Professor Kitamura publishes book

Professor Hiroshi Kitamura (Department of History and International Relations) recently published a book on the Japanese film critic Nagaharu YODOGAWA. The title of the book is The Evangelist of Cinema: Nagaharu Yodogawa and Modern Japan (淀川長治―「映画の伝道師」と日本のモダン―), and it was published in December of 2024 by Nagoya University Press. Nagoya University Press published previous work by Professor Kitamura, including the Japanese version of Screening Enlightenment and a Japanese language translation of David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson's Film Art that Professor Kitamura contributed to. 

Evangelist of Cinema is a critical biography of YOGOGAWA, discussing his encounter with cinema during his early life and how his career as a writer and editor for journals such as Friend of the Movies (映画の友) and Film World (映画世界) led to him becoming one of Japan's representative cinephiles at a time when film was still the driving force in mass culture. This status led to appearances on television as a film personality, and YODOGAWA grew to be a beloved figure through his work hosting the weekly showcase program Sunday Western Cinema (日曜洋画劇場), which aired on Asahi TV between 1962 until 1998. 

The book connects YODOGAWA's career as a film critic to the conditions and experience of modern life in Japan, in which Hollywood cinema was a powerful force. Born in 1909, YODOGAWA's life overlaps significantly with the history of film in Japan, and that relationship forms an important part of Professor Kitamura's approach to analyzing YODOGAWA's career. 

Additional information is available on Nagoya University Press' website.