Leiden University Student Repository

Kalcheva, Maya (2020)

Interrogating mainland representations of Okinawa: The case of Takamine Gō’s Paradise View

Master thesis | Asian Studies (60 EC) (MA)

Okinawa’s position within Japan has been historically regarded with ambivalence in Japanese mainstream discourse, which is particularly visible in Japanese cinema featuring the prefecture. Such films have been predominantly produced by mainland Japanese directors, and have often been criticized for depicting Okinawa in stereotypical and essentializing ways. This thesis places Paradise View, the understudied first feature film of Okinawa-born independent director Takamine Gō, in the above-mentioned context and focuses on the film’s thematic and narrative analysis to put it forward as a case study of a film that actively evades and challenges such representations.

Okinawa

representation

Japanese cinema

Author

Kalcheva, Maya

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

East Asian Studies

Supervisors

Smits, Ivo

ECTS Credits

15

Language

en