CMST 24905/34905 & EALC 24905/34905

Agitation and Propaganda: Cinema in Wartime Japan and its Territories 

Instructor: Michael Raine

Office Hours: WB301C Wednesday 3-5

Screenings:   Tuesday 7:00 – 10:00

Class meeting: Monday, Wednesday 1:30 – 2:50

 

Course requirements: participation / presentation / posting / paper

 

Required text:

Peter B. High.  The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Year War, 1931-1945 (Wisconsin UP: 2003) (Seminary Coop)

 

All other readings available on Chalk 

Week I    March 29: Foreign Cinema and Japanese Film Culture

Screening: Triumph of the Will (dir: Leni Riefenstahl, 1935)

Readings:

Richard Taylor.  "Propaganda and Film"

Brian Winston.  "Triumph of the Will: Reinterpretation of Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi-era film"

Siegfried Kracauer. "The Mass Ornament"

 

Week II   April 6: A German-Japanese Coproduction

Screening: The New Earth (Arnold Fanck / Itami Mansaku, 1937)

Readings:

Peter B. High.  The Imperial Screen ch. 1, 2, 4

Janine Hansen.  "The New Earth (1936/37): A German-Japanese Misalliance in Film"

 

Week III  April 12: Monumental Cinema

Screening: 47 Ronin, pt. 2 (dir: Mizoguchi Kenji, 1942)

Readings:

Darrell William Davis.  "Approaching the Monumental Style"

Darrell William Davis.  "Genroku Chushingura (1941-1942)" 

 

Week IV   April 19: Film Art and the "Kokumin Eiga"

Screening: There Was a Father (dir: Ozu Yasujiro, 1942) [Cobb 425]

Readings:

Peter B. High.  The Imperial Screen ch. 9, 10

David Bordwell.  "There Was a Father"

 

Week V    April 26: Wartime Melodrama / Continental Romance

Screening: China Nights (Fushimizu Osamu, 1940)

Readings:

Peter B. High.  The Imperial Screen ch. 7, 8

Michael Baskett.  "Imperial Acts: Japan Performs Asia"

 

Week VI   May 3: Colonial Cinema: Korea

Screening: Springtime on the Peninsula (dir: Lee Byong-il, 1941)

Readings:

Michael Baskett.  "From Film Colony to Film Sphere"

 

*** May 7: Term Paper High Concept due ***

 

Week VII  May 10: Wartime (Training) Documentaries

Screening: Fighting Soldiers (1939) / Youth Corps of the Sky (1941) / Can You Become a Pilot? (1943)

Readings:

Peter B. High.  The Imperial Screen ch. 3

Siegfried Kracauer. "Propaganda and the Nazi War Film"

Abe Mark Nornes.  "Stylish Charms: When Hard Style Becomes Hard Reality" and "Editing Under Pressure: Kamei Fumio"

 

Week VIII May 17: Spectacular Action and the Kokumin Eiga

Screening: The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya (dir: Yamamoto Kajiro, 1942)

Readings:

Peter B. High.  The Imperial Screen ch. 5, 6

 

*** May 21: Bibliographic / Filmographic project due ***

 

Week IX   May 24: Colonial Cinema: Ri Koran, Man'ei, and Taiwan

Screening: Sayon’s Bell (dir: Shimizu Hiroshi, 1944) [Cobb 425]

Readings:

Peter B. High.  The Imperial Screen ch. 11, 12

John Dower.  "The Pure Self"

Shelley Stephenson. "Her Traces Are Found Everywhere- Shanghai, Li Xianglan, and the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere"

 

Week X    May 31: Kokumin Eiga as Nihilist Spectacle

Screening: Battle Troop (dir: Yamamoto Kajiro, 1944) [Cobb 425]

Readings:

Peter B. High.  The Imperial Screen ch. 13, 14

John Dower.  "The Demonic Other"

 

*** June 7: Term Paper Due ***