Cinema of Kinoshita Keisuke

David Desser is Emeritus Professor, University of Illinois. He is a well-known scholar of Japanese cinema, author or editor of eight books on the subject. His latest publications are The Blackwell Companion to Japanese Cinema (2023) and, with Lindsay Coleman, Killers, Clients and Kindred Spirits: The Taboo Cinema of Shohei Imamura (2019). He has worked on a number of Blu-ray commentaries for Criterion (including Tokyo Story) and Arrow Academy, including a boxset of the films of Yoshida Kiju. Earl Jackson is Associate Professor Emeritus from the University of California, Santa Cruz and Professor Emeritus from the National Chiao Tung University. He is the author of Strategies of Deviance: Studies in Gay Male Representation (1995), and numerous essays on Japanese and Korean cinema, gender and sexuality, New Narrative writers, and the work of Samuel R. Delany. His forthcoming monograph is titled Critical Conditions: Theory and Practice in Japanese Cinema and he is writing a book entitled Templates for Trauma: Crisis and Significance in Japanese Genre Film.

• Introduction David Desser and Earl Jackson1. One Big Happy Family? The Social Relationships and Legacy of the Kinoshita-gumiLauri Kitsnik2. Reading Between the Lines: Contrary Messages in the Wartime FilmsEarl Jackson3. Morals and Camera Movements: Kinoshita Keisuke According to Yoshida YoshishigeDaisuke Miyao 4. Bold Kinoshita, Tender Kinoshita: Close-ups and Long ShotsLinda C. Ehrlich5. Living Memory: History and Experience in She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum and The Snow FlurryAlexander Jacoby6. Farewell to Joy and Sorrow: Revisiting Kinoshita’s ‘Chaotic’ PeriodWilliam Carroll7. The Lovelorn Plight of Ishizu Keizō: Music and Male Desire in Here’s to the Young Lady and The Tattered WingsMina Ku8. Chronicles of Love and HateMats Karlsson9. The Celebration of Being Useless through Food: Portrayals of Older Women in Danger Stalks Near and The Ballad of NarayamaYutaka Kubo10. The Image Becomes You: Representation and ‘Self”-understandingEarl Jackson11. Demystifying Mother: Mother-Daughter Relationships in A Japanese Tragedy and The Scent of IncenseMika Ko12. More Times of Joy and Sorrow – the Self-sequel and Late StyleDavid Desser13. Kinoshita’s Children: Memories of Kinoshita’s Films among Audiences of the Postwar EraJennifer Coates

A long overdue volume on one of Japan’s most important filmmakers, Desser and Jackson’s anthology mirrors the variety and complexity of Kinoshita Keisuke’s oeuvre that spanned many genres and media. It preserves a diversity of approaches and encourages us to ourselves explore a director who opens up new horizons on Japanese cinema.