Cinema 103
Suffering of Ninko
By Jasper Sharp. Ninko is a zealous young Buddhist monk of the Edo era. The cause of his suffering, his cross to bear so to speak, is that he is catnip to the ladies. And oh, how he suffers! A simple trip into town on his daily alms round runs the risk of him being […]
Books: Coproducing Asia
By Jasper Sharp. Stephanie DeBoer’s scholarly study Coproducing Asia: Locating Japanese-Chinese Regional Film and Media is not the general overview of Asian co-productions that its title might suggest. Its focus is more on the construction of a new cinematic and televisual idea of “Asia” in the post-war and post-colonial era. It details how forces within […]
Books: The Early Miyazaki
By Andrew Osmond. It’s been only months since the publication of Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli’s Monster Princess, an anthology of papers about Miyazaki’s fantasy blockbuster (reviewed here). Today Bloomsbury releases another Miyazaki book, Hayao Miyazaki: Exploring the Early Work of Japan’s Greatest Animator. This one’s by a solo writer, Raz Greenberg, who’s written on […]
Go to Hell Bastards!
by Jeremy Clarke. A private eye gets caught in the middle of a Tokyo gang war, when two gun-running yakuza clans are ripped off by a third. Made by cult director Seijun Suzuki at Nikkatsu in 1963, Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! was also his first to feature Jo Shishido in a leading […]
Books: Gaijin at Ghibli
By Motoko Tamamuro. There are plenty of books written about Studio Ghibli, although it is difficult to tell how well they sell. Hayao Miyazaki’s collected writings seem to do well enough for Viz Media, but producer Toshio Suzuki’s memoirs only limped out from a small, expensive academic press. Perhaps these diminishing returns explain why Stephen […]