Digital technology has transformed cinema’s production, distribution, and consumption patterns and pushed contemporary cinema toward increasingly global markets. In the case of Japanese cinema, a once moribund industry has been revitalized as regional genres such as anime and Japanese horror now challenge Hollywood’s preeminence in global cinema. In Japanese Cinema in the Digital Age, a rigorous investigation of J-horror, personal documentary, anime, and ethnic cinema, Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano deliberates on the role of the transnational in bringing to the mainstream what were formerly marginal B-movie genres. She argues persuasively that convergence culture, which these films represent, constitutes Japan’s response to the variegated flows of global economics and culture.
May 2012 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3594-1 / $47.00 (CLOTH)