China and Japan both have traditional art forms that have been highly developed and long studied. In these pioneering essays, noted film and art scholars explore how the spatial consciousness, compositional techniques, and construction of images in these traditional and modern art forms also inform filmmaking in these two countries, so that film and art share the same culturally defined "methods of seeing."
This major first study of the relationship between Chinese and Japanese art and film will be of wide interest to historians and film scholars, with applications beyond the Far Eastern context. It demonstrates that while mainstream Hollywood cinema has influenced filmmaking everywhere, other national cinemas cannot be completely understood without considering their indigenous traditions.
