Ozu International Essays on the Global Influences of a Japanese Auteur

by Stein, Wayne; DiPaolo, Marc

• ISBN13: 9781628922875
• ISBN10: 1628922877
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-03-12
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

In Japan and much of Europe, Ozu is widely considered to be one of the finest film directors who ever lived. While Ozu has a strong reputation in the West, his films are not as well-known or widely appreciated in the U.S. as they are elsewhere. A notable exception to this trend is film critic Roger Ebert, who recently wrote that Ozu is one of his “three or four” favorite directors. Also, moving beyond the view that Tokyo Story is a masterful exception in the Ozu canon, Ebert sees Ozu's films as “nearly always of the same high quality.” Ozu International will reflect on Ebert's view of Ozu by arguing that this director deserves broader recognition in the U.S., and that his entire canon is worthy of serious study.

With the recent release of more than 15 Ozu DVDs in the Criterion Collection, covering every phase of his career at least in part (including silent films, black-and-white talkies, and color films), Ozu International helps to fill a lingering gap in English-language scholarship on Ozu by giving this new generation of scholars a book-length forum to explore new critical perspectives on an unfairly neglected director. Contributions include specialists in Japanese culture, academics from a range of disciplines, and professional films critics.

Author Biography

Wayne Stein is Professor at the University of Central Oklahoma, USA, and teaches classes on Kurosawa, Japanese horror, and Vietnam War cinema. He has coauthored the readers Fresh Takes (2009) and Strategies and has written various chapters in books and encyclopedia entries on Asian American literature and Asian cinema.

Marc DiPaolo is Assistant Professor of English and Film at Oklahoma City University, USA, and is the author of War Politics and Superheroes and Emma Adapted (2007); editor of Godly Heretics: Essays on Alternative Christianity in Literature (2013) and Unruly Catholics: Faith, Progressivism, and Cultural Studies (2013).

Table of Contents

Part I: Ozu in Cultural Context: Considering Class, Gender and Domestic Spaces

Chapter 1: “Vanished Men, Complex Women: Gender, Remembrance, and Reform in Ozu’s Postwar Films” by Mauricio Castro, Purdue University, USA

Chapter 2: “Tokyo is a Nice Place: The Suburban, the Urban and the Space In-­-Between in Early Ozu” by John Berra, Tsinghua University, China

Chapter 3: I Was Born Middle-­-Class, But...: The Price of Modernity in Ozu’s Shoshimin eiga in the Early 1930s” by Woojeong Joo, Nagoya University, Japan

Chapter 4: “Social Fragmentation: Dealing with Divorce and Abortion in Tokyo Twilight” by Elyssa Faison, University of Oklahoma, USA

Chapter 5: "Re-­-evaluating Zen in Ozu’s Empty Spaces in Late Autumn” by Jeff Hammon, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Japan

Part II. Ozu’s International Reception and Influences

Chapter 6: “Ray Carney, Reader-­-Response Theory and the Problem of Ethical Spectatorship and ‘Foreign’ Films” by Marc DiPaolo, Oklahoma City University, USA

Chapter 7: “The Ozu Effect, Malick’s Tree of Life, and Other Art House Family Dramas: Too Slow to Handle?” by Dr. Isolde Vandee, LUCA - Faculteit Kunsten, Belgium

Chapter 8: "An Appreciation of the Pedagogy of Ozu’s Cinematic Style and Context in such Films as Early Spring” by Naomi Chiba, University of Southern Maine, USA

Chapter 9: “Ozu's Art Direction and Dress as Symbol: International Perspectives" by Brenda Wentworth, Saint Cloud University, USA and Sharon E. Cogdill, Saint Cloud University, USA

Chapter 10: “Ozu and the Poetics of Space: Enter into Yoko’s Room in Hou’s Café Lumière” by Tom Paulus, University of Antwerp, Belgium

Part III: The Spiritual and Universal: Death and Rebirth, Time and Transcendence in Ozu

Chapter 11: “Death and Duration in the Creation of Authentic Being in Toyko Story” by Jack Lichten, Sophia University, Japan

Chapter 12: “The Moment of Instability in Early Ozu: A Textual and Intertexual Analysis of Passing
Fancy” by Yuki Takimani, University of Tokyo, Japan

Chapter 13: "Ozu’s Good Morning: The Limits of Cinema and the Issue of Order” by Suzanne Beth, University of Montreal, Canada