Love and Politics – The Japanese New Wave
Abstract
Loska presents a review of films that are classified as belonging to the Japanese new wave (nuberu bagu). He notices that the popular comparisons with the French nouvelle vague only show superficial similarities that suggest work based on imitation and lacking in originality. However the work of Japanese directors coming from the 1960s generation is marked by exceptional and innovative combination of the erotic with the political, and the historical context that is entirely different from the European one. In the case of the Japanese new wave we are not dealing with a shared or consistent enterprise, rather we find similar main themes and leitmotivs (interestingly some of the artists did not like to use the label of nuberu bagu, and provocatively rejected the legitimacy of its usage). In the films made by this generation one can notice a certain dislike of the classic film based on an impression of reality. Rather the artists like to use non-linear plot, the breaking of the space-time continuity and disturbing the mechanisms of identification, and what follows - the use of distancing techniques creating a defamiliarization effect. The way members of this generation deal with the problem of subjectivity also indicates shared spirituality and sensitivity.
Keywords:
nuberu bagu, Japanese new wave, defamiliarization effect, Japanese cinemaReferences
Burch Noël, To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema, University of California Press, Berkeley 1979, s. 327.
Google Scholar
Desser David, Eros plus Massacre. An Introduction to Japanese New Wave Cinema, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1988, s. 52, 200.
Google Scholar
Fisher Sorgenfrei Carol, Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-Garde Theatre of Shūji and Postwar Japan, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu 2005.
Google Scholar
Goodman David, Japanese Drama and Culture in the 1960s: The Return of the Gods, M.E. Sharpe, Amonk 1988.
Google Scholar
Hunter Jack, Eros in Hell: Sex, Blood and Madness in Japanese Cinema, Creation Books 1998, s. 33-64.
Google Scholar
Masumura Yasuzō and the Cinema of Social Consciousness, University of California, Berkeley 2007, s. 73, 78, 83 (nieopublikowana praca doktorska).
Google Scholar
McDonald Keiko, Time, Sex, and Politics in Yoshida’s Eros plus Massacre, w: tejże, Cinema East: A Critical Study of Major Japanese Films, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Rutherford 1983, s. 176-179.
Google Scholar
Mellen Joan, Waves at Genji's Door: Japan Through its Cinema, Pantheon, New York 1976, s. 294-300, 343-352.
Google Scholar
Raine Michael, Modernization Without Modernity: Masumura Yasuzō’s “Giants and Toys” (1958), w: Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, red. A. Phillips, J. Stringer, London: Routledge 2007, s. 164.
Google Scholar
Raine Michael, Youth, Body, and Subjectivity in the Japanese Cinema, 1955-1960, University of Iowa 2002.
Google Scholar
Sharp Jasper, Behind the Pink Curtain, FAB Press, Surrey 2008, s. 87, 93-94, 107-118.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2008.107.706.93
Google Scholar
The Cambridge Guide to Asian Theatre, red. James R. Brandon, Cambridge 1993, s. 157-159.
Google Scholar
Turim Maureen, The Films of Ōshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast, University of California Press, Berkeley 1998, s. 43-44.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520918283
Google Scholar
Wada Natto, The ‘Sun Tribe’ and Their Parents, w: Kon Ichikawa, red. J. Quandt, Cinémathèque Ontario, Toronto 2001, s. 195.
Google Scholar
Yoshimoto Mitsuhiro, Logic of Sentiment. The Postwar Japanese Cinema and Questions of Modernity, University of California, San Diego 1993, s. 97 (nieopublikowana praca doktorska).
Google Scholar
Żeromska Estera „Post-shingeki” - awangardowy nurt w XX-wiecznym teatrze i dramacie japońskim. Powstanie i rozwój w latach sześćdziesiątych, „Japonia” 1996, nr 6, s. 45-55.
Google Scholar
Authors
Krzysztof Loskakwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Jagiellonian University Poland
Profesor UJ; zajmuje się kulturą popularną, postmodernizmem, literaturą współczesną i kinem gatunkowym. Autor m.in. Encyklopedii filmu science fiction (2004), Tożsamości i mediów (2006).
Statistics
Abstract views: 22PDF downloads: 11
License
Copyright (c) 2010 Krzysztof Loska

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The author grants the publisher a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY 4.0) to use the article in Kwartalnik Filmowy, retains full copyright, and agrees to identify the work as first having been published in Kwartalnik Filmowy should it be published or used again (download licence agreement). The journal is published under the CC BY 4.0 licence. By submitting an article, the author agrees to make it available under this licence.
In issues from 105-106 (2019) to 119 (2022) all articles were published under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. During this period the authors granted a royalty-free non-exclusive licence (CC BY-ND 4.0) to use their article in „Kwartalnik Filmowy”, retained full copyright, and agreed to identify the work as first having been published in our journal should it be published or used again.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Krzysztof Loska, Memory, Performance and Affects – Genocide in the Films by Joshua Oppenheimer , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 111 (2020): Senses and Affects
- Krzysztof Loska, „Tropical Malady”, or on Humans, Animals and Spirits in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s film , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 110 (2020): Beyond Human Being
- Krzysztof Loska, Journey to the New World. Cinematic Ethnographic Fiction in Post-Colonial Perspective , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 107 (2019): Journey, (E)migration, Pilgrimage
- Krzysztof Loska, Apichatpong Weerasethakul – About Politics and Spectres , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 105-106 (2019): Cinema and Political Transformation
- Krzysztof Loska, Architecture and Japanese Colonialism – Cinematic Image of Cityscape in Occupied Seoul , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 109 (2020): Architectural Space in Film
- Krzysztof Loska, Histories of Polish Migrants in European Cinema , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 109 (2020): Architectural Space in Film
- Krzysztof Loska, From the Point of View of Indigenous Peoples: Film as a Tool of Decolonization in Canada , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 116 (2021): Cinema and Social Identity
- Krzysztof Loska, Life in the Shadow of a Nuclear Power Plant (Fukushima – Ten Years Later) , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 114 (2021): Contamination, Dirt, Flaw
- Krzysztof Loska, Oscar Micheaux and the Beginnings of African-American Cinema , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 117 (2022): Unknown/Hidden Cinema
- Krzysztof Loska, Lav Diaz, Revolution and Messianic Time , Kwartalnik Filmowy: No. 123 (2023): Pace and Rhythm