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In his Foreword to this volume, Donald Richie, one of the most important and influential non-Japanese scholars of Japanese film, writes that 'directories of directors are extremely helpful. They indicate the shape of a career, give examples of its contours. They help trace development, or lack of it, and offer a full account of a life's work. They record and they register' (ix). This is very true—and, also as Richie points out, good directories are scarcer than they should be. To help rectify this situation for English-language scholars, Alexander Jacoby has created a thoroughly-researched, comprehensive, and yet highly personal set of 'profiles and filmographies for more than 150 Japanese filmmakers at work in live-action cinema between the silent era and the present day' (xxvi). The comprehensiveness comes from the scope of the historical periods covered here and the many diverse genres and eclectic styles which the directors represent. The 'personal' comes from Jacoby's criteria for including the directors he has chosen, which rest on his 'sense of each director's importance in Japanese cinema, and to an extent on �E�c [his] evaluation of their talent' (xxvii). Jacoby readily admits that he has 'made space for little-known directors who do not command a wide reputation if�E�c [he is] personally enthusiastic about their work' (xxvii). This is a candid, even refreshing approach to scholarship and quite appropriate given Jacoby's stated intention for his book to serve 'as a source of both factual information and critical discussion,' (xxvii). In general his work succeeds admirably in bringing together in a highly accessible package both an alphabetised, chronological listing of many filmmakers' output, as well as provocative comments on the substance of that work.

This is a handbook of directors, a directory, rather than an interpretative or analytical evaluation of the filmmakers it includes, yet as such, it is an impressive collection. Jacoby introduces each director by listing his/her date of birth, date of death (where appropriate), and the Japanese kanji script for the director's name. Next comes a brief though insightful description of major themes selected from major, representative works, supplementing his own critiques with relevant evaluative, illustrative quotations from contemporary directors or film scholars. Attached to these introductions are chronological filmographies, as complete as possible, listing film names in Japanese transliteration and English translation, both literal and commercial, where such differ. While Jacoby discusses representative works in passing, he doesn't attempt an exhaustive overview of the directors' output—quite understandable given the scope of the work as it stands. He also doesn't provide a list of principal actors, producers, screenwriters, cinematographers, or other details of technical collaborators. This is unfortunate because such information too can be extremely useful in providing a coherent picture of development in a filmmaker's work. And yet here, too, we can forgive Jacoby for leaving this material out, and so keeping his book to a manageable 400 pages. And, after all, this does not aim to be a film directory—for that, one may turn to Tom Mes's and Jasper Sharp's Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film (Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2004), for example, or even to the newly-updated version of Donald Richie's A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: a Concise History, With a Selective Guide to Videos and DVDs (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2001). These other works are more centrally concerned with providing introductions to Japanese film for general or academic audiences, respectively, and so their greater detail is necessary. Jacoby's project is more limited, but in some ways broader. Instead of an exhaustive listing of the production details of each director's work, on the one hand, or an investigation into the thematic, stylistic, and political trends of the Japanese film industry as a whole, his task is to 'offer a comprehensive introduction to the work of major directors from every period of the Japanese cinema' (xxv).

While the entries are indeed comprehensive, they are also relatively brief, averaging between one and two double-columned pages, and yet Jacoby's economical writing style allows him to give a good evaluative overview of the work he discusses. The descriptions are definitely aimed toward the amateur enthusiast, though, avoiding specific, esoteric terminology about composition or lighting, for example. Jacoby has also elected to use Western name ordering for his discussions of the directors, inverting the order of family name/given name which is proper in Japan. This is not surprising given Stone Bridge Press's own focus on a popular, general readership, and neither does it detract from Jacoby's overall well-considered entries and sensitivity to cinematic and historical importance. For the reader wanting a quick guide to prominent directors throughout Japan's rich film heritage, this book makes a welcome and overdue contribution to cinema studies. I certainly do hope Alexander Jacoby will turn next to some of the areas he reasonably decided to leave out of this volume: television, for example, but more importantly animation. There is an equally pressing need for a comprehensive handbook of filmmakers working in anime, as indeed there is a need for a comprehensive history of animation in Japan.

These projects are for the near future, however. For now, Jacoby's handbook is a valuable and valid guide to a wide range of important filmmakers who, collectively, have produced a highly impressive body of work.

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Copyright: Timothy Iles
This page was first created on  15 April 2009.

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