“…We should not forget that there have been and are, even now, very active international flows in Japan of images, stories, iconographies and theories. As many papers in this volume note, even films considered as milestones of Japanese National Cinema were clearly exposed to foreign influences, such as those of Kurosawa Akira (Martinez 2018), Mizoguchi Kenji and Ozu Yasujirō (Centeno Martín 2018), Yoshida Yoshishige (De Vargas 2019) or Kawase Naomi (Schoneveld 2019). Most of the articles included in this Issue question whether external influences and Japanese film uniqueness are compatible or not, or to what extent Japanese specificity is compromised by foreign codes of representation.…”