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Around 1980, the film industry underwent a transformation that had commenced two decades earlier. The studio system that constituted the film industry collapsed, consequently generating new players and regimes. However, filmmakers of this era fell victim to a strange paradox. Despite the fact that watching their films, which were born at the same time as video, digital tools, databases, and the Internet, is much easier, research and evaluation outside Japan (especially in French-speaking countries) remains fragmentary.
 
In light of this, the purpose of this issue is to describe and analyze 40 years of Japanese cinema from 1980 to 2020. Therefore, this may appear to be a reasonable objective. However, one can consider another 40 years to understand how complex and diverse such a short period can be. For example, the period from 1930 to 1970, perhaps the best-known period in Japanese film history, experienced a transition from silent movies to talkies, from the golden age of the 1930s to that of the 1950s after 15 years of war, and the consolidation of the film industry before its collapse in the 1960s; this period also included produced several generations of directors. The four decades since 1980 covered by this issue are no less rich and demanding in terms of precision and nuance.
 
Moreover, the term “film” designates a heterogeneous and multiple subject, from private to spectacular practices, and from industry (be it the equipment industry or filmmaking) to small stores. This heterogeneity is also found in the approach to understanding it. The fragmentation of the history of cinema into multiple approaches, as theorized by many texts and too often assumed to be autonomous, has resulted in the fragmentation of its subject (and thus, the angle of its study). In other words, film historiography is simply confronted with the idea, which is already very common in the subject of historiography and perfectly summarized by Braudel, that there is not one history, not one profession of historian, but many professions and histories. The Japanese context is no exception to these questions.

This issue is also designed to reflect pluralism in rethinking the past 40 years of Japanese cinema and is divided into two parts. The first examines how production, distribution, and creation have evolved in this “post-studio” era, while the second introduces French-speaking readers to Shigehiko Hasumi, who is an indispensable figure in Japan, but is rarely discussed abroad.
 

(Written by Mathieu Capel, Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2024)