Japanese Movie Posters (a J!-ENT Book Review)

“This is truly a book created for the Japanese film enthusiast who collects posters of various movie genres.  From classic yakuza films to pink, mature content films to anime-related films, ‘Japanese Movie Posters’ works as an book full of informative content, large colorful images inc. nostalgic content and more!”

BOOK: Japanese Movie Posters

AUTHORS:  Chuck Stephens, Tetsuya Masuda and Kairakutei Black

COMPANY: Cocoro Books (DH Publishing, Inc.)

PAGE COUNT: 98 pages

OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Monster and Yakuza, Ghosts and Samurai, Anime, Pink and New Cinema!

A tribute to 50 years of lurid imagery and purple prose created by nameless designers at Japanese film studios.  Unforgettable images conjured out of a few still photos, some bold lettering and plenty of tattoos, swords, guns, baseball bats, ropes, scowls, leers, scars, rubber suits, school uniforms, cartoon characters and half-naked women.

I happen to collect various art and photographs of entertainment from the early 1900’s to modern times and I’ve always been interested in others collections of art  or photography.

“Japanese Movie Posters” is a book that features posters from various genres such as yakuza, sci-fi and monster, samurai, pink, horror, animation and new cinema and goes further by allowing the reader to have a chance to purchase the book.

Similar to other Cocoro Books (DHP Publishing) releases, this book can be seen as a photobook but you do get  commentary for each poster and its respective genre.  Also, unlike other recent releases from Cocoro Books, this book is about 8×12 and quite large, featuring large full color photos and more.

The book was written by Chuck Stephens, a contributing editor from “Film Comment” and Jinema Junpo”, Masuda Tetsuya, a prdocuer and runs the cinema section at the bookstore @wonder and the final person featured is Kairakutei Black, known as a walking encyclopedia on Japanese films of all genres.

The pages feature a large image of the poster and below the image is the title of the film (in English and Japanese), the film studio and year it was made, the director and how much the poster costs.  Then a brief information on the film.

So, an example would bey “Return of the Tokyo Drifter” (Zoku: Tokyo Nagaremono” which was releasd in 1966.  It was great to see classic posters like this, that go back in the 60’s and the same can be said for other genres featured.    Especially for the Sci-Fi films such as Godzilla, Mothra, Gamera and Ultra Man films.  Great to see those posters.

As much as the book features straight up movie posters, this book is not for the young as it does contain nudity.

Once you get to the chapter of “Pink”  (adult films produced by indie productions), then you do get to see quite a bit of the nudity featured on the posters and it’s not full frontal nudity but a lot of the movie posters featured a lot of women nude from the the torso up.

I’m sure one of the biggest attractions of this book will be those who are enamored by anime films.  Posters from the 1978 “Farewell Space Battleship Yamamoto”, 1979’s “The Castle of Cagliostro”, 1984 “Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer” and many Miyazaki film posters are featured.  But unfortunately, anime posters are limited to only nine pages and I admit that I was hoping to see posters from the late 70’s “Gundam” films, the 1982 “Cobra” film, a few other Miyazaki films and more.

Also, another attraction is the “samurai” posters which seem to be the most expensive in terms of collectability.  But if there was one thing I was hoping was that there would be Kurosawa Akira posters featured.  I know that the book features films from 1960’s and up but I would have loved to see the posters for “Yojimbo” or even “Ran”.

As for the category “New Cinema”, you get newer films such as Kitano Takeshi films and films that I watched in Japan such as “Odoru Daisousassen” have their posters featured.

And featured at the end of the book is an index in both English and Japanese for those looking for a film poster in this book which was cool to see both featured.  And as mentioned, a way for fans to purchase the posters online.

“Japanese Movie Posters” is definitely another welcomed niche book from Cocoro Books.  The fact that this company continues to bring niche books that appeal to fans worldwide is great and as much as one can see many film or TV drama posters on the train stations or high above buildings, and many around the Odaiba Fuji TV area, for me, it’s always cool to see artwork, photography or posters from a film, especially if it was created before I was born.

I did feel that I wish there were as equal amount of coverage for other genres, especially for the coverage of anime films and wished there were posters for Kurosawa-related films.  That would have been awesome to see.

But all in all, the guys did a great job featuring the posters and giving information on the films.  And as much as it serves as a visual reference for fans interested in purchasing the posters, it also works as a great entertainment book covering Japanese entertainment within the last 40 years.

So, overall this is another solid release from Cocoro Books/DHP.