Naoki Yamamoto, Dialectics without Synthesis: Japanese Film Theory and Realism in a Global Frame

Has there ever been film theory in Japan? This question, posed more than four decades ago by Satō Tadao, the doyen among Japanese film scholars, has recently found new resonance and relevance. Naoki Yamamoto’s first monograph, Dialectics without Synthesis: Japanese Film Theory and Realism in a Global Frame, should be seen as a seminal contribution to this trend and an important step towards an affirmative answer to the nagging question. Previously, Aaron Gerow’s Decentering Theory,1 was the first to build up expectations about this new line of inquiry in anglophone Japanese film studies. In Japan, the 2018 publication of the bulky 746 pages of Rediscovering Classical Japanese Film Theory2 sought to present examples of critical engagement with cinema by dozens of pre-1945 writers, including Nakai Masakazu, Imamura Taihei, Sugiyama Heiichi and Nagae Michitarō, all discussed in detail by Yamamoto. Last but not least, Media Theory in...