Contemporary Japanese Cinema Since Hana-Bi

This book studies the key genres in contemporary Japanese cinema through analysis of their key representative films. It considers both those films whose generic lineage is clearly definable (samurai, yakuza, horror) as well as the singularity of several recent trends in the country’s filmmaking (such as magic realist filmmaking).

This book looks at some of the key genres in Japanese cinema since 1997. In several cases it considers in detail the ways in which individual films have both drawn and departed from those films that have comprised the key works and trends in these generic categories, and in others it looks at some significant recent developments that have little real precedence in filmmaking in Japan. Through close textual analysis of representative films, the study seeks to elucidate the prevalence of repetition and variation in contemporary Japanese genre cinema, to understand some of the reasons behind this paradigm, and analyze where relevant how and to what extent new modes or generic groups fit into the schema. In so doing it seeks for the first time in English language discourse to offer an academic appreciation and overview of popular Japanese of the last two decades.