Princess Iron Fan and the origins of Asian animation
Like most of you (I assume) I knew that Princess Iron Fan 鐵扇公主 (1941) was China’s first full-length animated film. Also like most of you I assume that you...
Category: Film
The Last Supper (2012): Xiang Yu Overthrows the Qin in order to…protect Diversity?
I’ve been listening to the lectures given by Prof. Ou Fan Leo Lee (李歐梵) for his Coursera course Classics of Chinese Humanities: Guided Readings from the C...
Delayed Reaction, or, I get mail.
In response to my review of The Last Samurai movie, I got the following email yesterday: The text reads: Message From: your mom Message: I read your review of &...
Atrocities/China-Japan/Current/Recent Events/Film/Historiography/Korea-Japan/Memory/Nationalism/Pedagogy/War/昭和
Memory Politics and Memory Drama
Jordan Sand’s A Year of Memory Politics in East Asia: Looking Back on the “Open Letter in Support of Historians in Japan” is immensely timely: I spent a f...
ASPAC 2014 Abstract: Japanese Historical Process in Anglophone Cinema
It’s that time of year again, when procrastinators do their taxes, spring cleaning, and summer abstract writing in one weekend! My proposed paper for ASPA...
Yes, I watched it.
As Jamie Noguchi said, I see these movies so you don’t have to: my review of 47 Ronin is up at HNN. As expected, it’s a blazing failure, with few de...
Red Chapel Ironies
I recently got around to watching the Red Chapel, the unusual guerrilla documentary by the Danish journalist Mads Brügger.1 The basic premise is a visit to Nort...
Turnbull Book on Ako
Stephen Turnbull, one of the most prolific and controversial writers on Japanese military history, has written a book on the 47 Samurai incident. The Samurai Ar...
Cultural Consumption and Comprehension
There’s an interesting article up at Japan Focus this week, “Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras: Cinema in Korea Under U.S. Occupati...
Film Festival
Just received this from friends at the Japanese American National Museum: The Japanese American National Museum is accepting film & video submissions for th...
St Sebastian Redux
At Danwei, a blog you must follow to keep up with China, “Donnie Yen Meditates on Violence” shows the Hong Kong movie star posed as the martyred Sai...
Modernization or Japanization? –The Movie “Homeless Angels” 1941
I had a chance to watch a Korean movie from the colonial period, called “Homeless Angels (집없는 천사, 家なき天使),” at the Korean Film Archive (KFA) in Susek...
1949 Banning Japanese Subtitles
On the second page of the June 25th issue of The Korean Free Press (자유신문 自由新聞) there is a very small article which shows how long the process of eliminating the...