Book Reviews Reviews

Book Review: No Borders No Limits (2007) by Mark Schilling

My thoughts and admiration for 's work have already been shared in the review of “Art, Cult and Commerce“. In that regard, continuing with his bibliography was inevitable, and the fact that the present book deals with the oldest Japanese motion picture studio, and particularly its Action Cinema period, made its appeal even more intense. Even more so, since, during the latest years, there seems to be a renewal of interest regarding the genre, especially through the home video releases of companies like Arrow and Eureka.

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The book begins with the history of , focusing on the period from the late 50s until the early 60s, when the Nikkatsu Action genre started, flourished and declined. The second part deals with the main male protagonists of those movies, presenting detailed biographies of Yujiro Ishihara, Akira Kobayashi, Keiichiro Akagi and Tetsuya Watari, highlighting the concept of the Sun Tribe and the importance of the film that started it all, “Season of the Sun”. The third chapter does the same with the female protagonists, namely Mie Kitahara, Ruriko Asaoka, Izumi Ashikawa and Meiko Kaji.

The third chapter concludes the protagonists biographies with Joe Shishido, Hideaki Nitani, Nobuo Kaneko, Tamio Kawachi, Hideki Takahashi and Tatsuya Fuji. The rather lengthy interview Schilling and Mamiko Kawamoto conducted with Shishido is probably the most enjoyable part of the book, with him not pulling any punches in his answer while exhibiting a very amusing pride regarding his former star status.

The last part deals with the directors, Toshio Matsuda, Koreyoshi Kurahara, Seijun Suzuki and Yasuharu Hasebe including another very interesting interview, with the first one.

Through these rather detailed portraits, Schilling succeeds fully in presenting the history of Nikkatsu Action Cinema, using one of the most “popular” concept in historic research, which states that history actually revolves around particular individuals. Despite some measure of repetition, particularly regarding specific movies (of which Schilling actually apologizes in the ending of his foreword) the book pages flow like water, through Schilling's simple but very rich and informative writing, with the complete lack of (back) notes adding to this sense. The many and occasionally full-page photographs that include theatrical posters, photos of the people of interest and captions from the movies also add to the overall presentation, while the pocket-size of the edition makes the book very easy to handle.

Lastly, the book is also quite useful individually as a tool of reference for all the key players featuring in its pages.

Not much more to say, “” is another must-read for every fan or student of Japanese cinema, and a great companion to all these DVD releases of Nikkatsu Action movies that are available at the moment.

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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