Exploring cinematic adaptations of Murakami Haruki's fiction over the past four decades, this book highlights how these films serve as creative reinterpretations that reflect and respond to their unique cultural contexts. By examining the relationship between the original narratives and their film adaptations, it reveals the evolving nature of storytelling across mediums and cultures.
The Historical Imagination of the Lost Decades
Focusing on Japan's Heisei period, this book offers an interdisciplinary analysis of popular fiction and film from the "lost decades" (1989-2019). By integrating literary and film theory, it explores cultural works, making it a valuable resource for students and scholars interested in Japanese culture, society, and history.
Films like Shoplifters and After the Storm have made Kore-eda Hirokazu one of the most acclaimed auteurs working today. Critics often see Kore-eda as a director steeped in the Japanese tradition defined by Yasujirō Ozu. Marc Yamada, however, views Kore-eda's work in relation to the same socioeconomic concerns explored by other contemporary international filmmakers. Yamada reveals that a type of excess, not the minimalism associated with traditional aesthetics, defines Kore-eda's trademark humanism. This excess manifests in small moments when a desire for human connection exceeds the logic of the institutions and policies formed by the neoliberal values that have shaped modern-day Japan. As Yamada shows, Kore-eda captures the shared spaces formed by bodies that move, perform, and assemble in ways that express the humanistic impulse at the core of the filmmaker's expanding worldwide appeal.