"Using film texts drawn from the 1950s to the 1970s, Sasaki brilliantly and insightfully deconstructs the myth of Japan's postwar 'economic miracle,' recognizing the (inevitably) uneven growth along with the heterogeneity of experiences generated by high-speed economic expansion. He writes from the perspective of an insider, a kind of historico-anthropologist of the anthropocene, and under his magnanimous microscope we feel for the characters in these films and come to know their context—perhaps better than any work on Japanese cinema I have read. I feel like I learn something—about cinema, economics, and culture—on almost every page." — David Desser
