Keiko McDonald's 1994 "Japanese Classical Theater in Films" (Associated University Presses) has become an indispensable text. Anyone studying the cinema of Japan will find no richer source concerning the beginnings and the continuing assumptions influencing filmmaking. Now McDonald has issued a companion volume about modern Japanese literature in films that is equally imperative for both student and scholar.
The reason is that no other expert in the film has more completely presented those qualities that make the Japanese cinema so singular. One (the theme of the 1994 book) emphasizes that Japan did not see film as a new kind of photography (as did, for example, the United States), but as a new form of drama. The connection of film and theater created and maintained the "benshi"-commentator, the stagelike, long-held, distant shot, theatrical styles of acting, and so on.
Another distinguishing factor (the theme of this new book) is that, as the author states, "It could well be that of all the world's cinemas, the Japanese is unique in its closeness, early and late, to the nation's literature." Not only does this mean that there are a greater number of films based on plays or books than in most other film industries, but it also indicates ways in which Japanese film developed.