Screen Studies: Japanese Golden Age

Catherine Russell's highly accessible book approaches Japanese cinema as an industry closely modelled on Hollywood, focusing on the classical period, from roughly 1930 to 1960. Respectful and thoroughly informed about the aesthetics and critical values of the Japanese canon, Russell is also critical of some of its ideological tendencies, and her analyses provide new insights on class and gender dynamics. Catherine Russell demystifies the canon of great Japanese cinema, treating it with fewer auteurist and Orientalist assumptions than many other scholars and critics.

Combining biographical information with discussions of the films' aesthetic strategies and cultural significance, David Bordwell questions the popular image of Ozu as the traditional Japanese artisan and examines the aesthetic nature and functions of his cinema.

Donald Richie, the internationally recognized authority, who did so much to introduce the work of directors of the calibre of Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Akira Kurosawa to the West, provides an introduction to Japanese cinema, offering both an up-to-date history and an investigation into the qualities of the jidai-geki (costume drama) and the gendai-geji (contemporary drama) that make Japanese film Japanese.

In A Hundred Years of Japanese Films, Richie offers an insider's look at the achievements of Japanese filmmakers, beginning in the late 1800s and finishing in the present.

The rape of a bride and the murder of her samurai husband are recalled from the perspectives of a bandit, the bride, the samurai's ghost and a woodcutter.

A tale of ambition, family, love, and war set in the midst of the Japanese Civil Wars of the sixteenth century.

An old couple visit their children and grandchildren in the city, but receive little attention.

A poor village under attack by bandits recruits seven unemployed samurai to help them defend themselves.

A crafty ronin comes to a town divided by two criminal gangs and decides to play them against each other to free the town.