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Japan Documents Handbook titles

This series focuses on the broad field of Japanese Studies, aimed at the worldwide English language scholarly market, published in Tokyo in English. Each Handbook contains an average of 20 newly written contributions on various aspects of the topic, which together comprise an up-to-date survey of use to scholars and students. The focus is on Humanities and Social Sciences.

Advent of Sound in Japanese Cinema: A Handbook (Edited by Sean O'Reilly)

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The advent of synchronous sound is the most fundamental rupture in the history of cinema. Building on the growing general interest in and the excellent recent scholarship on Japanese cinema’s fraught transition to sound, this book paradoxically offers a narrow thematic and chronological focus yet also a broad and diverse range of topics and approaches. Limiting its scope entirely to the 1930s enables this volume to achieve a cohesiveness that is rare in anthologies, while its other strength is its breadth: fifteen very different angles from which to approach the 1930s and the advent of sound offer a clearer picture of the sheer variety of innovations in and reactions to the contested sound transition in Japanese cinema. Part 1 explores the industrial side of film production, with one chapter for each major studio. Part 2 explores the new storytelling possibilities the advent of sound enabled. Part 3 traces the careers of three key yet often overlooked directors, while Part 4 describes the important roles that individual or collective actors played in Japanese cinema during the sound transition. Finally, Part 5 traces the evolution of soundscapes in 1930s Japan, ultimately taking readers beyond the doors of the movie theater to a broader understanding of sound. Many take for granted the seeming superiority of sync sound to silent cinema, but the drawn out, hotly contested transition to talkies in Japan shows that in the 1930s, neither spectators nor filmmakers necessarily shared the assumption—and perhaps we should not either.

June 2025, 328p. Hardback

ISBN: 9784909286642

¥28,875 (tax included)

Editor: Sean O'Reilly
 
Sean O'Reilly s Professor of Global Connectivity and Coordinator of the Japan Studies program at Akita International University. A graduate of Harvard University’s History and East Asian Languages doctoral program, he completed a secondary field in Film and Visual Studies. His research, which began with a Fulbright Scholarship to Japan, concerns the ways Japanese history has been reinvented in film and popular culture. Publications include Re-viewing the Past: The Uses of History in the Cinema of Imperial Japan (Bloomsbury, 2018) and “The Resurgent Right: The Secret of Japan’s Twenty-first Century Cinematic Success” (Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 2023).

Contributors

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David Baldwin, Independent Scholar; Eun Jong Choi, New York University; Richard M. Davis, Duke Kunshan University; 

Hase Kenichirō, Osaka Sangyo University; Iris Haukamp, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies; Yui Hayakawa, Toyo Gakuen University; Irena Hayter, University of Leeds; Earl Jackson, University of California and National Chiao Tung University; Yutaka Kubo, Kanazawa University; Laura Lee, Florida State University; Alexander Murphy, Clark University; Joelle Nazzicone, Kyoritsu Women’s University; Sean O’Reilly, Akita International University; Susanne Schermann, Independent Scholar; 

Mitsuya Wada-Marciano, Kyoto University.

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​Table of Contents 目次  

(Editor, Sean O'Reilly 編)

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Introduction: The Advent of Sound in Japanese Cinema—Soundscapes of the 1930s

(Sean O’Reilly);

 

Part 1—Talkies vs. Tradition: Japanese Movie Studios’ 1930s Experimentation:

Chapter 1. P.C.L. and the 1930s “Talkie” Films of Naruse Mikio (Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano);

Chapter 2. A Flexible Shochiku Realism: Shimazu Yasujirō and the Introduction of Sound (Earl Jackson);

Chapter 3. Reevaluating Nikkatsu Talkies: Dubbing During the Transition to Sound Cinema in Japan (Kenichiro Hase); 

 

Part 2—Sounding Them Out: New Genres in 1930s Japan:

Chapter 4. Changing Lyrics, Changing Times: Kaeuta (Parody Song) Culture in Japanese Cinema of the 1930s (Richard M. Davis);

Chapter 5. Made in Japan: The Birth of Tokusatsu (Laura Lee);

Chapter 6. Sounding out Synchrony: Early Experiments with Manga Eiga and Sound (Joelle Nazzicone);

 

Part 3—Finding Their Voice: The Woes and Wows of Great Directors in 1930s Japan:

Chapter 7. Japan’s “Best One” of 1939: Why Uchida Tomu’s Earth Won the Top Critic’s Prize in an Extraordinary Year (David Baldwin);

Chapter 8. Restricting the Soundscape: The Secret of Tasaka Tomotaka’s Extraordinary Success (Susanne Schermann); Chapter 9. Image-Grammar: Shimazu Yasujirō and Film Language (Earl Jackson);

 

Part 4—Speaking Up: Actors’ Struggles with the Silent-to-Sound Transition in 1930s Japan:

Chapter 10. Magnetic Nonchalance: Actor Saburi Shin’s Performances and Performativity in 1930s Shochiku Films (Yutaka Kubo);

Chapter 11. The Narutaki-Zenshin Collaboration: Creative Vanguards and Networks Advancing Period Film Conventions (Iris Haukamp);

Chapter 12. Rhythms in Migration: Whispering Sidewalks and Japan’s Jazz Age Cinema (Alexander Murphy);

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Interlude—Acting out the Soundscape: Enoken Plays Kondō Isami   (Sean O’Reilly);

 

Part 5—Movie Musicality: Soundscapes of the 1930s:

Chapter 13. From Silent to Talkie Soundscapes: Transforming Sounds and New Subjectivity (Eun Jeong Choi);

Chapter 14. The Relationship Between Ozu Yasujiro’s Signature Style and the Soundscape in The Only Son (Yui Hayakawa); Chapter 15. Dreamworlds: The Cinema and the Department Store (Irena Hayter);

 

Appendix—The Advent of Sound: Timeline

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