Author Aaron Gerow contributes to 8-volume book on the state of Japanese film scholarship

by Chris MaGee

While we like to indluge our film geek sides on the Pow-Wow blog we also like to balance things out with news from the the world of Japanese film scholarship as well, and this past week saw some great news come out in regards to this courtesy of Yale Professor and author Aaron Gerow. The author of such books as "Kitano Takeshi" and his most recent book "Visions of Japanese Modernity is reporting on his blog that he is one of the contributing authors and editors of a a new 8-volume summation of the present state of Japanese film scholarship.

This multi-volume work published by Japanese publisher Iwanami Shoten is titled "Nihon eiga wa ikite iru (Japanese Cinema Is Alive)" and, as Gerow describes it, follows in the tradition of a koza publication, a compendium of artiles, essays and lectures regarding a specific sholarly field. Gerow not only has contributed an essay, " Nihon/eiga/riron" that explores " the tortured history of Japanese film theory", to the set, but has acted as part of its editorial board. Gerow was joined in this venture by such Japanese film luminaries as director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, documentary filmmaker Tatsuya Mori and "Beat Takeshi v s. Takeshi Kitano" author Kasho Abe.

For any hardcore Japanese film enthusiast (who is able to read Japanese) ""Nihon eiga wa ikite iru " seems like an invaluable piece of scholarship. Follow the link above to Aaron Gerow's blog to learn more about it.