Powers of the Real: Cinema, Gender, and Emotion in Interwar Japan

摘要

Diane Wei Lewis's beautifully written book on interwar cinema in Japan argues that the years following the Great Kanto Earthquake (1923) were charged with a particular emotive mood that characterized certain modes of presentation, representation, and communication as feminine. As Lewis notes, some scholars have approached the topic of cinema in Japan's interwar period to assess the dissemination of images of Westernized modernity. The innovative contribution of this book is connecting cinema culture of the era to other arts and culture production and reception, tracking "how the rise of the commercial media culture in a time of national crisis drew intensive scrutiny to the affects and emotions" (p. 4) associated with the rapid changes in everyday life occasioned by, or occurring alongside, the Great Kanto Earthquake.