Description

In Japanese Cinema and Punk, Mark Player examines how the do-it-yourself ethos of punk empowered a new generation of Japanese filmmakers during a period of crisis and change in Japan's film industry.

Drawing on rare materials and first-hand interviews with key figures from the jishu eiga (self-made film)
tradition, including Ishii Gakuryu (formerly Ishii Sogo), Yamamoto Masashi, Tsukamoto Shin'ya, and Fukui Shozin, Player explores how punk's bricolage style was leveraged to create exciting intermedial film aesthetics. These aesthetics were influenced by rock music, graffiti art, street performance, handmade animation, television, and other mass media.

By considering the practical, phenomenological, and political ramifications of combining diverse media elements, Player offers in-depth analyses of films such as Burst City (1982), Robinson's Garden (1987), Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), and more. He further traces the changing sociocultural position of Japan's punk generation throughout the 1980s-from its euphoric early-80s peak to the growing disillusionment caused by its mainstream co-optation and convergence.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Anarchy in Japan
1. Apathy and Atrophy: The emergence of Japan's punk generation
2. Synergies and Analogues: Exchanges between self-made film and punk
3. Liberation and Capitulation: Burst City and the politics of musicality
4. Placemaking and Resistance: The competing mediascapes of Robinson's Garden
5. Assimilation and Symbiosis: Tetsuo: The Iron Man and the intermedial (cyber)punk body
6. Space and Feeling: The explosive sound of Pinocchio 964
Notes
References
Works Cited
Index

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 15 May 2025
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Extent 264
ISBN 9781350378575
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Series World Cinema
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Mark Player

Mark Player is a film scholar specialising in Japa…

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