Welcome to Kinema Club
Welcome to the website of Kinema Club, a long-standing, international but informal group devoted to the study of Japanese moving image media. Kinema Club was started precisely to share knowledge about Japanese cinema, so this site serves both to introduce our activities, such as the KineJapan mailing list and our conferences and workshops, as well promote information and thinking about films, research, bibliography, and education.
Japanese Film Gets Respect in '97 (1997 in Review)
1997 was certainly a year to remember for the Japanese cinema. Imamura Shohei’s The Eel (“Unagi”) and Kitano Takeshi’s Hana-Bi captured grand prizes at two of the world’s top three film festivals (Cannes and Venice respectively) and Miyazaki Hayao’s ...
Read moreHana-Bi (Fireworks)*
Kitano’s Inner Lives Bloom in ‘Hana-Bi’
After winning the coveted Golden Lion at last year’s Venice Film Festival for his new film Hana-Bi, Kitano Takeshi boasted of his exploit to the sports papers in typical Beat Takeshi fashion: “I am the master!”
The statement was certainly the kind...
Read moreCure*
A ‘Cure’ for Repression
Mamiya (Hagiwara Masato), the serial killer in Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s brilliantly chilling Cure, keeps asking the same simple question of everyone he meets: “Who are you?”
They give him their usual answers–school...
Read moreAn Obsession
A Stolen Gun Links Murder and Love
In only the year and a half since exploding on to the feature film scene with his shocking portrait of alienated youth, Helpless (1996), the prolific Aoyama Shinji has already turned out three more movies,...
Read moreTo Love
Spiritual Aims and Worldly Choices
Launched to commemorate Nikkatsu’s return to production after surviving bankruptcy proceedings, To Love recalls elements of the rich tradition of Japan’s longest running film company (since 1912, to be exact).
Not only do we enjoy seeing the faces of such old Nikkatsu stars as...
Read morePostman Blues*
‘Postman’ Rings with High Action
“Does your heart ever thump with excitement like it did when you were a kid?” The yakuza Noguchi (Horibe Keisuke) poses this question to his childhood friend Sawaki (Tsutsumi Shin’ichi) at the beginning of Postman Blues, but it could equally be directed at the audience...
Read more2 Duo*
The Bitter Reality of Japanese Youth
Why can’t we call a fiction film a documentary? Both genres use the same film stock, chemically recording real people engaging in real actions before the camera. What difference does it make that it’s “only acting” in fiction? Don’t we all act to some degree in our everyday lives?
These questions seemed to confront...
Read moreThe Princess Mononoke*
A Spirited Battle for Nature
It is testimony to the importance of animation in the Japanese film world that the most successful filmmaker in any genre in the last thirteen years - both financially and critically - has without a doubt been Miyazaki Hayao. His epic tales of chivalry and the powers of nature, speaking to...
Read moreTokyo yakyoku
Orchestral Score of Tokyo Life
The city symphony was one of the hallmarks of classical film, as directors such as Walter Ruttmann, Dziga Vertov and Rene Clair tried to weild all the tools the new...
Read moreSuzaku*
Betting On a Long Shot
Kawase Naomi’s rise to stardom has been nothing less than astronomical. Just a year ago, she was known only to experimental film aficionados as a talented 8mm filmmaker who won of a couple of prizes at the Image Forum Festival and the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (where I helped...
Read morePages
