How Can You Start Studying Japanese Cinema in English?

Start by choosing one entry point—an era, a director, or a genre—then anchor it with English-language scholarship and criticism rather than trying to read a general history cover to cover. Aaron Gerow's site Tangemania (aarongerow.com) is a practical hub for this: it lists his books, articles, interviews, and reviews, plus links to other English resources. It works best as a map to research and criticism, not as a self-contained course.

First, pick a branch of Japanese cinema

"Japanese cinema" is not one subject. The research and viewing paths differ depending on what you want:

• Early cinema (roughly 1895–1925): silent film, benshi narration, the emergence of studios and stars. Gerow's Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation, and Spectatorship, 1895–1925 addresses this period directly.
• Classic studio era and canonical directors: Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, and the studio system around them.
• Contemporary directors: Kitano Takeshi, Kore-eda, and others. Gerow's Kitano Takeshi is a book-length study of one director, useful as a model for how to analyze a single filmmaker.
• Genre and cult cinema: yakuza films, horror, anime, documentary. The Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, where Gerow worked for nearly 12 years, is a reference point for the documentary side.

Choosing one branch first keeps you from drowning in titles. A director study or a single-period monograph gives you a framework you can extend later.

Where the English-language resources are

Gerow's site organizes his own output and points outward. The categories on Tangemania indicate the kinds of material that exist in English:

Two of these links are worth noting for beginners. Midnight Eye is an English-language site focused on Japanese cinema, useful for reviews and interviews. Kinema Club is a scholarly network for Japanese film studies, a place to find research-oriented discussion rather than fan commentary.

Use institutions to find structure

Gerow teaches Japanese and East Asian cinema at Yale University, where he helps run a combined doctoral program in East Asian cinema between the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Film and Media Studies Program. You do not need to be at Yale to benefit from this: program pages, faculty bibliographies, and reading lists show you what a structured course of study looks like, which you can replicate on your own.

His background also signals where the field's expertise sits: an MFA in film studies from Columbia, an MA in Asian Civilizations from the University of Iowa, a PhD in Communication Studies from Iowa, and roughly 12 years in Japan working for the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival and teaching at Yokohama National University and Meiji Gakuin University. When you read a scholar's work, knowing whether their training is in film studies, area studies, or communication tells you what kind of argument to expect.

Separate criticism from scholarship

This distinction matters more than it first appears:

• Criticism and reviews (Midnight Eye, review sections, festival reports) are written for viewers deciding what to watch and what to think about a film. They are fast, opinionated, and tied to release cycles.
• Scholarship (monographs, journal articles) makes an argument about history, theory, or interpretation, and shows its sources. It is slower and expects you to check claims.

Read criticism to build a viewing list and sharpen your eye. Read scholarship when you want to understand why a film or period matters and how other researchers have treated it. Mixing the two without noticing which is which is the most common way beginners get confused about what is established and what is one critic's view.

A workable starting sequence

1. Pick one film or director you already want to understand. If you have no preference, a single-director study like Kitano Takeshi gives you a ready-made focus.
2. Watch the films before or alongside the reading, so the analysis has something to attach to.
3. Read one book-length study on that director or period, using its bibliography to find the next sources.
4. Use Gerow's site and its links to branch out: articles for shorter arguments, Midnight Eye for reviews, Kinema Club for the scholarly network.
5. Consult a research guide such as Research Guide to Japanese Film Studies when you need to find archives, databases, or further reading systematically.

One caution: this site is a scholar's personal page, and it mixes his own work, news, and opinion with links to others. Treat the "News and Opinion" section as commentary, and check the publication details of any book or article before citing it. The site also has a Japanese-language section, which is useful if you read Japanese but is not a substitute for the English resources if you do not.

If your goal is simply to watch more Japanese films, criticism and festival sites will carry you. If your goal is to study the field, start with one scholarly monograph, follow its citations, and use Gerow's page and Kinema Club to see where the research community gathers.