Landscape and Japanese Cinema

This class explores what a hundred years of Japanese cinema can reveal of the shifting meanings, emotions, and values ascribed to human and non-human landscapes. What role has film played in crafting our collective imagination of landscape and lived space? How does the meaning of “landscape” shift across time and culture? Engaging with a range of interdisciplinary approaches to these questions (including cultural studies, environmental history, philosophy, geography, and film theory), this seminar pairs an introduction to key works of Japanese film with a close look at the shifting landscapes at the base and the “background” of this cinema.