ABSTRACT
The 1990s was supposed to be the era when Japanese cinema revealed the true heterogeneity of the archipelago’s population, exposed the porousness of its borders, and thereby opened up to the transnational flows that have challenged the long-standing myth of Japan as a homogeneous nation. Resident Korean (zainichi) directors such as Sai Yōichi (Choe Yang-il), Lee Sang-il, and Matsue Tetsuaki offered accounts of Japan’s largest minority population, while filmmakers such as Takamine Gō and Nakae Yūji explored the difference of Okinawan culture that was often suppressed in Japan’s rush to become a unified and modern nation state. Still other filmmakers, as varied as Miike Takashi, Yamamoto Masashi, Harada Masato, Zeze Takahisa, Yanagimachi Mitsuo, Iwai Shunji, and Ōtomo Katsuhiro, presented a Japan crisscrossed by transnational flows of Chinese, Pakistanis, Iranians, Brazilians, or Iranians, where multiple languages filled the soundtrack.
