Europe Japan Research Centre Podcasts

Following their defeat of Japan in the second World War the occupying American forces imposed radical policies of suffrage, demilitarisation and wide ranging social reforms. Part of the allied policies included strict censorship on what could be shown in cinemas. This lead to the wide scale importation of Hollywood cinema into a country where until recently it had not only been banned but audiences had been fed a strict diet of anti-american propaganda. In light of the developing field of audience research and memory studies in Japanese cinema this seminar will look at primary research with surviving women to see how in watching Hollywood cinema and phrasing their own experiences through those of popular films and Hollywood stars, women were able to make sense of their own pasts. This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University on 4 March 2015.