Kyoto Lectures

Kyoto still preserves its ancient cultural tradition as one of Japan's major academic centers and a meeting place for scholars from around the world. Organized in collaboration with the École Française d’Extrême-Orient and the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyoto University, the Kyoto Lectures offer specialists in East Asian cultures and societies the opportunity to present their ongoing research results in Kyoto.
Censorship and Japanese Cinema, 1925-1945

Kyoto Lectures

Censorship and Japanese Cinema, 1925-1945

A Case Study of Mizoguchi Kenji’s Sisters of the Gion (1936)

Chika Kinoshita

May 21st, 2025 18:00

Mizoguchi Kenji (1898-1956) always had problems with censors. This presentation analyzes The Naimushō (Ministry of Internal Affairs)’s censorship, 1925-1945, taking Mizoguchi’s Gion no kyodai (Sisters of the Gion, 1936), one of the most critically acclaimed films of the 1930s Japanese cinema, as a case study. Censorship is recast as a process involving criticism, reception, and negotiation. The analysis reconstructs the censors’ logic, goal, and professional consciousness based on their published memos, interviews, the censored script, and the surviving film text.

Chika Kinoshita is a professor of Film Studies at the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies at Kyoto University. She has published the award-winning book Mizoguchi Kenji: Aesthetics and Politics of the Film Medium (Hosei University Press, 2016), and essays and chapters on cinema, gender, and sexuality in English and Japanese.

 

This hybrid lecture will be held on site (registration required in advance from here) and via Zoom.

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81327602950

Meeting ID: 813 2760 2950