Shohei Imamura (1997), is a book of essays about the celebrated Japanese film maker that was edited by James Quant was designed to accompany a traveling retrospective of the films of the director in Canada and America in 1997-1998. It was organized by Cinematheque Ontario (Toronto) and the Audio-Visual Department of The Japan Foundation (Tokyo). This retrospective was due to Imamura winning a second Plame d'Or at the 1997 Cannes International Film Festival for The Eel, his second (the first was in 1983 for The Ballad of Narayama) one of only three directors to accomplish such a feat-as pointed out in Quandt's Introduction.
This collection contains several essays by critics, an interview with Imamura, as well as translations of writing by Imamura. Most of these writings were collected from other sources so there is some repetition of analysis and summary of Imamura's films as well as commentary about his inspiration and methods as a director. However, there are many insightful comments and discussions of his films. One of the best pieces in the collection is Donald Richie's essay, "Notes for a Study on Shohei Imamura" from Richie's 1995 collection, Partial Views: Essays on Contemporary Japan. Richie makes an interesting point by stating that though Imamura's and Ozu's style and technique differ, they both have a concern for the natural and real as well as an obsession about the concept of being Japanese. Max Tessier's essay, "Shohei Imamura: Modern Japan's Entomologist," felt a bit repetitive after Richie's essay, but included commentary on The Ballad of Narayama, that was not included in Richie's essay. Again, there was repetition in Dave Kehr's essay, "The Last Rising Sun" from Film Comment in 1983, which looks at the career of Imamura up to his Cannes victory. Allan Casebier's essay "Images of Irrationality in Modern Japan: The Films of Shohei Imamura" is another look at Imamura's career from Film Criticism in 1983. Thus more recaps of films like the previous essays. However, there is an insightful section in the essay where he discusses the concept of "yugen" (the presence of of mystery and incomprehensibility in all things) in Japanese culture. Thus, he uses this concept to explore the films of Imamura. This is followed by a translated entry, "Shohei Imamura:Human, All Too Human" by Gilles Laprevotte from Amiens International Film Festival Catalogue 1996. This is notable because it makes reference to some of his later works such as Zegen (1987) and Black Rain (1989). One of the most enlightening entries in this collection is the interview between film maker Toichi Nakata and Imamura, in which the younger director's mentor talks about his past, films, and film school in detail. This is followed by a brief essay written by Imamura after hsi third film called "My Approach to Filmmaking," which underlines his interest in portraying people on the screen. Imamura then writes about his influences in the short piece "Traditions and Influences." Imamura explores the influence of his second mentor, after Ozu, Yuzo Kawashima in "The Sun Legend of a Country Boy." There is more about Kawashima in Imamura's short essay "My Teacher." Audie Bock, one of the trailblazing English historians of Japanese cinema, has written a short piece that places Iamaura in the context of the Japanese cinema written specifically for this collection, "Shohei Imaura: No Confucianist." Antoine de Baecque contributes a review of Profound Desire of the Gods with "Murder of the Pink Pig." While Yann Lardeau writes about The Ballad of Narayama in his piece "Ascent to the Beyond: The Ballad of Narayama." There is more on this film in Charles Tesson's essay "Pigs and Gods." The final essay was one of the more interesting for me, Linda C. Ehrlich's "Erasing and Refocusing: Two Films of the Occupation." In this essay, Ehrlich compares and contrasts Imamura's Pigs and Battleships with Masahiro Shinoda's 1984 MacArthur's Children, a film I have yet to see. Despite the repetition throughout the collection, it is an invaluable document since there is precious little written in English about the films of one of Japan's giants of cinema.
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