Professor: Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto

Class: W 2:30-4:20 23 PH

Office Hours: T 2:30-3:30, W 1:30-2:30/661 PH

Phone: 5-2314

E-mail: mitsuhiro-yoshimoto@uiowa.edu

In this seminar we will reexamine scholarship on Japanese cinema, and review critical issues in film and cultural studies which at first may not seem directly related to, yet in the end turn out to be essential for any serious understanding of Japanese cinema. As you can see in the subtitle of the seminar and in the course schedule, only a few limited aspects of critical problems and problematics coalescing into the sign "Kurosawa" will be dealt with this semester. Three core questions to be explored are: (1) how to conceptualize Japanese film history; (2) how to understand the notion of authorship; (3) how to deal with genres in Japanese cinema.

At the beginning of each meeting, I will briefly explain, in 5-10 minutes, the significance of the general topic for that day and contextualize it in the overall structure of the seminar. This introduction is followed by the student presentation on the assigned readings. The presentation should be succinct, no more than 10 minute long, clearly articulating the most pertinent issues or questions which need to be explored further in class. This presentation becomes a starting point for our class discussion lasting about 40 minutes. After 10 minute break, we will spend the rest of the class period (40 minutes) to discuss the film in relation to the assigned readings and the critical questions raised in the preceding class discussion. There will be no formal presentation on the film, but students will be asked to take turns at leading the discussion every week.

1) Weekly reading and assignments. It does not make any sense to meet every week and spend two hours talking about the texts which you have not read or watched thoroughly. Even when you are not doing a presentation or leading a discussion, be prepared. Come to class with notes, questions, comments, etc. More items may be added to the reading list later in the semester.

2) Research paper: 25-page paper for graduate students; 15-page paper for undergraduate students. The paper outline and bibliography are due on March 1. The final paper is due in my Phillips Hall mailbox (651 PH) by 1 p.m., May 9. No late paper accepted. Graduate students who can read Japanese are expected to make use of our library’s extensive Japanese cinema book collection.

Class participation and presentation (30%); Research paper (70%)

I will talk about the availability of books and films at our first meeting.

Week 1/Jan 19: Introduction

Week 2/Jan 26

Readings: Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs; Noël Burch, To the Distant Observer, pp. 11-139

Film: A Page of Madness (Kinugasa Teinosuke, 1926)

Week 3/Feb 2

Film: Late Spring (Ozu Yasujiro, 1949)

Week 4/Feb 9: No Class

Week 5/Feb 16

Readings: Burch, To the Distant Observer, pp. 217-246; Darrell Davis, Picturing Japaneseness, pp. 107-130; Donald Kirihara, Patterns of Time: Mizoguchi and the 1930s, pp. 137-157

Film: Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (Mizoguchi Kenji, 1939)

Week 6/Feb 23

Readings: Burch, To the Distant Observer, pp. 271-323; Donald Richie, The Films of Akira Kurosawa, pp. 115-124

Film: Throne of Blood (Kurosawa Akira, 1957)

Week 7/March 1

Readings: Kuan-Hsing Chen, "Taiwanese New Cinema"; Chow, Primitive Passions, pp. 4-52; Stephen Crofts, "Concepts of National Cinema"; Fredric Jameson, "Notes on Globalization as a Philosophical Issue"

Film: Chungking Express (Wong Kar-Wai, 1994)

Week 8/March 8

Readings: André Bazin, "La Politique des auteurs"; John Hess, "La Politique des auteurs," Part 1; Andrew Sarris, "Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962"

Film: TBA

Week 9/March 22

Readings: Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author"; Michel Foucault, "What Is an Author?"; Stephen Heath, "Comment on ‘The Idea of Authorship’"; Peter Wollen, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema

Film: TBA

Week 10/March 29

Readings: Stephen Crofts, "Authorship and Hollywood"; James Goodwin, Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema; Peter Lehman, ; Maureen Turim, The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast, pp. 1-26

Film: The Sun’s Burial (Oshima Nagisa, 1960)

Week 11/April 5

Readings: Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography; Philippe Lejeune, On Autobiography, pp. ; Stephen Prince, The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa, pp. 3-31

Film: Dreams (Kurosawa Akira, 1990)

Week 12/April 12

Readings: Rick Altman, Film/Genre, pp. 1-48; Tom Ryall, "Genre and Hollywood"

Film: TBA

Week 13/April 19

Readings: Joseph Anderson and Donald Richie, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, pp. 315-331; Burch, To the Distant Observer, pp. 151-153; David Desser, "Toward a Structural Analysis of the Postwar Samurai Film," in Reframing Japanese Cinema

Film: Sleepy Eyes of Death: Sword of Fire (Misumi Kenji, 1965)

Week 14/April 26

Readings: Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, "Seven Samurai"

Film: Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954)

Week 15/May 3: No Class