Japanese Cinema Between Frames

This book explores the rich complexity of Japan's film history by tracing how cinema has been continually reshaped through its dynamic engagement within a shifting media ecology. Focusing on techniques that draw attention to the interval between frames on the filmstrip, something that is generally obscured in narrative film, Lee uncovers a chief mechanism by which, from its earliest period, the medium has capitalized on its materiality to instantiate its contemporaneity. In doing so, cinema has bound itself tightly with adjacent visual forms such as anime and manga to redefine itself across its history of interaction with new media, including television, video, and digital formats. Japanese Cinema Between Frames is a bold examination of Japanese film aesthetics that reframes the nation's cinema history, illuminating processes that have both contributed to the unique texture of Japanese films and yoked the nation's cinema to the global sphere of film history.


Laura Lee is Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at Florida State University, USA.