Catherine Russell, The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity
At long last, Naruse Mikio’s cinema has received serious attention in the first book-length study of his work in the English language. Western scholars of Japanese cinema have neglected Naruse, favouring the more attention-grabbing classic maestros – Kurosawa Akira, Mizoguchi Kenji and Ozu Yasujiro – who have all been discussed extensively and long accepted into the pantheon of great film directors. Like Mizoguchi, Naruse was a great director of star actresses and women’s films; like Ozu, he was trained at Shochiku’s Kamata studios and was a reliable company employee; like Kurosawa, he served a long apprenticeship – in fact, the young Kurosawa worked as Naruse’s assistant director in his early years at Toho.