List of illustrations; Contributors; Foreword: outside views of the Japanese film Donald Richie; Introduction Carole Cavanaugh and Dennis Washburn; Part I. Wording the Image/Imaging the Word: 1. The word before the image: criticism, the screenplay, and the regulation of meaning in prewar Japanese film culture Aaron Gerow; 2. The cinematic art of Higuchi Ichiyo's Takekurabe (comparing heights, 18951896) Janet Walker; 3. Once More and Gosho's Romanticism in the Early Occupation Period Arthur Nolletti, Jr.; 4. The taunt of the Gods: reflections on Woman in the Dunes Linda C. Ehrlich and Antonio Santos; 5. Adapting The Makioka Sisters Kathe Geist; 6. In the show house of modernity: exhaustive listing in Itami Juzo's Tanpopo Charles Shiro Inouye; Part II. Reflections of Identity: 7. Where's mama? The sobbing Yakuza of Hasegawa Shin Alan Tansman; 8. Saving the children: films by that most 'casual' of directors, Hiroshi Shimizu Keiko I. McDonald; 9. Ishihara Yujiro: youth, celebrity, and the male body in late 1950s Japanese culture Michael Raine; 10. Otoko wa tsurai yo: nostalgia or parodic realism? Richard Torrance; 11. A working ideology for Hiroshima: Imamura Shohei's Black Rain Carole Cavanaugh; Part III. Outside the Frame of Culture: 12. Piss and run: or how Ozu does a number on SCAP Edward Fowler; 13. In the realm of the censors: cultural boundaries and the poetics of the forbidden Leger Grindon; 14. The arrest of time: the mythic transgressions of Vengeance Is Mine Dennis Washburn; 15. The frenzy of metamorphosis: the body in Japanese pornographic animation Susan J. Napier; Selected bibliography of articles and books in English; Index.