Book Reviews Reviews

Book Review: Art, Cult and Commerce: Japanese Cinema Since 2000 (2019) by Mark Schilling

Let me start with a personal note. I have been reading, writing, watching and obsessing with Asian cinema for about 15 years now and in that time frame, has always set the bar for me regarding writing about Japanese cinema through his reviews, interviews, feature articles and books. His style of writing is easy to read, to the point, without the complexities of academic texts or the unnecessary literary elements that so frequently torment contemporary reviews, and always very informative, highlighting the knowledge he has accumulated over decades of dealing with Japanese cinema. In that regard, it was a true pleasure to get the opportunity to read and review a book that collects some of his best writings of the last two decades (more than 60 interviews and hundreds of reviews).

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The most obvious asset of the book is that, at 482 pages and in a rather large format, it definitely is a value-for-money purchase (Amazon lists it at $28.99). Apart from that, the book offers a rather thorough look at the Japanese movie industry during the last two decades, as it includes texts about both famous films and ones that Schilling seems to have been the only one who has written about (at least in the English language). In that fashion, the review section provides an excellent and quite informed catalogue and reference-guide for a plethora of Japanese films of the last 20 years, while the best-of-the-year-lists that feature at the end of the book will definitely become part of the must-see selection of any fan of Japanese cinema. At the same time, it is also quite interesting to witness how Schilling's reviews have evolved through the years, with the obvious change being the decrease in word count and the more intense focus in the movie itself rather than its general context, a change that could be attributed to the fact that international knowledge about Japanese cinema is more significant now than what it was 20 years ago.

The sections that truly make the book stand out, however, are the first two, that include Schilling's essays and interviews. These parts are the ones that offer his rather uniquely informed perspective on Japanese cinema, both through his own life stories (the one about violence in particular is truly shocking) and the words of various key figures of the industry. Among the 60+ interviews, a number stand out. The ones with Haruki Kadokawa, Kyoko Kagawa (that focuses on her experiences working with Akira Kurosawa), Takuya Kimura, Masahiro Kobayashi, Takashi Miike, Nobuhiro Obayashi (whose quite lengthy interview, in essence,  presents the history of the studio system in Japan) and the one with Donald Richie, which puts a “face” to another great writer of Japanese cinema, were the most memorable, although all of them have something to offer.

The only fault I found in the book is the complete lack of photos, although the “difficulties” the Japanese industry always presents in these cases justify the fact, while Tomoki Watanabe's minimalist illustrations tone down even this element.

“Art, Cult and Commerce: Japanese Cinema Since 2000” is an excellent book, that functions, in equal measure, as a guide to Japanese cinema of the last two decades and a blueprint on how writing about cinema should be.

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

My name is Panos Kotzathanasis and I am Greek. Being a fan of Asian cinema and especially of Chinese kung fu and Japanese samurai movies since I was a little kid, I cultivated that love during my adolescence, to extend to the whole of SE Asia.

Starting from my own blog in Greek, I then moved on to write for some of the major publications in Greece, and in a number of websites dealing with (Asian) cinema, such as Taste of Cinema, Hancinema, EasternKicks, Chinese Policy Institute, and of course, Asian Movie Pulse. in which I still continue to contribute.

In the beginning of 2017, I launched my own website, Asian Film Vault, which I merged in 2018 with Asian Movie Pulse, creating the most complete website about the Asian movie industry, as it deals with almost every country from East and South Asia, and definitely all genres.

You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

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