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| HISTORY 347 |
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| HISTORY 347 |
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Week 2: Introduction to post-war Japanese cinema and Kurosawa Introduction to postwar Japanese cinema and Kurosawa, its early restructuring under the US Occupation, and the emergence of different film genres. The film to be shown this week is Yojimbo by Akira Kurosawa, the former doyen of Japanese cinema who died in 1998. Made in 1961, it encompasses much of what Kurosawa regarded as seminal to the Japanese popular cultural experience, (and arguably provides the blueprint for the development of the spaghetti western!). Seminar Question: Why was Yojimbo successful both at home and overseas? How was it different from earlier samurai films, and how did it influence other films in this genre? Can you argue that samurai dramas reflected contemporary issues? Or were they intentionally located outside of the modern era for other reasons? Reading: anonymous 'Yojimbo' (The Bodyguard). http://www.compusmart.ab.ca/kroyea/yuojimbo.htm David Desser 'Toward a Structural Analysis of the Postwar Samurai Film'. In Noletti and Desser (eds) Reframing Japanese Cinema: Author, Genre, History, Indiana Uni 1992. Brooks Grigson 'Kurosawa and the Spaghetti Western' http://www.baylor.edu/~Brooks_Grigson/papers/Kurosawa.html Tadao Sato 'Kurosawa Akira: A Teacher of Courage' Japan Echo Vol.25, No. 6, December 1998. Keiko MacDonald 'Popular Film'. In Powers and Kato (eds) Handbook of Popular Japanese Culture, Greenwood, 1989.
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