The Aesthetics of Shadow: Lighting and Japanese Cinema

July 20, 2015 @ 2:30 pm

The Aesthetics of Shadow: Lighting and Japanese Cinema

Daisuke Miyao

Language: English

Pages: 400

ISBN: 0822354225

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


In this revealing study, Daisuke Miyao explores "the aesthetics of shadow" in Japanese cinema in the first half of the twentieth century. This term, coined by the production designer Yoshino Nobutaka, refers to the perception that shadows add depth and mystery. Miyao analyzes how this notion became naturalized as the representation of beauty in Japanese films, situating Japanese cinema within transnational film history. He examines the significant roles lighting played in distinguishing the styles of Japanese film from American and European film and the ways that lighting facilitated the formulation of a coherent new Japanese cultural tradition. Miyao discusses the influences of Hollywood and German cinema alongside Japanese Kabuki theater lighting traditions and the emergence of neon commercial lighting during this period. He argues that lighting technology in cinema had been structured by the conflicts of modernity in Japan, including capitalist transitions in the film industry, the articulation of Japanese cultural and national identity, and increased subjectivity for individuals. By focusing on the understudied element of film lighting and treating cinematographers and lighting designers as essential collaborators in moviemaking, Miyao offers a rereading of Japanese film history.

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THE AESTHETICS OF SHADOW Lighting and Japanese Cinema DAISUKE MIYAO Duke University Press Durham and London 2013 © 2013 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Designed by Heather Hensley Typeset in Arno Pro by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. ISBN-13: 978-0-8223-9966-7 (electronic) For Dica CONTENTS

shadows on a shoji screen. A 35 mm print of Lamb is preserved at the National Film Center, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. 117. Tanaka Junichiro, Shochiku shichijunen shi, 246. 118. Nomura Hotei, “Nihon no eiga o tsukuritai,” 24. 119. Tanaka Junichiro, Shochiku shichijunen shi, 247. 120. Nagayama, Shochiku hyakunenshi honshi, 562; Tanaka Junichiro, Nihon eiga hattatsu shi I, 349–50. 121. Nagayama, Shochiku hyakunenshi honshi, 562. 122. Ibid. Ushihara Kiyohiko even insists that it was

Kazuo to Yamada Isuzu: Senjika ni okeru romantishozumu no koryu” [Hasegawa Kazuo and Yamada Isuzu: The emergence of romaticism in wartime]. In Nihon eiga to nashonarizumu 1931–1945 [Japanese cinema and nationalism 1930–1945], ed. Iwamoto Kenji, 157–84. Tokyo: Shinwa sha, 2004. Shinbun shusei Taisho hennenshi, 1917–1 [Periodical history of Taisho through newspapers, 1917, volume 1]. Tokyo: Meiji Taisho Showa Shinbun Kenkyukai, 1980–87. Shinkokugeki, ed. Shinkokugeki goju nen [Fifty years of

Yet to me it is more interesting to think about the simultaneity (“coeval modernity”) through which directors and cinematographers in Germany and Japan in the late 1920s to early 1930s became intrigued by the sense of tactility in the visual medium than it is to clarify who was influenced by whom. Moreover, it is fascinating to wonder how those filmmakers negotiated with the conditions of film production and reception while they pursued the diverse potentiality of lighting in cinema. As I have

formulation of shared Japanese imaginaries or the dominant aesthetic expression of Japan under the militarist control of cinema. There are some explanations for the complexity of the aesthetics of shadow. There were Japanese cinematographers who adored the low-key lighting in Hollywood cinema. They despaired at the limited material conditions in Japanese cinema. Exploration of the documentary style occurred within the confines of that ambivalent situation. There was also a strong rivalry between

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