Western Literature in Japanese Film: From the Dawn of the Cinema to the End of American Occupation

Abstract

Many scholars in Literature and Film Studies have focused on the Western literature adaptations made by Kurosawa in the 1950s and subsequent decades, when Japanese cinema began to receive worldwide acknowledgment. However, not much attention has been drawn to adaptations of Western works produced in Japan from the dawn of cinema to the end of American occupation in 1952. Searching in different movie databases, in newspapers and cinema magazines of that time, and archives of Japanese cinema studios, it has been possible to identify around fifty movies based on or inspired by Western literature shot mostly during the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. This research paper aims to survey the adaptations of Western works made before 1952, and to describe the socio-cultural and ideological context in which they were made. This study aims to broaden existing academic literature in the field, going beyond the large number of investigations examining transpositions of Western literature into Japanese films produced from the 1950s.