The accented Japanese screenplay: Transnational currents in contemporary Japanese cinema

Abstract

Japanese cinema in the early twenty-first century has seen the emergence of Japanese-language films written by non-Japanese screenwriters. The arrival of these screenwriters and screenplays complicates existing discourses on ‘nation’ and the transnational in Japanese cinema. In particular, it adds to the tensions around East–West binaries that often permeate considerations of non-Japanese contact with cinematic representations of Japan and requires industry practitioners and researchers to re-consider notions of ‘Japan’ and cultural contact in cinema from Japan. Drawing on the concept of ‘accented cinema’, this article positions Japanese screenplays by non-Japanese screenwriters as accented Japanese screenplays. Two such screen texts are critiqued to suggest the dialogic inevitability of polyvocal interpretations of accented Japanese screenplays with regard to issues of privilege and marginalization, as well as the national and the transnational.