Politics, Porn and Protest: Japanese Avant-Garde Cinema in the 1960S and 1970s

Although this book is primarily about film, Isolde Standish has woven into it a vivid, and very gripping, social, political and cultural history of 1960s’ Japan. She traces the struggle that was taking place over the narrative of post-war Japanese history: the ‘official story’ and its reflection in mainstream studio output against which directors such as Oshima, Yoshida and Imamura reacted bitterly. These and other directors developed avant-garde cinematic and narrative strategies to confront the repression of the past as well as the repressive nature of the state in occupied Japan. Isolde Standish places the development of the avant-garde within its contemporary intellectual context, (including the influence of French thought and literature), the complex politics of the left and the diversifications of the film industry as it faced economic decline. The book is remarkable for the author’s mastery of the subject, the clarity of her arguments and the depth of her scholarship. Rarely does one read a book in which the pieces of the jig-saw fall so precisely and illuminatingly into place.