"Visions of Japanese Modernity is the single best account of the formation of Japanese cinema. Deftly drawing on film discourses, regulations, and exhibition practices, it brilliantly brings into focus one of the most exuberant and contested moments in the history of cinema. It not only sets new standards for film history but also plants the seeds for a counterhistory to cinema as such."—Thomas LaMarre, author of The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation
"In this landmark study, Aaron Gerow richly demonstrates the vibrancy of Japanese film culture as no book has done before. Visions of Japanese Modernity is centered on the contentious Pure Film Movement, and the transformations it helped provoke in performance, screenwriting, censorship, film style, and benshi oratory. With virtually no extant films to work with, Gerow strategically turns to a multitude of other sources, including fanzines, popular movie magazines, sociological studies, government regulations, and impressive works of early film theory. Rich in detail and lucidly argued, Visions of Modernity provides a model for writing about filmmaking in its social, political and aesthetic contexts."—Abé Mark Nornes, author of Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema
"Gerow offers not only a benchmark in the study of Japanese cinema, but a major contribution to world film history; a thoroughly researched and complexly argued 'discursive' history of early Japanese cinema, that avoids approaching it simply as an alternative to western cinema and reveals the unique role cinema played in the formulation of modern Japanese culture. Gerow makes clear the foundations of Japanese film history in the silent era—and how it shaped the complex and exciting national cinema that followed."—Tom Gunning, author of D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film
