Paper short abstract:

This paper focusses on Yoshida Kijū's 'anti-cinema' approach to filmmaking through an analysis of his film Woman of the Lake. Yoshida attempted to incorporate key pillars of New Left thought such as subjectivity into his practice by examining the role of women in 1960s Japan.

Paper long abstract:

The films of Yoshida Kijū are commonly associated with politics as most scholars focus on his pivot into making explicitly political films that addressed the New Left at the end of the 1960s. A few years prior to this, Yoshida made a group of six lesser known films that focussed on the role of the modern woman in Japan. These films were also subversions of the traditional post-war melodrama. Often focussing on the repression of women, traditional melodramas generally remained subdued in their narrative content. On the contrary, Yoshida's films pushed cinematic conventions through representations of women who pursued their inner desires regardless of the consequences.

Focussing on this period of Yoshida's career, this paper will address the formation of his 'anti-cinema' framework and examine its practical implementation in Woman of the Lake - a film loosely based on Kawabata Yasunari's novel The Lake. Drawing from debates on subjectivity as well as ideas of self-negation, Yoshida's film theory was heavily inspired by New Left thought and became explicitly feminist as he shifted his focus onto women. Whilst the film is perhaps not as overtly political as the films made at the end of the 1960s, Woman of the Lake's thematic concerns - autonomy, sexual liberation, and individuality - were core pillars of the New Left, and the film must be analysed with this in mind.

The paper will first offer a definition of 'anti-cinema', examining how it draws from New Left thought and how Yoshida attempted to translate this loose theoretical framework into his filmmaking practice. Following this, the paper will closely examine Woman of the Lake, arguing that it is a subversive take on both its source material and the traditional post-war Japanese melodrama. Kawabata's novel features a male protagonist, but Yoshida switches to the perspective of the novel's limited female point-of-view. In doing so, I argue that Yoshida uses his 'anti-cinema' framework to critique the male gaze and the voyeuristic nature of cinema, all whilst pushing female subjectivity to the forefront with his unique take on the source material.