It is widely believed that Japanese cinema was reborn in the early 1990s after more than a decade of hiatus. Formal recognition and honors at international film festivals, a strong cult following among international audiences, and wide availability of new Japanese films as DVDs with English subtitles all confirm the vitality of Japanese cinema now. Yet such understanding of contemporary Japanese cinema misses a fundamental historical break by directly linking the Japanese cinema of the 1990s and after to what used to be called Japanese cinema. Japanese cinema is now in a post-national state, consisting of complex and contradictory trends and developments that do not necessarily form a coherent image of Japan, traditional or otherwise. What is called for, therefore, is a new critical framework where contemporary Japanese cinema can be discussed as something other than a traditional national cinema or a subgenre of world cinema.

Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto is an associate professor of East Asian studies at New York University. His research interests focus on contemporary Japanese film and media. He is the author of Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema and numerous articles on Japanese film and television, as well as Hollywood cinema.

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