About the Comparative Japanese Film Archive
KYOKO OMORI, PH.D.
Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures (Japanese)
komori@hamilton.edu, or 315.859.4866
PROJECT DETAILS
A database of video clips from early silent films to contemporary Anime, with annotations and metadata that can be shared with consortial institutions for scholarly and instructional activities.
BACKGROUND
"As a scholar of Japanese modernist literature of the 1920s, I have recently expanded my scope from the analysis of literature and magazine culture to a wider examination of interactions across media between film and literature. With the advent of technology and the already globalized socio-economic context of 1920s Japan, writers explored the use of various new mass media (such as film, radio and phonogram), seeking to invent new narrative styles suitable to depict modern life and modernites' psychological world. My article on the trans- and inter-media explorations by Japanese artists will be published in a British academic journal, Japan Forum, this spring. I see that this critical cross-examination of the narrative strategies of literature and cinema is crucial not only for the analysis of the 1920s, but also in the study of the development of modern narratives of the entire 20th century and up to the present time. In addition to taking a global approach to theory and knowledge about moving images, I would like to study further on the specific history and production of Japanese cinema. This video clip and still image database is provided to assist others in their research and instruction. I welcome collaboration in developing it further."