Studies of Chinese Cinema in Japan

Abstract

Japanese interests in Chinese cinema go as far back as to the 1910s, when film magazines reported on the situation of Chinese cinema. Discussions of Chinese cinema began to flourish in the 1920s, when intellectuals wrote travelogue essays on Chinese cinema, particularly on Shanghai cinema. In the mid-1930s, more serious analytical discourses were presented by a number of influential contemporary intellectuals, and that trend continued until the end of WWII. Post-War confusion in Japan, as well as political turmoil in China, dampened academic interests of Japanese scholars on Chinese cinema somewhat, but since the re-discovery of Chinese cinema in the early 1980s with the emergence of the Fifth Generation, academic discussions on Chinese cinema resumed and flourished in the 1980s and the 1990s. In the past decade or so, interesting new trends in studies of Chinese cinema in Japan are emerging that include more transnational and comparative approaches, focusing not only on film text but the context of production, distribution, and exhibition. Moreover, scholars from outside of the disciplines of literature and film studies—such as cultural studies, history, and sociology—have begun to contribute to rigorous discussions of Chinese cinema in Japan.