This is the first academic book to provide a comprehensive survey of the work of Haneda Sumiko (1926-), the first woman to regularly direct documentaries in postwar Japan, by examining her major documentaries amongst the extensive filmography she developed over sixty years.
Bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines—including film studies, gender studies, art history, eco-criticism, and aging studies—this volume explores Haneda’s depiction of critical issues in Japanese society, culture, history, and nature. It showcases how her cinema provides a personal and reflective view on Japan’s drastic transformations of the twentieth century, while her career also bore witness to changes taking place in the national cinema industry. It thus situates Haneda’s oeuvre within the history of Japanese non-fiction film whilst offering new perspectives on questions of authorship and representation.
Collectively, the chapters in this book make a case for Haneda to be recognised as a key figure in Japan’s postwar documentary scene. Bridging gaps in research on both documentary studies and women filmmakers, this will be a valuable resource to scholars and students of film studies, Japanese studies, gender studies and art history, as well as to film curators and programmers.
This is the first academic book to provide a comprehensive survey of the work of Haneda Sumiko (1926-), the first woman to regularly direct documentaries in postwar Japan, by examining her major documentaries amongst the extensive filmography she developed over sixty years.
Haneda Sumikos Oeuvre. An Introduction. GENDER DYNAMICS AND THE
REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN
1. Adding a Gender Perspective to Iwanami
Documentaries: Womens College in the Village (1957).
2. Akiko (1985):
Portrait of an Indomitable Force. CULTURAL HERITAGE
3. Resurrecting Dedicated
Treasures of Horyuji-Temple (1971): a Cinematic Poem on Absence, Melancholy,
and the Passage of Time.
4. A Gaze at the Ordinary People in Genre Paintings
in the Late 16th Century (1967).
5. The Art/s and The Artist/s: Japanese
Scroll Painting, Art Documentaries and Haneda Sumikos Journey into a Picture
Scroll. TRADITIONAL THEATRE ARTS
6. Kygen (1969), the Mirror of Tradition.
In Search of Identity through Performing Arts.
7. The Ontology of an Actors
Body: Documenting the Last Years of Kataoka Nizaemons Life. NATURAL SCIENCES
AND ECO-CINEMA
8. Haneda Sumiko Runs through a Cabbage Field: The Challenge
of The Cabbage Butterfly (1968).
9. Visualizing Invisible Contamination:
Haneda Sumikos TV Programs on Environmental Pollution.
10. The Cherry Tree
with Grey Blossoms (1977): An Ecology of the Everyday. HISTORY AND MEMORY OF
VANISHING JAPAN
11. Hanedas Beauty of the Ancients (1958) and
Traumascapes: Re-membering Japanese Culture through Documentary Film.
12. Ode
to Mt. Hayachine (1982). Between an End of an Era, and the Dawn of a New One:
Capturing the Flow of History.
13. Hanedas Transnational Cinema: From
Diasporic Cinema to Mnemonic Journey Films. The case of The Japanese
Settlers (2008). AGING
14. Confronting the Forgotten: Unveiling the World of
the Elderly with Dementia through The World of Dementia (1986).
15. Gendered
Citizenship, Democracy, and Welfare Reform in Getting Old without Anxiety
(1990) and the Takanosu trilogy (1997-2006).
16. Critiquing Ideal Aging:
Food, Care, and Detachment in Haneda Sumikos Alls Well that Ends Well
(2006) and Other Documentaries. ANNEXES
17. Interview with Sat Tokue,
Filmmaker, Haneda Sumikos Personal Assistant and Manager of Kanatasha, Inc.
18. The Eye of the Documentarist. Interview with Director Haneda Sumiko.
19.
Haneda Sumikos Filmography.
Marcos Centeno-Martin is associate professor in Film and Media and Japanese Studies at University of Valencia, Spain, and Research Associate for the Japan Research Centre at SOAS, UK.
Irene González-López is Lecturer in Japanese Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, UK.
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández currently works at The Japan Society in London and is a Ph.D. student at University Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, Spain.
