Dreaming Movies: RIP Satoshi Kon (1963-2010)

Image from Ohayo/Good Morning (part of Ani*Kuri15) (Satoshi Kon, 2008) See the video embedded below

[...] Kon fully takes advantage of what makes animated films unique. [His film Paprika (2006)] is ultimately a dream about movies, as well as a movie about dreams. The way characters jump in and out of settings first made me think of Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr., perhaps the original virtual reality movie. One can also easily link Paprika to such films as David Cronenberg's eXistenZ. In another moment that may be a nod to Cronenberg, two of the characters jump into a television screen. Because this is a truly animated film, Kon creates a universe where a long office hallway and walls suddenly undulate with the solidity of a half-filled waterbed, characters in advertisements leap out into other billboards or out into the streets, and giant toy dolls threaten the planet.

It is the dense and detailed imagery that makes Paprika stand out. Frames are crowded with giant marching frogs, large appliances and living dolls. The goofy spirit of the film is close to the self-refererential work of the Fleischer Brothers' earlier work with Koko the Clown and Betty Boop. The story loops around itself like a mobius strip, with dreams and dreams within dreams.

Paprika, the character, dreams of a street where there are old fashion movie theaters, one of which shows Roman Holiday. Kon even has a character going to a multiplex that is showing nothing but Kon's previous features on each of the screens. Movies have informed Kon's films, so that Perfect Blue is an anime thriller that has reminders of Hitchcock, De Palma and Argento. Tokyo Godfathers, with both its plot about an abandoned baby and Christmas setting could well have been inspired by John Ford's Three Godfathers. While Kon has not cited specific films as influences on Paprika, he did agree with the observation that his new film was "like a collision of Hello Kitty and Philip K.Dick." [Peter Nellhaus, 'Aurora (Colorado) Asian Film Festival, Part 3', Coffee coffee and more coffee, June 3, 2007]

Film Studies For Free was very sad to hear of the untimely death at the age of 46 of Japanese  anime auteur Satoshi Kon. Paprika, the film Peter Nellhaus is referring to above, a complex and densely entertaining oneiric thriller, was one of FSFF's author's favourite animated films of recent years.

Kon directed his first film, Perfect Blue, in 1997, followed by Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, and the television series Paranoia Agent. A fifth film, The Dream Machine, is still in production at the time of his death.

Some great memorial linkage about Kon has been posted in the last few days by David Hudson. But there are not too many online scholarly studies of Kon's work yet, sadly, though FSFF is sure that will change. For now, then, here are some links to the very worthwhile resources and discussions that have been made freely accessible.

• Brendon Bouzard, John Lichman, and Keith Uhlich, '"He's the Internet": A Conversation on Satoshi Kon', The House Next Door Online,  June 27, 2008

• Grady Hendrix, 'Satoshi Kon's Theory of Animation', The New York Sun,June 27, 2008

• Noel Kirkpatrick, '“Then I’ll show you that starry, starry sky, like I promised I would.”', Media Milieus, August 24, 2010

• Alexander Kirst, 'Anchors Aweigh: The Aesthetic of Surface in the Films of Kon Satoshi', Honours Thesis, Wesleyan University, 2008

• Martin Lewis, 'Two Tastes of Paprika: Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel (trans. Andrew Driver), and Satoshi Kon's anime', Strange Horizons, July 2009 

• Meg Rickards , 'Screening Interiority: Drawing on the Animated Dreams of Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue', IM 2: 2006

• Jasper Sharp, 'Beyond Anime: A Brief Guide to Japanese Experimental Animation", Midnight Eye, 2003

Other Good Anime Resources:

• Thomas Lamarre, 'Platonic Sex: Perversion and Shôjo Anime (Part One)',  Animation 2006; 1; 45
• Annie Manion, 'Discovering Japan: Anime and Learning Japanese Culture', A Master's Thesis Submitted to the East Asian Studies Center, USC
• Caroline Ruddell, 'Breaking Boundaries The Representation of Split Identity in Anime', Animation Studies – Vol.2, 2007 
• Mickey Mouse and Animation Links, Film Studies For Free, November 18, 2008 
• On Japanese Cinema, Film Studies For Free, July 27, 2010 
• 'Imaginary and Fantastic': Hayao Miyazaki Studies, Film Studies For Free, November 23, 2009

On Japanese Cinema

Last updated: August 3, 2010

Film Studies For Free wanted to make sure its readers didn't miss the video embedded above. It's another great offering from Fora.tv, this time a very entertaining and informative interview with Donald Richie about his internationally celebrated work on Japanese cinema and culture. FSFF heard of this via David Hudson and the Japan Society Film Blog.

In addition, FSFF has assembled some links below to openly accessible and very high quality scholarship on Japanese cinema (including numerous full-length studies), with work by Donald Richie, and many other excellent items which are indebted to his studies of Japanese cinema.

This was quite a broad category to research online, so FSFF will inevitably have missed some good resources: suggestions for any high quality additions are, therefore, even more welcome than usual! (Update: See comments  below for some of these, including the tip to link to Eigagogo's bookmarks at Delicious which lists some further great resources).

•  Kaori Ashizu, 'Kurosawa’s Hamlet?', Shakespeare Studies 33 (1995): 71-99

• Sarah M. Ball, The Uncanny in Japanese and American Horror Film: Hideo Nakata’s Ringu and Gore Verbinski’s Ring, MA thesis, North Carolina State University, 2006  

• Colette Balmain, 'Inside the Well of Loneliness: Towards a Definition of the Japanese Horror Film', Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, Discussion Papers, 2006 

• Colette Balmain, '“Vengeful Virgins in White”: Female Monstrosity in Asian Cinema', in Niall Scott (ed), Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2004) [scroll down through pdf to p. 123]

• David Bordwell, Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988)

• David Bordwell, 'Review of Noël Burch's "To the Distant Observer"', Wide Angle vol. 3, no. 4 (1980): 70–73

• Mio Bryce, Christie Barber, James Kelly, Siris Kunwar and Amy Plumb, 'Manga and Anime: Fluidity and Hybridity in Global Imagery', Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, 2010

• Noël Burch, To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema (London : Scholar Press, 1979)

• Robert Castle, 'The Radical Capability of Rashomon', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 7 No. 33, October 2003

• Ryan Cooke, 'Review of Jay McRoy, Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema. Amsterdam and New York: Editions Rodopi B.V., 2008', Screening the Past,Issue 23, 2008

• Christopher J. Coyne, 'Culture, Common Knowledge and Post-Conflict Reconstruction', Journal of Intercultural Communication, No 13 (2007)

• Darrell William Davis, Saving Face: Spectator and Spectacle in Japanese Theatre and Film (LEWI Working Paper Series/David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, October 2004)

• Darrell William Davis, 'Reigniting Japanese Tradition with Hana-Bi', Cinema Journal 40, No. 4, Summer 2001

• Rayna Denison, 'On Susan J. Napier's From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West', Participations, Volume 6, Issue 2 (November 2009)

• Freda Freiberg, 'The Unkindest Cut of All? Some Reflections on the Recent Cinematic Release of the Uncut Version of Nagisa Oshima's Ai no corrida', Senses of Cinema, Issue 12, Feb-Mar 2001

• Freda Freiberg, 'Pale Flower', Senses of Cinema, Issue 55, 2010

• Freda Freiberg, 'Miyazaki's Heroines', Senses of Cinema, Issue 55, 2010

• New Jinshi Fujii, 'Films That Do Culture : A Discursive Analysis of Bunka Eiga, 1935-1945', Iconics 6, Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences, 2002

• New Hideaki Fujiki, 'Dual Persona : Onoe Matsunosuke as Japan's Early Cinema Star', Iconics 7, Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences, 2004

• Tag Gallagher, 'Mizoguchi and freedom', Screening the Past, Issue 13, 2001

• Aaron Gerow, 'One print in the age of mechanical reproduction: film industry and culture in 1910s Japan', Screening the Past, 2000 (11), 11 January 2000

• New Aaron Gerow, 'The Benshi's New Face : Defining Cinema in Taisho Japan', Iconics 3, Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences, 1994

• Andrew Grossman, 'Gohatto-or the End of Oshima Nagisa?', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 33, 2001 July

• New Masato Hase, 'Cinemaphobia in Taisho Japan : Zigomar, delinquent boys and somnambulism', Iconics 4, Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences, 1998

• New Kyoko Hirano, 'The Banning of Japanese Period Films by the American Occupation,' Iconics 1, Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences, 1987

• Lori Hitchcock, 'Third Culture Kids: A Bakhtinian Analysis of Language and Multiculturalism in Swallowtail Butterfly', Scope, February 2004

• Hikari Hori, 'Representing a Woman’s Story: Explicit Film and the Efficacy of Censorship in Japan', Sarai Reader 2005: Bare Acts

• Yuwen Hsiung, 'Kurosawa's Throne of Blood and East Asia's Macbeth', CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 6.1 (2004)

• Lee Wood Hung, 'Natural Culturalism in The Ballad of Narayama: A Study of Shohei Imamura's Thematic Concerns', Asian Cinema, Spring/Summer 2003

• Timothy Iles, 'Are We There Yet? Travelling Toward the Self in Contemporary Japanese Cinema', Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, 2007

• Mizuko Ito, 'The Gender Dynamics of the Japanese Media Mix', A position paper prepared for the workshop and conference on Girls 'n' Games, May 8-9, University of California, Los Angeles, 2006

• New Kenji Iwamoto, 'Film Criticism and the Study of Cinema in Japan：A Historical Study', Iconics 1, Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences, 1987

• Brian Jarvis, 'Anamorphic allegory in The Ring, or, seven ways of looking at a horror video', The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, 3, 2007

• Lei Jin, 'Silence and Sound in Kurosawa's Throne of Blood', CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 6.1 (2004) 

• Journal of the Imaginary and Fantastic Vol. 1.  No. 2.:  The Films of Hayao Miyazaki

• Sato Kenji, 'More animated than life', Japan Echo, Dec 1997; 24, 5; International Module pg. 50

• Chika Kinoshita, '"Choreography of desire: analysing Kinuyo Tanaka's acting in Mizoguchi's films', Screening the Past, Issue 13, 2001

• New Futoshi Koga, 'A Review of Pornographic Images in the 1970s in Japan: Centered Around Nikkatu Roman Porno Film"', Iconics 2, Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences, 1992

• Colleen A. Laird, 'Japanese cinema, the classroom, and Swallowtail Butterfly', Jump Cut, No. 52, Summer 2010

• Annie Manion, 'Discovering Japan: Anime and Learning Japanese Culture', A Master's Thesis Submitted to the East Asian Studies Center, USC

• Dolores Martinez, 'Where the human heart goes astray: Rashomon, Boomtown and subjective experience', Film Studies, Issue 11, Winter 2007

• Yuji Matson, The Word and The Image: Collaborations between Abe Kôbô and Teshigahara Hiroshi, Masters Thesis, University of Victoria, 2007 

• Bonnie Melchior, 'King Lear and Ran: Identity Translated and Transformed', East-West Connections: Review of Asian Studies Volume 5, Number 1 (2005) [scroll to p. 41 in PDF]

• New Kiseko Minaguchi, 'Yamamoto Satsuo's Haha no kyoku (Mother's Melody) : Making a Father's Story of Stella Dallas', Iconics 6, Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences, 2002

• Gary Morris, 'The Spirit Moves: The World of Kenji Mizoguchi',  Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 22, 1999

• New Hisashi Nada, 'An Aspect of the Reception of Avant Garde Films in Japan', Iconics 2, Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences, 1992

• New Hisashi Nada, 'The Little Cinema Movement in the 1920s and the Introduction of Avant-Garde Cinema in Japan', Iconics 3, Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences, 1994

• Lindsay Nelson, 'Ghosts of the Past, Ghosts of the Future: Monsters, Children, and Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema', Cinemascope, Issue 13, July-December 2009

• Eimi Ozawa , 'Remaking Corporeality and Spatiality: U.S. Adaptations of Japanese Horror Films, 49th Parallel, Conference Special Edition, Autumn 2006

• Chris Payne, 'Burying the Past: Nihonjinron and the Representation of Japanese Society in Itami's The Funeral', Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies, 1: 1 (2003), 13-20

• Michael Francis Phillips, 'A Cinematic Challenge to Modernity Critical Theory in Postwar Japanese Cinema: An Introduction to Fukasaku Kinji', eCommons@Texas State University, May 2009

• Donald Richie, Japanese Cinema: Film Style and National Character (New York: Anchor Books, 1961; Michigan Electronic Reprint 2004)

• Donald Richie, 'Expressionism in Film', Tokyo - Berlin / Berlin - Tokyo Exhibition Catalogue, Mori Art Museum, 2006

• Donald Richie, 'The Daughter of the Samurai: a German-Japanese co-production', Tokyo - Berlin / Berlin - Tokyo Exhibition Catalogue, Mori Art Museum, 2006

• Donald Richie, writer and film critic, Conversations With History: "Writing, Film, and Japan: An Expatriate's View," 9/21/01

• Juneko J. Robinson , 'Review: Jay McRoy (2007) Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Horror Cinema. Amsterdam: Rodopi', Film-Philosophy, 14.1, 2010 

• Caroline Ruddell, 'Breaking Boundaries The Representation of Split Identity in Anime', Animation Studies – Vol.2, 2007

• Chi-Yun Shin, 'Art of branding: Tartan "Asia Extreme" films', Jump Cut, No. 50, spring 2008

• Greg M. Smith, 'Critical reception of Rashomon in the West', Asian Cinema, Fall/Winter 2002

• Ayumi Suzuki, 'A nightmare of capitalist Japan: Spirited Away', Jump Cut, No. 51, spring 2009

• Donato Totaro, 'Tokyo Sonata: Flirting with the Fantastic: Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008', Offscreen Journal,Vol . 13, Issue 5, 2009

• William Tsutsui, 'Godzilla And Postwar Japan', East-West Connections: Review of Asian Studies Volume 5, Number 1 (2005) [Scroll to p. 1 in PDF]

• Paul Waley, 'Re-scripting the city: Tokyo from ugly duckling to cool cat', Japan Forum 18(3) 2006: 361–380

• Gregory A. Walle, Narrating the new Japan: Biograph's The Hero of Liao-Yang (1904) Screen 2006 47: 43-65

• Craig Watts, 'Blood Spear, Mt. Fuji: Uchida Tomu's Conflicted Comeback from Manchuria', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 33, July 2001

• Erica Lee Zilleruelo, Shakespeare by Any Other Word? Shakespeare's King Lear and Macbeth Reivented in the Films of Akira Kurosawa, Masters Thesis, Wichita State University, 2002

'Imaginary and Fantastic': Hayao Miyazaki Studies

Image from Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫, Mononoke-hime: Japan, 1997, 
directed by Hayao Miyazaki)

As Film Studies For Free's merry band of followers on Twitter already know, this morning brought the wonderful discovery of an openly-accessible special issue on the work of Hayao Miyazaki from the Journal of the Imaginary and Fantastic (Vol.1 No.2). As usual, direct links to all items are given below. Click here to check out all of FSFF's earlier posts on animation studies.

Vol. 1.  No. 2.  :  The Films of Hayao Miyazaki

Lucy Wright. Forest Spirits, Giant Insects and World Trees: The Nature Vision of Hayao Miyazaki. Rieko Okuhara. Walking Along With Nature: A Psychological Interpretation of 'My Neighbor Totoro'. Kozo Mayumia, Barry Solomon, Jason Chang. The Ecological and Consumption Themes of the Films of Hayao Miyazaki. James W. Boyd, Tetsuya Nishimura Shinto Perspectives in Miyazaki's Anime Film 'Spirited Away'. Aaron Sherwood Characterization, Narrative Structure and Mythopoeia in the Films of Hayao Miyazaki. John Gunston The Inverted Quest of Ashitaka: A Jungian Analysis of 'Princess Mononoke'. Christine Hoff Kraemer Between the Worlds: Liminality and Self-Sacrifice in 'Princess Mononoke'. Michie A. Suparman An Investigation into Audience Perception of 'Mononoke Hime'.

Jerry Chen. From Ashes to Stone: Development of Chihiro in 'Spirited Away'. Noriko T. Reider 'Spirited Away': Film of the Fantastic and Evolving Japanese Folk Symbols. Mohri. A Note on Family Size and Domestic Work in 'Spirited Away'. Interview: Midnight Eye interviews Hayao Miyazaki. Technical article: Jerome Chia-Horng Lin. Surprise As a Facial Expression in Animation: examples from Ghibli Studio animated films. Background article: Mio Bryce. 'School' in Japanese Children's Lives, as Depicted in Manga. Student work: Erlijne Runia @ Copenhagen University. Miyazaki's 'Mononoke Hime': The Analysis of a Myth. Student work: Petty Ho @ University of California, Berkeley. Depiction of Women & Girls in Miyazaki's Films - a visual survey.