Films japonais contemporains et représentations d’un pays perdu : des nostalgies à l’œuvre

Abstract

In many recent Japanese films, we see the recurring presence of places with a strong sense of typicalness: “traditional” houses with a genkan (vestibule), gardens, engawa (verandas), tatami mats; sentō (public baths), small railway stations passed on a local line running through the countryside. These spaces evoke collective practices informed by the seasons and where conviviality is evident: meals, baths, neighborhood life. While these places and practices are often far removed from the real lives of the general Japanese public, their representations abound in films. This article describes and analyses the images of these various topos from the perspective of nostalgia to understand how they relate to cultural issues in contemporary Japan.

Keywords

• daily life
• Japanese cinema
• nostalgia
• landscape
• Japanese house
• native land