Overview

Combining film studies and ethnographic research methods within a memory studies framework, Coates examines the impact of cinema cultures on the everyday lives of viewers. Film Viewing in Postwar Japan draws from four years of interviews, participant observation, questionnaire surveys, and written communications with over 100 study participants in the Kansai region of Western Japan. This is an in-depth study of memories of cinema-going among the generations who regularly attended film theatres between 1945-1968, the peak period of production and cinema attendance in Japan. Through investigating the role of film viewership, broadly conceived, in the formation of a postwar sense of self, the reader will benefit from rare access to the voices of grass-roots viewers, who often tell a different version of cinema history and its effects than that available in extant scholarship.

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9781399501033

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Reviews

It is no longer be possible to talk about ethnographies of film without putting Jennifer Coates' work at the top of the list. This riveting work makes us feel what the movies of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema meant and how important they were to the people who saw them. --David Desser, University of Illinois One of the most personal scholarly books that I have ever read! Expanding the methods of oral history and memory studies, Jennifer Coates weaves an untold story of cinematic experiences in postwar Japan. Her interests are in listening to people and giving voices to their feelings. This is a work of a real humanist. --Prof. Daisuke Miyao, University of California, San Diego

Author Information

Jennifer Coates, Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies, University of Sheffield.

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