News and Opinion

Donald Richie and Transnational Japanese Cinema

KaigaiShinshutsu

Donald Richie, one of the most important introducers of Japan and its cinema, passed away about this time three years ago. The following July, Iwamoto Kenji hosted a symposium on Donald at Waseda University. I talked about the famous Japanese film history he produced with Joseph Anderson, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry. While noting its problems, especially its orientalism and Cold War worldview, I also pointed out how its own stance of being other to Japanese film culture enabled it to provide a depiction of that culture, especially of such seemingly innocuous phenomena as the state of an average movie theater, that Japanese sources could not offer. In the end, I argued that, while Richie himself was not innocent of othering Japan, his decision to himself remain other to Japan—for instance, refusing to assimilate—was itself often productive.

That essay, plus some others presented that day, have been combined with many other articles (most composed as part of a series of workshops Iwamoto was holding), to create the anthology: 

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