An in-depth examination of the intermedial relationship between Japanese cinema and punk culture, focusing on Japan’s ‘punk generation’ of filmmakers between the 1970s and 1980s.

In this book, Mark Player explores how the do-it-yourself ethos of punk empowered a new generation of Japanese filmmakers during a time of crisis and change for Japan’s film industry. Drawing on first-hand interviews with filmmakers of the jishu eiga (self-made film) tradition, such as such as Ishii Gakuryu, Yamamoto Masashi, Tsukamoto Shin’ya, and Fukui Shozin, Player explores how the bricolage style of punk was harnessed to create exciting intermedial film aesthetics informed by punk rock, graffiti painting, street performance, animation, and music technologies. Taking into account the practical, phenomenological and political ramifications of combining different media elements, Player offers in-depth readings of films such as Burst City (1982), Robinson’s Garden (1987) and Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989). He goes on to trace the changing sociocultural position of Japan’s punk movement throughout the 1980s, from its euphoric early-80s highpoint to a growing dysphoria brought about by its co-opting and convergence by the mainstream.