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Asian Studies Book Services |
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About us contact details Catalogue
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A rare opportunity to read a distinguished auteur
discussing the work of a truly exceptional film artist with discerning
eyes and feelings of affection. Yoshida Kiju’s book is permeated
with a sense of sorrow, respect, and above all love for Ozu, who
simultaneously believed in cinema’s possibility as an art form and
revealed its fundamental fragility. Yoshida starts this award-winning book with a story about his visit to Ozu’s deathbed. Yoshida writes that a dying Ozu whispered to him twice, as if speaking to himself, "Cinema is drama, not accident". These cryptic last words troubled Yoshida for decades, and throughout this book he examines Ozu’s films and tries to uncover what Ozu really meant. The book’s main discussion concerns Ozu’s films, but it is also Yoshida’s manifesto on films and film-making. Thus, this book is Yoshida’s personal journey into Ozu’s thoughts on filmmaking and, simultaneously, into his own thoughts on the nature of cinema. Every page displays the sensibility of one artist discussing another – a book that only a filmmaker could write. Within Yoshida’s luminous prose lies a finely tuned, rigorous analysis of Ozu’s films, which have rarely been engaged as closely and personally as here. Published by Center for
Japanese Studies, University of Michigan |
