Censorship and Japanese Cinema, 1925-1945
A Case Study of Mizoguchi Kenji’s Sisters of the Gion (1936)

Wednesday, May 21st, 18:00
Chika Kinoshita (Kyoto University)

Mizoguchi Kenji (1898-1956) always had problems with censors. This presentation analyzes Naimushō (The 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 censorship 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.


This hybrid lecture will be held on site and via Zoom.
Registration required in advance from https://forms.gle/4WPxrhQXDRo3o2348

Zoom Meeting ID: 813 2760 2950
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81327602950

Venue: EFEO Kyoto, 29 Kitashirakawa betto-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8276
You can find the place on Google Maps with the words 'EFEO Kyoto'.


École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO)
Italian School of East Asian Studies (ISEAS)
Co-hosted by Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University



 kyoto lectures