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.
For Yamamoto, Life Is by the Reel (Interview with Yamamoto Masashi)
Yamamoto Masashi, the director of Junk Food and such internationally acclaimed films as Carnival in the Night (“Yami no kanibary,” 1982) and Robinson’s Garden (“Robinson no niwa,” 1987), is still a student at the age of 42. And it is not just because he is...
Read moreMobsters' Confessions*
Distrust and disclosure
Japanese cinema of the 1980s was dominated by film adaptations of popular manga comic books. The affinity was natural given how deeply indebted manga is to the movies, but by the eighties, the comics were less feeding off of film than the other way around. In serious decline, Japanese cinema desperately latched onto its now more popular offspring for any ideas...
Read moreJapanese 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...
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