Contents

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. List of Figures vii
4. Notes on the Contributors ix
5. 1 Introduction 1
6. 2 The Making of an Auteur: The Early Films (1958–1959) 21
7. PART I KILLERS
8. 3 Confronting America: Pigs and Battleships and the Politics of US Bases in Postwar Japan 41
9. 4 Insect Men and Women: Gender, Conflict and Problematic Modernity in Intentions of Murder 56
10. 5 Hidden in Plain Sight: The False Leads and True Mysteries of Vengeance Is Mine 75
11. 6 The Eel: Trauma Cinema 92
12. PART II CLIENTS
13. 7 The Insect Woman, or: The Female Art of Failure 115
14. 8 The Obscene in the Everyday: The Pornographers 139
15. 9 Shohei Imamura’s Profound Desire for Japan’s Cultural Roots: Critical Approaches to Profound Desires of the Gods 159
16. 10 “Products of Japan”: Karayuki-san, The Making of a Prostitute 177
17. 11 The Female Body as Transgressor of National Boundaries: The History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess 192
18. PART III KINDRED SPIRITS
19. 12 Better Off Being Bacteria: Adaptation and Allegory in Dr. Akagi 213
20. 13 Time Out of Joint: Shohei Imamura and the Search for an “Other” Japan 228
21. 14 Promotional Discourses and the Meanings of The Ballad of Narayama 246
22. 15 Boundary Play: Truth, Fiction, and Performance in A Man Vanishes 267
23. 16 Why Not? Imamura, Nietzsche, and the Untimely 287
24. 17 Kuroi Ame: An Anthropology of Suffering 308
25. 18 The Symbolic Function of Water 326
26. Index 343