Killers, Clients and Kindred Spirits The Taboo Cinema of Shohei Imamura

Lindsay Coleman is an educator and writer based Melbourne, Australia. He is a Ph.D candidate at the University of Melbourne. He is the editor of Sex and Storytelling in Modern Cinema, and co-editor of Contemporary Film Music, Transnational Cinematography Studies, and The Philosophy of Pornography.

David Desser is Emeritus Professor of Cinema Studies and Comparative and World Literatures and East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Illinois. He received his Ph.D. in Cinema with a Minor in Japanese from the University of Southern California. David is the author and editor of numerous works, including The Samurai Films of Akira Kurosawa; Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema; and Ozu's Tokyo Story.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: The Making of An Auteur: The Early Films (1958-1959); Jennifer Coates

Section I: Killers

Chapter 3: Confronting America: Pigs and Battleships and the Politics of US Bases in Postwar Japan; Hiroshi Kitamura

Chapter 4: Insect Men and Women: Gender, Conflict and Problematic Modernity in Intentions of Murder; Adam Bingham

Chapter 5: Hidden in Plain Sight: The False Leads and True Mysteries of Vengeance Is Mine; John Berra

Chapter 6: The Eel: Trauma Cinema; David Desser

Section II: Clients

Chapter 7: The Insect Woman, or: The Female Art of Failure; Michael Raine

Chapter 8: The Obscene in the Everyday: The Pornographers; Lindsay Coleman

Chapter 9: Shohei Imamura's Profound Desire for Japan's Cultural Roots: Critical Approaches to Profound Desires of the Gods; Mats Karlsson

Chapter 10: 'Products of Japan': Karayuki-san, The Making of a Prostitute; Joan Mellen

Chapter 11: The Female Body as Transgressor of National Boundaries: The History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess; Bianca Briciu

Part III: Kindred Spirits

Chapter 12: Better off Being Bacteria: Adaptation and Allegory in Dr Akagi; Lauri Kitsnik

Chapter 13: Time out of Joint: Shohei Imamura and the Search for an 'Other' Japan; Bill Mihalopoulos

Chapter 14: Promotional Discourses and the Meanings of The Ballad of Narayama; Rayna Denison

Chapter 15: Boundary Play: Truth, Fiction, and Performance in A Man Vanishes; Diane Lewis

Chapter 16: Why Not? - Imamura, Nietzsche and the Untimely; David Deamer

Chapter 17: Kuroi ame: An Anthropology of Suffering; Dolores Martinez

Chapter 18: The Symbolic Function of Water; Tim Iles

Notes on Contributors