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Animation is a widespread artistic expression that holds a special place in people's hearts. Traditionally, animation creation has relied heavily on manual techniques, demanding skilled drawing abilities and a significant amount of time. For instance, many Japanese anime films draw inspiration from real-world settings, requiring access to relevant references and artists capable of translating them into anime visuals. Consequently, the development of technology that automatically converts images into anime holds great significance. Numerous methods for style transfer have been developed using unsupervised learning and have achieved impressive results. However, unsupervised learning methods suffer when the image contains multiple styles within itself because they learn the style of the image globally. To solve this problem, we propose splitting these styles within the image into multiple classes: sky, buildings, greenery, water, and other objects. Then, we style these separated classes using existing image-to-image translation models. Finally, we train a pix2pix model to learn image style transfer in a paired manner. The experimental results show that the images are effectively styled into the resulting anime-styled image domain with comparable results to existing unsupervised learning GAN-based methods. The proposed method can effectively transfer the style from real-world photos into the anime-styled image domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-1980s, film critics and audiences have come to recognize Ishirō Honda's original cut of Gojira/Godzilla (1954) to be a substantial meditation on the atomic bombing of Japan, an analysis that had been initially obscured by the re-working of the film for distribution to Western audiences. This article elucidates how the story of the international distribution and localization of Toho's Godzilla films communicates the story of Japan's relationship to the United States, who dropped those bombs and shaped Japan's post-war constitution, through the analysis of a further three key films from Toho's Godzilla franchise: Koji Hashimoto's Gojira/The Return of Godzilla (1984), Takao Okawara's Gojira Nisen: Mireniamu/Godzilla 2000: Millennium (1999), and Hideaki Anno & Shinji Higuchi's Shin Gojira/Shin Godzilla (2016). Each of these films re-set the series' continuity, and all but the last were radically re-cut for distribution abroad. Comparative analysis of the Japanese versions of the films with their American cuts demonstrates that the Godzilla franchise provides a unique transnational frame for charting the tensions concerning Japan's re-emergence upon the world stage at key moments since the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a transmedial lens to examine Japan's engagement with Soviet film, focusing on the 1933 adaptation of Nikolai Ekk's The Road to Life (Putevka v zhizn', 1931) for the Japanese pictorial medium of kamishibai. Challenging an unspoken consensus that it was The Road to Life's status as 'the first' Soviet talkie that accounts for its tremendous success and continuing influence, it was in fact the film's 'conversion' narrative that explains equally, if not more so, its popularity and impact. Although a product of a markedly different cultural context, The Road to Life and its depiction of reformed Soviet teenagers appealed to the Japanese state, the Japanese film industry, and to kamishibai creators alike, as each in their own way strove to distance themselves from an associative link with 'juvenile delinquency,' as well as from representatives of the Japanese Left who were increasingly persecuted by the state. As such, the film's conversion narrative functions as a powerful metaphor for the political transformations that both Japan and its visual media underwent in the early 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Mediterranean Journal of Gender & Women's Studies (KTC) / Akdeniz Kadın Çalışmaları ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet Dergisi is the property of Mediterranean Journal of Gender & Women's Studies (KTC) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

When we attempt to read visual messages in styles of dress within mass media such as film, it can help enlighten understanding of ourselves and nuanced messages we portray from a diverse range of cultures. Explained in qualitative methods, this paper explores pre- and post-World War II Japanese transnational dress through Mizoguchi 1956 film Akasen Chitai (Street Of Shame) and Imamura 1961 Buta to Gunkan (Pigs and Battleships), comparing how the clothed female body is reflective of political shifts in pre- and post-WWII Japanese culture. In order to contextualize and thus gain a clearer understanding of Japanese culture from both Japanese and Western perspectives, it is necessary to reflect on some of the history of Japan's textiles pre-WWII and the garments produced by showing visual examples of them. In film, women's bodies represent not only their own gender, but the role of men in society as well, which is true in real life. Imamura clearly looks at the human body as a context for society, applied specifically to how the female body is represented through what clothing and textiles she wears on her body, when and why; enabling the audience to decode cultural meanings as well as wider global, social and political significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tōho SFX films (tokusatsu eiga), more popularly known as kaiju films, are a subgenre of Japanese films that flourished in the postwar era. Since many of the early films feature radioactive monsters, the genre is largely valued for reflecting the trauma and anxiety of nuclear bombs, testing, and effects of radiation in postwar society. Rather than focus on nuclear science, this study considers the continuation of scientific development from wartime to postwar by examining two neglected films that deal with the horrors of military science: Tōmei Ningen (Oda, 1954) and Densō Ningen (Fukuda, 1960). It argues that while the films reflect the social structures that saw the laundering of a more complicated scientific development that included wartime atrocities, they also offer instances of resistance to such prevailing ideologies. By moving away from a preoccupation with nuclear discourse and consequently from victimhood, this study aims to complicate the approach to Tōho SFX films as cultural responses to the trauma of the war experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hollywood motion picture industry has been the epitome of our understanding and explanation of the rise and fall of the studio system. However, this study spotlights the Japanese studio system, which was solidly maintained until the late 1960s. Carefully tracing the process through which the major studios outsourced the production sector, this study examines state regulation against monopoly as a crucial factor explaining the reorganisation of the Japanese film industry after studio restructuring. Because anti-monopoly policies such as the Paramount Decree did not exist in Japan, the studios moved toward maintaining affiliate theatres despite reorganisation in the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, independent producers who did not possess their own distribution networks branched into three major categories: theatrical, low budget adult films; social films meant for independent exhibition, and blockbusters supported by external finance. The shifts in the production sector paradoxically highlight the decisive influence of distribution in the film industry. In essence, this study endeavors to present an alternative analytical approach, using Japan as a case study, for comprehending the rise and fall of the studio system and its restructuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This article focuses on the representations of natural hazards, disasters, gender roles and norms in Makoto Shinkai's disaster-themed anime films Your Name (2016) and Weathering with You (2019). Design/methodology/approach: This article commences with a literature review on disasters, disaster films, gender in disasters and gender in disaster films; then, this article thoroughly investigates the portrayal of disasters and gender in the two films, drawing data from their narratives and plots. Findings: This article finds that the two films' depictions of disasters and gender adhere to the traditional patterns observed in Hollywood and Japanese disaster films. The natural hazards and disasters in the two films reflect real-world disasters that occurred in Japan's recent decades, especially the 3.11 Tohoku earthquake in 2011. Traditional gender figures and prevalent heterosexual expectations in Japanese culture and society deeply influence the two films' portrayal of gender roles and norms. Originality/value: Numerous academic works explored Hollywood disaster films, their representations of gender roles and norms in disaster themes. However, few focus on recent Japanese anime films such as Your Name and Weathering with You. This article aims to fill this gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of futures studies has done little work on analysis of films and movies, with the exception of the science fiction genre. There has been little attempt to wrestle with and analyze other film genres, integrating such analyses into futures studies. This article makes an attempt at bridging that gap by analyzing the 2018 Palme d'Or winning film Shoplifters by Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda. In the article, we examine the film as a signal of transformation in the Japanese family by comparing this new form of the family to the Japanese family in the past. Using Shoplifters as a guiding post, I contextualize the transformations portrayed in the film with research on and trends in Japanese society. By using Shoplifters, I show how we can use films as guiding posts and as valuable sources of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the use of sex as a revolutionary act against wartime oppression in Japanese cinema, examining two films, Nagisa Ôshima's "In the Realm of the Senses" (1976) and Park Chan-wook's "The Handmaiden" (2016). Topics include the 1930s under Japanese imperialism, both films challenge traditional power dynamics by portraying female characters using sex as a tool for self-actualization and vengeance against patriarchal societies.

Am I pretty? A simple question that epitomises both beauty and vulgarity in its monstrous representation of feminine embodiment. In this work, I look at the 2007 Japanese Horror film Carved: The Slit Mouth Woman directed by Koji Shiraishi and its relation to the way in which it the monster Kuchisake-Onna presents the idealised role of motherhood in Japan today. Through this critical examination of the film, we see how communities establish social order and gender scripts of the feminine within the media, perpetuating hegemonic normalised roles through the monstrous feminine. This work looks at the Japanese urban legend of Kuchisake-Onna and compares it with the movie monster Carved as it projects forms of femininity and motherhood. By cross-referencing the telling of the legend with popular cinema we can see how media influence takes on a broader context towards the gendering of woman. In both the legend and the film, we see how women seek the approval of self and sovereignty, which is demonised, by revealing herself through sexual autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Period of High Economic Growth has gone down in the Japanese collective memory as a golden era stoking sentiments of nostalgia. Ever since the downturn of the economy in the early 1990s, the Japanese have sought to recharge their dreams by looking back at a period supposedly permeated with an energetic and optimistic, forward-looking spirit. Yet, when we turn to contemporary films for testimony, we find this retrospective sentiment complicated by an ambivalent attitude towards ongoing social developments. This article focuses on three mainstream popular youth films – Foundry Town (Kyūpora no aru machi), Always Keep the Dream (Itsudemo yume o), The Sunshine Girl (Shitamachi no taiyō) – that share critical perspectives on issues pertaining to social class, economic inequality, and the attainability of worthwhile education. Set in 'low town' industrial districts in Tokyo and populated with unprivileged factory workers who went under the epithet of 'golden eggs', the films deliver a socio-political critique that ultimately questions the very desirability of the promises of social and spatial mobility built into high growth policies. It argues that the contemporary sararīman dream shared by the proverbial one hundred million Japanese in which everyone is able to join the ranks of elite white-collar employees, was disavowed by the films just as the plans started to unfold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1972, the Japanese entertainment listings magazine Pia was established, providing information on film screenings, theatre and concert events happening in Tokyo each month. It quickly cultivated an engaged readership of teenagers and young adults. Among this readership were participants of a burgeoning nationwide phenomenon of do-it-yourself film production, referred to in Japanese as jishu seisaku eiga (meaning 'self-made films'), which typically saw young, aspiring filmmakers produce short and feature-length narrative works using 8 mm (and sometimes 16 mm) film cameras. This article contextualises the emergence of Pia magazine and its role in centralising and providing opportunities to Japan's growing 'self-made' filmmaking community throughout the 1970s, 1980s and beyond. This can be viewed on two fronts: firstly, from within the pages of the magazine itself and its strategies to stimulate reader-to-cinema engagement; and, secondly, through the magazine's organisation of an annual self-made film screening event in the late 1970s that would come to be known as the Pia Film Festival (PFF). PFF remains an essential national showcase for new Japanese filmmakers to this day, but, more importantly, it would herald its own system of independent film production in the form of the PFF Scholarship. This article concludes with a discussion about the PFF Scholarship, and its importance at a time when early career filmmakers were struggling within the Japanese film industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monsters constitute an essential aspect of any society, but their imprinted cultural body causes them to fulfill different roles in different cultures. By remaking a monster from a different culture, the mutated entity will fail to reproduce the same meanings since many symbols will be lost in cultural appropriation and faulty translation. This article analyzes such loss of meaning in the portrayal of one relevant monster in Eastern culture (the onryō) in a Western context of horror movie mania, decoding the underlying gender politics ingrained in the Japanese movie Ringu (1998) and its Hollywood remake The Ring (2002). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on two recurring cinematic spaces of water: the sea and shore and the furo (Japanese bathroom) in the films of the contemporary Japanese auteur Kore-eda Hirokazu. To develop a somatechnical perspective to address the dynamics between water, bodies and technologies, I deploy the notion of 'the domestication of water' (Macauley 2005), denoting the process of how humans make a constant effort to maintain water in a state between liquidity and stillness. This lived interaction between humans and water can illuminate the leitmotif of kinship through the two cinematic spaces. In so doing, I firstly focus on the final shots of the sea and shore from Maborosi (1995) and Our Little Sister (2015). The mise-en-scène of the sea and the shore can create a vision of stillness on the surface but also a sense of liquidity underneath, illustrating that kinship is an ongoing process which can never be shaped but is constantly being re-shaped. Following the flow of water, I then observe the space of the furo in Still Walking (2008) and Like Father, Like Son (2013). By examining two bath routines, co-bathing with children and bathing-in-turn, I argue that the water in furo is by no means in a still state but rather is always circulating between different bodies. The circulation can not only help nurture the parent-child intimacy through co-bathing, but it also enables a theatrical stage on which to convey conflicts of kinship via bathing-in-turn. In conclusion, by further linking the representation of water and kinship in Kore-eda's cinema, I propose the idea of liquid kinship: a lived process of making rather than a static state of being. The domestication of water between stillness and liquidity epitomises this liquid form of kinship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a case study of the innovative Japanese film education project Children Meet Cinema, through aspects of an interview with its founder Etsuko Dohi, placed within a wider discussion of the project’s pedagogical approaches. In particular, the article details the innovative manner in which Children Meet Cinema has invited some of Japan’s leading film-makers – among them, Nobuhiro Suwa, Hirokazu Koreeda and Naomi Kawase – to engage with children making films for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the ways in which a Japan‐specific Orientalism regarding Japanese femininities establishes itself in Weimar Germany's popular culture. In this period of German democratization in which we observe Weimar women's social, sexual, and political liberation, I propose that popular culture texts such as Fritz Lang's film Harakiri (1919) and Kapitän Mertens's magazine publication "Kio, die lasterhafte Kirschblüte" (1924) created an alternative fantasy engaging with contemporary anxieties and dreams. I read the depiction of Japanese femininities as a mediation of predominantly heterosexual male fears about the liberation movement of modern Weimar women as circulated in mass media. In developing this reading, I observe a simultaneity of three different imagined Japanese femininities: aestheticized artificialization/reification, eroticization, and infantilization. I argue that the narrative construction of such ultimately subservient exotic, doll‐like figures is diametrically opposed to the widely studied New Woman of Weimar and thus warrants further inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines one of the works created in the collaborative milieu of the Sōgetsu Art Center: Tōru Takemitsu's film music for Otoshiana (1962), also known in English as Pitfall or Cheap, Sweet and a Kid. It is Hiroshi Teshigahara's (1927 - 2001) first full-length film, a documenta ry fantasy that is also the first Japanese movie to be distributed by the Art Theater Guild (ATG), a network that has supported independent cinema since 1961. The music for Otoshiana (1962) differs from Takemitsu's earlier film music, where he applied genres such as the Charleston, jazz, blues, and Latin American rhythms. Musically, Otoshiana is distinguished by its use of the cembalo and two pianos, one of which is prepared and the other used for inside-piano techniques. It is considered the first work in which Takemitsu applied the prepared piano, and is exemplary of Takemitsu's tendency to use various techniques to create new sounds. What also gives this work a particular stance is that it is composed and performed in collaboration with Toshi Ichiyanagi and Yūji Takahashi.Through the author's interview with Yūji Takahashi and with reference to Yūji Takahashi's recently completed Otoshiana music timetable, which resulted from correspondence between the composer and the author, the article revises the sources on Otoshiana's music and further analyzes the characteristics of the work. Moreover, it highlights the collaboration of the three musicians and emphasizes Takemitsu's role as music director, composer, and performer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criticism tends to be a face-threatening speech act that can endanger social relationships if not managed using appropriate strategies, especially in the intercultural context. This study aims to compare and contrast the politeness of criticism speech acts used in Japanese and Minangkabau languages as depicted in film series. The data on criticism speech acts in this study were collected from eleven Japanese film series with a total duration of 538 minutes and eight Minangkabau films with a total duration of 535 minutes. The collected data were formed into a set of data cards, classified based on the criticism speech acts strategies by Nguyen (2005), and analyzed based on Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory. The data classification in Japanese and Minangkabau was validated through the expert judgment process. The findings indicated that the Japanese and Minangkabau languages employed the same set of criticism speech act strategies but had different tendencies. In Japanese, speakers tend to use indirect strategies as their main criticism speech act strategy by 'asking/presupposing,' 'correction,' and 'advice for change.' Meanwhile, in Minangkabau, speakers tend to use direct strategies by using 'negative evaluation,' 'expression of contradiction,' and 'disagreement' strategies. Regarding the politeness strategy, off-record politeness strategies are more dominantly used among Japanese speakers. In contrast, Minangkabau speakers use bald on-record politeness strategies in criticism speech acts, reflecting their communication culture. The findings of this study provide a deeper understanding of criticism speech acts and politeness strategies. The study is expected to contribute to the area of research on intercultural communication and sociolinguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These serial formats, and other international examples like them, also quickly became part of Japanese film culture where, as Aaron Gerow explains, the first major film hit (and scandal) in Japan centred upon a foreign film series ([6], 52-57). Although the "film serial" is usually modelled as "the forerunner of today's serialised television dramas" (Winston Dixon [42]), there is compelling evidence to assert that the film series persists in all sorts of forms in world cinema, from Hollywood to Japan (see Forrest [5]). Zahlten also usefully contends that V-Cinema (straight to VHS tapes made for the Japanese rental markets) created a new "industrial genre" that continued the legacy of theatrical film series, including the I Sasori i films discussed by Treglia (Zahlten [43], 192-3). Seriality, therefore, has not just been a significant part of Japanese film throughout its history, it is also an aspect of cinema that generates flashpoints of controversy and debate about the nature and meanings of cinema within Japan. [Extracted from the article]

The Toei Studio-produced Truck Guys/Torakku yarō (1975–79) is a popular domestic genre film series. Consisting of ten films, it is an action-comedy, loosely structured around a buddy-road film genre framework. While rarely canonised within critical or academic discourses, the series' lasting popularity is still evidenced by its commercial 'long-tail'. The aim of this article is primarily to shed light on this critically overlooked series, locating it within specific national and cultural contexts, in particular toward the end of the Japanese studio system. Specifically, this article examines how Toei attempted to revitalise the popular cycles of their genre films facing a decline in both mainstream commercial film production and cinema audiences, highlighting a fiercely pragmatic mode of filmmaking in the 1960s and 1970s where serialisation played an important role. By exploring the films from both textual and contextual perspectives, the article will also attempt to highlight and confirm the significance of intra-serial intertextuality, with particular reference to the first and the final instalments of the series: No One Can Stop Me (1975) and Hometown Express Service (1979). Addressing a practice of popular genre filmmaking in Japan also begins to fill a critical gap in Japanese film studies [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carroll addresses the infamous 1968 Suzuki Seijun incident, in which Nikkatsu, for whom Suzuki worked from the 1950s to the 1960s, fired Suzuki, reportedly due to the impenetrability of his films. Across five chapters, Carroll explores in meticulous detail Suzuki's distinctive style and extensive body of work and situates them within developments in Japanese film and film criticism, primarily from the 1950s to the 1970s. These structural concerns aside, the strengths of Carroll's book remain, and it provides an insightful new perspective on Suzuki, Japanese film and film criticism, and contemporary cultural history. [Extracted from the article]

A Silent Voice (Koe no katachi, dir. Yamada Naoko, 2016) is an anime film based on the critically acclaimed manga of the same name by Ôima Yoshitoki. A Silent Voice follows the experiences of a deaf character, Nishimiya Shôko, and her classmates, particularly as they deal with school bullying and rebuilding friendships afterwards. A Silent Voice not only won various awards such as Best Animated Feature Film at the Japanese Movie Critics Award, but also collaborated with actors across the public sector such as schools, local governments, and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), to enhance inclusive education in Japan. This article shifts the typical focus on media mix as a marketing strategy to consider media mix strategies as potential tools for civic and educational causes. Specifically, it explores A Silent Voice’s media mix in relation to improving inclusivity in Japanese education and society. To that end, this project begins with a brief elucidation of the three versions of the original manga, which serve as starting points of this inclusivity-focused media mix. The project then moves to analysis of how the anime problematizes school bullying as systemic exclusion and explores how sign language is presented as one key to forming an inclusive society. Finally, by introducing cases in which collaboration with the public sector distributes this anime’s characters, induces various audience desires, and mobilizes audiences to participate in social change, I argue that A Silent Voice provides an example of inclusive media mix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hayao Miyazaki's animated films question what audiences may conceive to be inanimate and bring these objects into a new sphere of categorization. New eco-philosophical schools of thought have recently raised the dualistic definitions of the terms 'human' and 'non-human' as problematic. Philosophical approaches of 'new materialism' point to agency inherent to all objects. Utilizing the term 'non-human' within this article will enable a more nuanced grasp of what may be considered as the 'inanimate' and the 'non-human'. Miyazaki utilizes a philosophical approach to 'enchantment' to present audiences with a complex view of the relations between the human and non-human world through a folkloric lens, thereby providing an alternative mode of eco-criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not only are numerous components absorbed and modified in terms of movie subjects, but also various art forms like painting and music are researched and examined in the production of Japanese cinema, resulting in the development of film styles with national characteristics. The fundamental role of film industrialization is to increase production efficiency, reduce industry risks, create job opportunities, and provide related technologies and services for professional creative people, so that the creativity crystallization of all industry insiders can become an invisible creative power and tangible economic values in the economy and can circulate continuously within the overall film industry structure. On the basis of summering and analyzing of previous research works, this article expounded the research status and significance of Japanese film industry, elaborated the development background, current status, and future challenges of film industry model, introduced the creation and production of genre films in Japanese film industry, established the relationship between personalized creation and market trend of Japanese films, proposed the competition and cooperation model for the distribution of local and imported films, analyzed the market share of sequel and anime films in Japanese film industry, conducted the analysis of terminal construction changes and localized cinema lines operation, and discussed the exploration and management model of film screening bodies. The research results of this article provide a reference for further researches on the development model of Japanese film industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Imagofagia is the property of Imagofagia - AsAECA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Bernardo Carvalho's Brazilian novel, O sol se põe em São Paulo [The Sun Sets in São Paulo, 2007], alongside Shiozaki Shōhei's Japanese film, Akaneiro no yakusoku: Sanba do kingyo (Goldfish Go Home, 2012), create postmodern narratives that render Japanese Brazilian dekasegi, or migrant laborers, similar to their depictions in historical archives: invisible and unable to emerge from the shadows. Through scenarios of discovery, the texts reveal how present-day Japanese Brazilian dekasegi inherit their condition as disappointing failures from past generations of dekasegi. This article explores the intergenerational trauma of Japanese Brazilian dekasegi through an analysis that centers the failed neoliberalist fantasy of commodity fetishism. Postmodern hauntology is never resolved in the existing archives. Instead, the texts suggest that a new archive must emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Nippon Connection, the Japanese film festival finally returned to theaters in Frankfurt am Main and the main focus of the 2022 edition is held from May 24 to 29, 2022 was "Stories of Youth – Coming of Age". Topics include examines the title "Stories of Youth–Coming of Age" provided a broad thematic focus covering a range of aspects.

In Hong Kong film historiography, the films from the Union Film Enterprise Ltd (1952–1967) are totally separated from socialist arts and politics. In this paper, I argue that the working masses in Union's films are derived from the legacies of leftism, which manifest in films about the anti-Japanese War of Resistance (kang ri). The Chinese leftism legacies, since the 1930s, are concerned with how human beings are formed socially rather than morally, that aesthetics are not separated from politics, and that learning and labor are not separated. Both Road (Lu 1959) and Sea (Hai, 1963) are directed by the same director Ng Wui. They share similar thematic concerns and aesthetic motifs of glorifying the heroic masses in the anti-Japanese war of resistance. These films can see how the ideas and practices of the New Democratic Revolution about the working masses in art and literature, born around the Second Sino-Japanese war, informed the left-wing films in Hong Kong. Also, given the censorship of films in colonial Hong Kong, these films shift the focus from showing the political parties (Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang) and army to the solidarity of the working masses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Audio description (AD) is a narration technique that allows visually impaired people to experience movies. However, high-quality AD production is expensive, preventing its widespread adoption. The quality of synthesized-voice AD is inferior to that of human-narrated AD, but its practicality may outweigh the cost of producing human-narrated AD if its real cost of production is verified. The results of an empirical experiment comparing standard synthesized-voice AD and human-narrated AD for two-hour-long Japanese narrative films using general-purpose movie-player software and Excel spreadsheets indicated that the synthesized-voice AD scripts required approximately 5 h 20 min. of modification work by the film producer and sound engineer. Furthermore, despite the same cost of production, the quality of the finished synthesized-voice AD was only 75% of that of human-narrated AD. Consequently, with the aim of improving these statistics, we developed a prototype of a higher-quality, less expensive AD production software based on speech synthesis. The prototype includes dedicated interfaces for AD-script entry, frame-by-frame insertion-point settings, speech rate settings, and volume settings with audio waveforms. It also integrates with Excel, a software often used by film production teams. In evaluations conducted using trailers in the same genre as that of the Japanese film used in the empirical experiment, our AD production software successfully reduced cost by eliminating the modification time conventionally required by the film producer and sound engineer; additionally, the film producer's quality assessment increased by 5% relative to existing standard synthesized-voice ADs. Finally, challenges and potential areas of improvement with the software were evinced from the participating audio describers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mending tears in translucent papers is a challenging task that requires mending materials with specific mechanical and optical properties. Recently, translucent films from microfibrillated cellulose have been suggested as an attractive alternative to traditional repair materials. We prepared custom films from a commercial microfibrillated cellulose suspension and compared their mechanical and optical properties as mending supports with commercially manufactured microfibrillated cellulose films and Japanese tissue. Tear mending of modern and historic translucent paper samples using the custom-made films and Klucel G or isinglass as adhesives showed satisfactory strength and resilience, and accelerated ageing tests yielded acceptable visual results. A case study on a translucent paper document from the collection of The National Archives, UK, is detailed. We conclude that custom-made tear mending materials from commercially available microfibrillated cellulose suspensions present a cost-effective and attractive approach for the mending of translucent papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers film criticism on Hirokazu Kore-eda's "After Life" (1998), focusing on its depiction of the afterlife where the dead review their lives to choose a single memory for eternity. Topics include memory selection, role of counselors, and the blurring of reality and fiction in recreating memories.

In 2018, Netflix announced plans to expand into film production, and was soon followed by Japanese streaming platforms. How can these different production structures work with one another in a market controlled historically by major studios and television? Many have high hopes for the future of creation in Video on Demand (VOD), but can it really change the industry? What strategies have Japanese structures adopted to compete with the American giant? This article will assess both what national and international video streaming services have to offer, examine the positions of these various structures, and study the issues related to this new form of production, such as new dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the Japanese direct-to-video series "Guinea Pig," produced by Ogura Satoru in the 1980s and its pornographic approach to presenting violent imagery. Topics discussed include an analysis of the video series' form and distribution, an exhibition of cruelty by the series, and the viewer dynamics of video culture articulated by the series.

Copyright of Nasleđe is the property of University of Kragujevac, Faculty of Philology & Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Vampire Films Around the World: Essays on the Cinematic Undead of Sixteen Cultures As mentioned earlier, some of the essays discuss films likely familiar to a vampire film scholar. Here these essays speak to the "authenticity" (or lack thereof with the vampire, as explored humorously in the film) in Hoge's work and to the afterlives of the vampire text as in I Let the Right One In i . [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Revista Fotocinema is the property of Revista Fotocinema and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, I examine the cultural representation of ubume and kosodate-yūrei in early modern Japan. Specifically, I explore how intellectuals, writers, and artists understood and portrayed this group of mother ghosts whose characteristics were most evident in their death related to child delivery and in an afterlife in which they longed to raise their children. Female ghosts of this sort differed greatly from the ghost heroines depicted in contemporary Japanese horror films and even from Kabuki representations of dead women. They were closely associated with beliefs, taboos, and ritual practices around blood, childbirth, and death. By analyzing a selection of short ubume and kosodate-yūrei-related stories as well as accompanying illustrations, which were produced in late seventeenth-century kaidan-shū but have remained untranslated into English, I hope to provide my own interpretation of "mother ghosts" and contribute to the comprehensive study of yōkai in and outside of Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]