In this compelling study, Daisuke Miyao explores Jean-Pierre Melville's cult 1967 thriller Le Samouraï, a film that unfolds in a coolly stylised Paris where the paths of a contract killer, Jef Costello (Alain Delon), and the police commissaire pursuing him (François Périer) fatally intersect.Despite its title, Le Samouraï, is not a sword-clashing tale of feudal Japan. Rather, Miyao suggests that the film's philosophical framework draws on both existentialism and t...

In Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema, Daisuke Miyao explores the influence of Japanese art on the development of early cinematic visual style, particularly the actualité films made by the Lumière brothers between 1895 and 1905. Examining nearly 1,500 Lumière films, Miyao contends that more than being documents of everyday life, they provided a medium for experimenting with aesthetic and cinematic styles imported from Japan. Miyao further analyzes the Lumière films produce...

In this revealing study, Daisuke Miyao explores "the aesthetics of shadow" in Japanese cinema in the first half of the twentieth century. This term, coined by the production designer Yoshino Nobutaka, refers to the perception that shadows add depth and mystery. Miyao analyzes how this notion became naturalized as the representation of beauty in Japanese films, situating Japanese cinema within transnational film history. He examines the significant roles lighting played in distinguishing th...

While the actor Sessue Hayakawa (1886–1973) is perhaps best known today for his Oscar-nominated turn as a Japanese military officer in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), in the early twentieth century he was an internationally renowned silent film star, as recognizable as Charlie Chaplin or Douglas Fairbanks. In this critical study of Hayakawa’s stardom, Daisuke Miyao reconstructs the Japanese actor’s remarkable career, from the films that preceded his meteoric rise to fame as t...

Transnational Cinematography Studies introduces new perspectives to the discipline of film and media studies. First, this volume focuses on a crucial yet largely unexplored area in film and media studies: the substantial communication between critical studies of cinema and film production practices. This book integrates theories and practices of cinematographic technology. Secondly, Transnational Cinematography Studies expands the scope of film and media studies into the arena of transnati...