González-López, Irene (2022) Red-Light Bases (1953): A cross-temporal contact zone. In: Kirsch, G. and Mithani, Forum (eds.) Handbook of Japanese Media and Popular Culture in Transition. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 47-61. ISBN 9789048559268.
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Abstract
This chapter examines the gender politics at play in the cinematic imagination of post-Occupation Japan through the analysis of the controversial film Akasen kichi (Red-Light Bases, Taniguchi Senkichi, 1953). To this end, it focuses on the film’s depiction of the panpan sex worker and the returned soldier—arguably the most symbolic figures of early postwar Japan—and their interactions with other members of the community in a town marked by the presence of an American military base. It argues that, while Taniguchi’s film critically depicts the complex power dynamics at play in this sexual ‘contact zone’, it also works to disavow Japanese men’s responsibility for the war by translocating their moral accountability and trauma onto ‘fallen’ women and the Occupation.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | Japanese Cinema, base film, Memory, Prostitution, Contact Zone |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication |
| Depositing User: | Irene Gonzalez Lopez |
| Date Deposited: | 22 Nov 2023 13:42 |
| Last Modified: | 22 Nov 2023 20:00 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/52527 |
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