Michael Raine

PhD (University of Iowa)

University College 2421
519-661-2111 ext. 87895
mraine3@uwo.ca 

Office Hours: tba

Areas of Interest:

Film Studies, Cultural Studies, Asian Studies. Research interests in World Cinema, especially Japanese cinema: the transition to sound, wartime image culture, and the Japanese new wave. Media convergence of Japanese cinema, popular music, and publication culture; the participatory culture of fandom in Japan. Subtitling as an historical practice and an aesthetic problem in the relation between text and image in the cinema. Developing "digital humanities" tools for teaching and research in film studies.

Work in Progress:

In progress: The Cinema of High Economic Growth: New Japanese Cinemas, 1955-1964.

Book manuscript on the Japanese New Wave in the context of the youth-oriented program pictures of the 1950s and 1960s.

Selected Publications:

  • 2021 Co-editor (with Marcos Centeno), Developments in the Japanese Documentary Mode (MDPI)
  • 2020 Co-editor (with Johan Nordström), The Culture of the Sound Image in Prewar Japan (Amsterdam UP)
    "Introduction" (with Johan Nordström)
    "No Interpreter, Full Volume: The Sound Image as Cultural Modernity in Japan"
    Translator: Nagato Yohei. "The Dawn of the Talkies in Japan: Mizoguchi Kenji's Hometown (1930)"
  • 2020 "The Japanese Musical" in Alastair Philips and Fujiki Hideaki (Eds.) The Japanese Cinema Book (BFI)
  • 2019 "The Insect Woman, or: The Female Art of Failure" in Lindsay Coleman and David Desser (Eds.), Clients, Killers, and Kindred Spirits: The Taboo Cinema of Shohei Imamura (Edinburgh University Press)
  • 2019 "The Cold War as Media Environment in 1960s Japanese Cinema" in Poshek Fu and Man Fung Yip (Eds.), The Cold War and Asian Cinema (CRC Press)
  • 2018 "'You Can't Replace Gone With the Wind with Chūshingura': China Nights and occupied film culture in wartime Shanghai," Film History 30.2
  • 2018 "A New Form of Silent Cinema: Intertitles and Interlocution in Ozu Yasujiro's Late Silent Films" in Jinhee Choi (Ed.), Reorienting Ozu: The Cinema of Ozu and His Influence (Oxford UP)
  • 2016 "Kayō eiga to media mix" [Popular Song Films and the Media Mix] in New Vistas: Japanese Studies for the Next Generation (Kyoto: Nichibunken, 2016)
  • 2015 "Yasuzo Masumura: Studio Cinema as a Social Act" in Directory of World Cinema: Japan 3, John Berra (Ed.) (Intellect)
  • 2015 "Oshima Nagisa: Paradox and Perversion in the 1960s Avant-Garde" in Directory of World Cinema: Japan 3, John Berra (Ed.) (Intellect)
  • 2014 "'Nan no, soshite dare no tame ni' : Sengo Eikoku ni okeru Nihon eiga no juyo no saikosatsu" ["What is the use of this, and for whom?" : A reconsideration of the reception of Japanese cinema in post-war Britain] Gengo Bunka 30 (Meiji gakuin daigaku)
  • 2014 "From Hybridity to Dispersion: film subtitling as an adaptive practice" in Media and Translation: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Bloomsbury)
  • 2014 "Adaptation" in The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema (Ed. Daisuke Miyao) 
  • 2012 "Introduction to Matsumoto Toshio" and translation of Matsumoto Toshio. "Zen'ei kiroku eiga ron" [On Avant-Garde Documentary] in Cinema Journal 51.4
  • 2007 "Modernization without Modernity: Masumura Yasuzo's Giants and Toys", in Julian Stringer and Alastair Philips (Eds.) Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts. Routledge
  • 2001 "Japan as Punishment Room in Ichikawa Kon’s Shokei no heya" in James Quandt (Ed.), Ichikawa Kon (Cinematheque Ontario)
  • 2000 "Ishihara Yujiro: Youth, celebrity, and the male body in 1950s Japan," in Dennis Washburn and Carole Cavanaugh (Eds.), Word and Image in Japanese Cinema (Cambridge UP)

Other Interests:

  • From summer 2017 I am co-editor of The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema with Jinhee Choi (King's College London, UK) (Taylor and Francis).
  • I curated the film series Japan Sings! at Japan Society, New York in 2016 <>
  • I lectured in 2014 and 2015 on the Summer Program of the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at the University of Tokyo.
  • I am a member of the editorial collective for Kinema Club, the online web portal for Japanese film studies <>

I have translated and created subtitles for the Yamagata Film Festival (1997, 2009, 2011, 2013), the Vienna Film Festival (2001, 2003), the Udine Film Festival (2006, 2010, 2011), the Berlin Film Festival (2014), and for organizations such as Japan Society of New York (2015) and the Women Pioneers in Japanese Cinema project (2022).

Recent Grants:

  • 2016: NEAC Research Travel Grant, Association for Asian Studies for research on the transition to sound at the University of Tokyo
  • 2015: Faculty Research Development Fund grant to develop the book project The Culture of the Sound Image in Prewar Japan
  • 2015: Faculty Mentoring grant to bring Professor Tom Lamarre to campus.
  • 2014-5: International Curriculum development grant to fund an archive of anime for a class on Japanese animation.
  • 2013: SSHRC Internal Research Grant to research prewar sound culture in Japan
  • 2013: SSHRC Internal Travel Grant