The Hakubi Project

14th

:Global Type
:Tenure-track Type

Short Introduction

My research and teaching focus is on Japanese film and media. In my dissertation,which was later published as the monograph, Illusion of Realism: History of Soviet-Japanese Cinematic Interactions, 1925-1955 (Tokyo: Shinwasha, 2018), I present the concept of realism as a recurrent concern and the chief motivating force behind the interactions between Soviet and Japanese filmmakers, critics, and audiences. At Hakubi, I plan to extend my work on the 1950s, highlighting the decade as a transitional yet crucial moment in Japanese history, wherein different visions of the country’s future emerged and were negotiated by and through media. Issues of democracy (minshu-shugi) were among the ones most frequently discussed during this period. Film as a mass medium was manufactured and consumed “collectively,” and served as a space in which the role of the “common people” in the reconstruction of post-war Japan was debated. In my project, I hope to reach a more profound understanding of Japan’s complicated relationship with the concept and practice of “democracy” (i.e., people’s rule) through the study of independent “message films” and comedies that exhibit the early Cold War’s ideologies and politics.