’s the music that […]

January 9, 2018 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Hikari Hori’s new book Promiscuous Media: Film and Visual Culture in Imperial Japan 1926-1945, examines the first phase of the Showa Era, from the enthronement of Emperor Hirohito through to the end of World War Two. She offers an enthralling narrative of Japan’s first mass-media sovereign, but also the theories and critical […]

December 16, 2017 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. As its subtitle suggests, Wu Weihua’s book Chinese Animation: Creative Industries and Digital Culture delves into two specific elements of cartoons in China – the effects of disruptive transitions on a struggling business, and the massive transformations wrought by computers. Both these areas are under-represented in previous studies of the medium, and […]