Document Type
Review Essay
Abstract
[First paragraph]
Among the questions that should be asked regarding national cinemas outside Hollywood, but that have not yet been properly raised, is whether it is possible or necessary to establish specific conceptual frameworks for understanding different regional cinemas. While conceptual and methodological tools for regional analyses, applicable across various geographical formations, have yet to become widely available, [1] discussions of regional cinemas actually are proceeding. Regarding East Asian cinema in particular, collections of essays have appeared carving out various geographical groupings in single volumes that encompass all or select national cinemas of South Korea, Hong Kong, China and Japan. The presence of the relatively well-established Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema testifies to the desire to configure a comparative frame that would support regional film analyses. Reflecting on this comparative impetus, I am reminded of Naoki Sakai's position that we need to define a new framework that could replace the area studies model that has dominated Asian studies. To this end, Sakai proposes a trans-Pacific framework. Establishing this new model would require "a comparatist analysis of [the] political arrangement in which the Japanese imperialist heritage was accommodated within the anti-communist collective security system promoted by the United States in the 1950's and 1960's in Northeast Asia" (2012: 304). He argues that an understanding of the "transpacific complicity" that helped construct the region called East Asia should be the foundation of comparative studies in East Asia. Accordingly, we need to anchor discussions of East Asian national formations in a compelling theoretical and historical framework, one that involves theorizations of geopolitics. We can extend this principle to discussions of cultural and social formations, as well as to discussions of the media that present and represent them.
Repository Citation
Yoo, Hyon J.. "Review of Rising Sun, Divided Land: Japanese and South Korean Filmmakers, by Kate E. Taylor-Jones." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 16, no. 2, 2016, pp. 1–4. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol16/iss2/33