Japanese New Wave

The Japanese New Wave, or , is the term for a group of Japanese filmmakers emerging from the late 1950s through the early 1970s. The term also refers to their work, in a loose creative movement within Japanese film, from a similar time period.

History

David Desser in his Eros plus Massacre places the marginal comment:<blockquote>“Superficial comparisons between the Japanese New Wave cinema and the French New Wave, typically to imply greater integrity to the latter, have served the cultural cliché that the Japanese are merely great imitators, that they do nothing original. (...) To see the Japanese New Wave as an imitation of the French New Wave (an impossibility since they arose simultaneously) fails to see the Japanese context out of which the movement arose. (...) While the Japanese New Wave did draw benefits from the French New Wave, mainly in the form of a handy journalistic label which could be applied to it (the “nuberu bagu” from the Japanese pronunciation of the French term), it nevertheless possesses a high degree of integrity and specificity.”

Unlike the French nouvelle vague, the Japanese movement initially began within the studios, albeit with young, and previously little-known filmmakers. The term was first coined within the studios (and in the media) as a Japanese version of the French New Wave movement. Nonetheless, the Japanese New...
Read More