While the new year is already underway, we have not yet spoken about our mission for 2020, the first year of the new decade. While we’ll keep on providing qualitative and engaging psycho-analytical review-analyses of the newest Japanese releases, we also want to realize some other projects as well.

Top 10 Japanese movies of the decade.  

While we already introduced our top ten of Japanese movies for the year 2017, 2018, and 2019, we want to provide, at the end of 2020, a top ten of the previous decade. Our loyal readers can thus expect a lot of reviews of Japanese movies released between 2010 and 2019 throughout the year.

From hero to violator: An introduction to pre-war Jidai-geki cinema.   

A second project for 2020 is to provide an in-depth introduction to pre-war jidai-geki cinema. While many people know and love the jidai-geki narrative’s released in the second post-war golden-period of the period film, not many know the importance and the brilliance of the first golden-period of the period film.

The spell of beauty: About aesthetics in Japanese cinema.

We also aim to write an introduction to aesthetics in Japanese cinema. While the aesthetics in contemporary Japanese cinema are more in line with their western counterparts, an exploration in the specific aesthetics that marked the Japanese cinema of the past will allow the reader to appreciate the aesthetic sense Japanese directors of the past had.

A questioning the role of the critic.

Another project psycho-cinematography wants to realize this year is providing an critical discussion of what a critic should be and a thorough questioning of the current state of criticism in general and online-criticism is particular. For this project we’ll invite a very talented reviewer.

Continuing our exploration of the possibilities and struggles of doing psychoanalysis in Japan.

Last year, we wrote our first article about psychoanalysis in Japan – see The Japanese subject and the unconscious (part 1). Our article was written in response to an article written by Osagawara. This year, we aim to venture deeper into the possibilities and difficulties of psychoanalysis in Japan. 

Guest-writers 

This year, we’ll also aim to invite external writers to write quality content for our blog. While we cannot provide any particular information about who will write for psycho-cinematography at the moment, we do aim to invite people who with their knowledge about Japanese cinema can enrich our understanding of Japanese cinema.