Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Junʼichirō on Cinema and "Oriental" Aesthetics

by Thomas Lamarre

In recent years, the impact of new media and new technologies has renewed interest in the emergence of cinema and film criticism. Yet studies to date have focused almost exclusively on western cinema and problems of western modernity. Shadows on the Screen offers a challenging new reevaluation of these issues. In addition to extensively annotated translations of the long-neglected film work of the celebrated Japanese writer, Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, LaMarre offers a series of commentaries with an original and sustained analysis of how Tanizaki grappled with the temporal paradoxes of non-western modernity in his film work. Written largely between 1917 and 1926, Tanizaki's film stories and screenplays continue to delight and disturb readers with their exploration of the racial and sexual perversion implicit in the newly cinematized modern world.

Genres: Japan, Japanese Literature

424 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Ad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tanizaki becomes a script consultant for the Taisho Motion Picture studios in Yokohama. He also becomes involved in the writing of screenplays and the production of films. The first scenario he wrote was "Amachua Kurabu" (Amateur Club), a comedy about would-be actors trying to stage a Kabuki play at the seaside. The director, Thomas Kurihara, had worked in Hollywood. The star of the film was none other than Tanizaki's sister-in-law and secret flame Seiko under the screen name Hayama Michiko. She not only appeared in bathing costume, but also flirted with the other men on the set, recalling the title character in "Naomi."

[Gyewon · Rating 4 out of 5]

love the threads of logic he made, and love the way he deals with the cinematic materials in a cinematic way...