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Japanese Cinema is only 192 pages and could easily be twice as big.

It’s great when a writer loves his material. In Japanese Cinema, author Stuart Galbraith loves the subject. He currently lives in Japan and wants to share his love of the countries cinema with the rest of the world. Sadly, Galbraith works so hard to get his knowledge out that he does a poor job of relaying that information.

Covering the history of Japanese cinema from the late 1800’s to present, Galbraith explores the studio system before World War II, the rise of monster movies, the collapse of the film industry and the current rebirth it is going through. He tries to move past Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu in an effort to bring lesser known director into the spotlight.

The book is divided into ten chapters from the golden age of Japanese cinema in the 50’s and 60’s to monster movies to samurai to anime to the new violent, edgier films of today. It covers a lot of ground but doesn’t devote enough time to explore and provide an full understanding of the material. It’s almost as if, Galbraith was given a limited amount of space and he tried to cram as much information in as possible. He jumps from movie to movie, director to director giving just enough information to peak your interest but not enough to give you an understanding of the subject.

Instead of delving deeper into the subject, we’re given pictures, lots and lots of pictures often to the detriment of the flow of the book. It’s great to see the still from the different films mentioned but in the middle of a paragraph, there will a four page jump for photos. By the time you get back to what you were reading, the moment is lost.
On the plus side, he does spend some time with the pinku films and devotes a chapter to new filmmakers. The chapter on samurai films should give the reader more than a few films to track down that haven’t been declared “masterpieces” by Tarantino.

What the book sorely needs is better supplemental material. How about a filmography on the director’s mentioned in the book? Even better, an index to find mentions of directors or films. There is a very weak filmography on ten films, a bibliography and a decent chronology.

Taschen normally puts out great books but even the best have a misfire. I blame a lot of the problems of the book with Editor Paul Duncan. The flow of the book is off and most of it comes from the poor picture layout. Japanese Cinema is only 192 pages and could easily be twice as big. As it stands, the book is a good introduction to Japanese cinema and you should have a better understanding a country with a rich and incredible film history.

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