Daisuke Miyao

Office Hours

Considering cinema to be a transnational cultural form from the beginning of its history and simultaneously to be a national entity, formed by specific discourses on nationalism and modernization, Professor Miyao has been conducting research on film history. His interdisciplinary training in cinema studies, East Asian studies, and American studies, combined with his bicultural background, living and studying both in Japanese and North American academia, made it possible for him to recognize that the study of film could benefit from cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspectives. Professor Miyao received his B.A. in American Studies from the University of Tokyo in 1993 (with honor), M.A. in Area Studies from the University of Tokyo in 1995, M.A. in Cinema Studies from New York University in 1997, and Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University in 2003 (with distinction). Before joining the UCSD faculty in 2014, he taught at Columbia University as Postdoctoral Fellow in Expanding East Asian Studies Program, the University of California, Berkeley as Postdoctoral Fellow in Film Studies, and the University of Oregon where he chaired the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. He received, among others, NEH Summer Stipends in 2015, ACLS/SSRC/NEH International and Area Studies Fellowship in 2010-11, Center for the Study of Women in Society Research Grant in 2010-11, and Oregon Humanities Center Research Award in 2009. He has served as a visiting professor at the Global Studies Program of Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 in France in 2012-13 and Spring 2024.

Languages: English, Japanese, French

Books

• Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020.  LINK
• Cinema Is a Cat: A Cat Lover's Introduction to Film Studies. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2019.  LINK
• The Aesthetics Shadow: Lighting and Japanese Cinema. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013. Invited by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Deutsche Kinemathek Museum fur Film und Fernsehen to the 64th Berlin International Film Festival (2014).  LINK
• Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007. Received Book Award in History from the Association of Asian American Studies (2007) and John Hope Franklin Book Award from Duke University (2007).  LINK
• Eiga wa neko dearu: Hajimete no cinema sutadizu [Cinema Is a Cat: Introduction to Cinema Studies]. Tokyo: Heibon sha, 2011.  LINK
• The World of Benshi, eds. Michael Emmerich and Daisuke Miyao. Los Angeles: UCLA Film and TV Archive, 2024.
• Transnational Cinematography Studies, eds. Lindsay Coleman, Daisuke Miyao, and Roberto Schaefer, ASC. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017.  LINK
• The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema, ed. Daisuke Miyao. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.  LINK
• Casio Abe, Beat Takeshi vs. Takeshi Kitano, eds. Daisuke Miyao and William Gardner. New York: Kaya, 2004.

Articles & Book Chapters

• “The Aesthetics of Shadow in Color?: Miyagawa Kazuo’s Chromatic Experiments in Otōto (Her Brother, 1960).” Re-Focus: The Films of Ichikawa Kon, ed. Kyle Barrowman. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Accepted.
• “Morals and Camera Movements: Kinoshita Keisuke According to Yoshida Yoshishige.” The Films of Kinoshita Keisuke, ed. David Desser. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Accepted.
• “Seeing Is Filmmaking: Teshigahara Hiroshi’s Hokusai (1953).” Refocus The International Director Series: Hiroshi Teshigahara, eds. Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano and Marcos Pable Centino Martin. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Accepted.
• “Remaking His Way with Zen: Sessue Hayakawa and the Zen Boom.” Comebacks, Cameos, and Camp: The Return of the Aging Star, eds. by Gloria Monti and Martin Shingler. Detroit: Wayne University Press. Accepted.
• “Qu’est-ce qu’une direction de la photographie japonaise ?: Réflexions à partir du travail de Kazuo Miyagawa [What Is ‘Japanese’ Cinematography?: Thoughts from the Work of Miyagawa Kazuo].” Conceptualizing Motion Picture Photography, eds. Bérénice
  Bonhomme, Simon Daniellou, and Priska Morrissey. Rennes: Université Rennes 2, 2024. In press.
• “Old Man Beaver’s Blessing Song: Conversations with Jerome and Diane Rothenberg.” Denver Quarterly 58.4 (2024): 27-41.
• “What Is ‘Asian Cinema’ in Japan?: Film and Political Economy in the 1940s.” Routledge Handbook of Asian Cinema, eds. Zhang Zhen, Sangjoon Lee, and Debashree Mukherjee. London: Routledge, 2024, 111-122.
• “Reviewing Maple Viewing (Momijigari, 1899).” The Oxford Handbook of Silent Cinema, eds. Rob King and Charlie Keil. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024, 116-129.
• “The History of the Benshi.” The World of Benshi, eds. Michael Emmerich and Daisuke Miyao, Los Angeles: UCLA Film and TV Archive, 2024, 16-33.
• “Translocality and Polylocality in Ozu’s Late Spring and Hou’s Good Men, Good Women: A Belated Tribute to Yingjin Zhang.” Chinese Literature and Thought Today 54.3-4 (December 2023): 70-75.
• “Yasujiro Ozu.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Columbia, SC: LPP Publishing, 2023, 1-59.
• “Hanako, Rodin, and the Close-up: A Cross-cultural and Inter-medial Dialogue in the Early Twentieth Century.” Journal of Japonisme 8.1 (2023): 1-30.
• “Le Samouraï: Jean-Pierre Melville’s Cinematic Japan.” Capture Japan: Visual Culture and the Global Imagination from 1952 to the Present, ed. Marco Bohr. London: Bloomsbury, 2022, 18-35.
• “The Adventures of Uchida Tomu.” Companion to Japanese Cinema., ed. David Desser. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022, 90-104.
• “What We’ve Got Here Is a Failure to Communicate?: Facing Forward to the Future of Japanese Cinema Studies.” Transcommunication 9.2 (Fall 2022): 127-35.
• “After The Cheat: The Birth of the Japanese-American Film Audience.” Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History 14 (2022): 42-60.
• “The Melodrama of Ozu: Tokyo Story and Its Time.” Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema 13.2 (2021): 58-79.
• “From Kabuki to Cinema to Kabuki: Japanese Cinema Before World War II.” Screen Studies, ed. Eric Smoodin. London: Bloomsbury, 2019, n.p.
• “Yasujiro Ozu.” Oxford Bibliographies in Cinema and Media Studies, ed. Krin Gabbard. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.  LINK 
• “Le cauchemar des chats: Film noir et Le Cercle rouge [The Nightmare of Cats: Film Noir and Le Cercle Rouge].” Revue (In)Disciplines 3 (2019).  LINK
• “How Can We Talk About ‘Transnational’ When We Talk About Japanese Cinema?” Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema 11.2 (2019): 109-16.
• “What’s the Use of Culture?: Cinematographers and the Culture Film in Japan in the Early 1940s.” Arts 8.2 (2019).  LINK
• “Peace Before Storm: The Concept of Trans-Asian Cinema and Peace After Storm (Yuguo Tianqing, 1931).” The Palgrave Handbook of Asian Cinema, eds. Aaron Magnan-Park, Gina Marchetti, and Tan See-Kam. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 245-68.
• “Ozu and the Aesthetics of Shadow: Lighting and Cinematography in There Was a Father (Chichi ariki, 1942).” Reorienting Ozu: A Master and His Influence, ed. Jinhee Choi. London: Oxford University Press, 2018, 119-32.
• “Cinema and the Haptic in Modern Japan.” Screen Bodies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Experience, Perception, and Display 3.1 (Summer 2018): 1-14.
• “Introduction.” Transnational Cinematography Studies, eds. Lindsay Coleman, Daisuke Miyao, and Roberto Schaefer, ASC. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017, 1-10.
• “À Travers: The Cinematography of Depth in Japan.” Transnational Cinematography Studies, eds. Lindsay Coleman, Daisuke Miyao, and Roberto Schaefer, ASC. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017, 55-75.
• “Hollywood Zen: A Historical Analysis of Oshima Nagisa’s Unfinished Film.” Mise au point 9 (2017).  LINK
• “Serialities and Japonisme in Lumière Brothers’ Actuality Films.” The Velvet Light Trap 79 (Spring 2017): 109-113.
• “The Hand of Buddha: Madame Butterfly and the Yellow Peril in Fritz Lang’s Harakiri (1919).” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 33.8 (2016): 707-721.
• “A Ghost Cat, a Star, and Two Intertexts: A Historical Analysis of A Cat, Shozo, and Two Women (1956).” Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema 8.2 (2016): 89-103.
• “Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema: A Transmedial and Transnational Analysis of the Lumière Brothers’ Films.” Journal of Japonisme 1.1 (February 2016): 66-92.
• “Out of the Past: ‘Film Noir,’ Whiteness, and the End of the Monochrome Era in Japanese Cinema.” East Asian Noir, ed. Chi Yun Shin and Mark Gallagher. London: I. B. Tauris,2015, 21-36.
• “A Star Is Born: The Transnational Success of The Cheat and Its Race and Gender Politics.” The American Film History Reader, eds. Jon Lewis and Eric Smoodin. Oxford: Routledge, 2015. Reprint of Chapter 1 in Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 21-49, 285-90.
• “Telephilia vs. Cinephilia = Beat Takeshi vs. Takeshi Kitano?” Japanese Popular Culture, eds. Matt Allen and Rumi Sakamoto. Oxford: Routledge, 2014. Reprint of the article with the same title in Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 45.2 (Fall 2004): 56-61.
• “The Cinema and the Sword: Inventing Patterns of Japanese Culture.” Inventing Asia: American Perceptions and Influences around 1900, eds. Alan Chong and Noriko Murai. Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2014, 170-80.
• “Die Erfindung der Ästhetik des Scattens: Beleuchtung im japanischen Film von 1920 bis in die 1950er Jahre [Invention of the Aesthetics of Shadow: History of Lighting in Japanese Cinema 1920-1950].” Ästhetik der Schatten: Filmisches Licht 1915-1950, eds. Connie Betz, Julia Pattis and Rainer Rother. Berlin: Schüren, 2014, 22-45.
• “Introduction.” The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema, ed. Daisuke Miyao. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, 1-10.
• “Nationalizing Madame Butterfly: The Formation of Female Stars in Japanese Cinema.” The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema, ed. Daisuke Miyao. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, 152-71.
• “Bright Lights, Big City: Lighting, Technological Modernity, and Ozu Yasujiro’s Sono yo no tsuma (That Night’s Wife, 1930).” positions: asia critique 22.1 (2014): 161-201.
• “Sessue Hayakawa: The Racialized Body vs. Photogenie.” Flickers of Desire: Movie Stars in the 1910s, ed. Jennifer M. Bean. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2011, 91-112.
• “Kaogiri: Hayashi Chojiro, Shochiku jidaigeki, soshite josei kankyaku [Slaying face: Hayashi Chojiro, Shochiku jidaigeki and female audience].” Nihon eiga to kankyaku [Japanese Cinema and Its Audience], ed. Fujiki Hideaki. Tokyo: Shinwa sha, 2011, 1-29.
• “Nihon eiga to Hariuddo [Japanese cinema and Hollywood].” Nihon eiga wa ikiteiru [Japanese cinema is alive], ed. Yomota Inuhiko. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2010, 201-26.
• “From Doppelganger to Monster: Kitano Takeshi’s Takeshis’.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 18.1 (Spring 2009): 6-23.
• “Thieves of Baghdad: Transnational Networks of Cinema and Anime in the 1920s.” Mechademia 2: Networks of Desire, ed. Frenchy Lunning. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, 83-102.
• “Dark Visions of Japanese Film Noir: Suzuki Seijun’s Branded to Kill (1967).” Japanese Film: Texts and Contexts, eds. Alastair Phillips and Julian Stringer. London: Routledge, 2007, 193-204.
• “Hariuddo eiga, haken no seiritsu: Chito ni miru ‘kotenteki Hariuddo eiga’ no sutairu to ideorogi [Hollywood cinema, the emergence of hegemony: The style and ideology of ‘Classical Hollywood Cinema’ in The Cheat].” Amerika bunka shi nyumon [Introduction to American Cultural History], ed. Kamei Shunsuke. Kyoto: Showado, 2006, 151-173.
• “Nihon Bumu [Japan Boom].” Genten Amerika shi [Original documents in American history], ed. Igarashi Takeshi. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2006, 346-355.
• “Telephilia vs. Cinephilia = Beat Takeshi vs. Takeshi Kitano?” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 45.2 (Fall 2004): 56-61.
• “Translator’s Introduction.” Kiju Yoshida, Ozu’s Anti-Cinema, trans. Daisuke Miyao and Kyoko Hirano. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2003, ix-xx.
• “Triple Consciousness: Sessue Hayakawa at Haworth Pictures Corporation.” Pacific and American Studies 2 (March 2002): 129-45.
• “Before Anime: Animation and The Pure Film Movement in Prewar Japan.” Japan Forum 14.2 (2002): 191-209.
• “Blue vs. Red: Takeshi Kitano's Color Scheme.” Post Script: Essays in Film and Humanities 18.1 (Fall 1998): 112-27.
• “Doubleness: American Images of Japanese Men in Silent Spy Films.” The Japanese Journal of American Studies 9 (1998): 69-95.
• “Whatever Happened to The Grapes of Wrath?: Hollywood's Mythmaking in the 1930s.” Chiiki Bunka Kenkyu [Area Studies, University of Tokyo] 12 (Jan. 1997): 55-81.
• “Eiga suta Hayakawa Sesshu: Sosoki Hariuddo to nihonjin [Sessue Hayakawa a Movie Star: Early Hollywood and the Japanese].” Amerika Kenkyu [American Studies, The Japanese Association for American Studies] 30 (1996): 227-46.

Translations

• Kiju Yoshida, Ozu’s Anti-Cinema, trans. Daisuke Miyao and Kyoko Hirano. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2003.
• James Quandt, ed. Kon Ichikawa. Toronto: Cinematheque Ontario, 2001.

Book Reviews

• “Denise Khor, Transpacific Convergences: Race, Migration, and Japanese American Film Culture before World War II.” Japanese Studies 43.1 (2022).
• “Lumière! Cinéma Inventé.” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 14.2 (Autumn 2015).  LINK
• “Aaron Gerow, Kitano Takeshi.” Cinema Journal 49.2 (Winter 2010): 172-75.
• “Hollywood Zen.” Oshima Nagisa Chosakushu [Writings of Oshima Nagisa], ed. Yomota Inuhiko. Tokyo: Gendai shicho sha, 2009, 297-317.
• “You May Not Kiss the Bride: How Sessue Hayakawa Conquered Early Hollywood and Promoted the ‘American Way of Life’ in Japan.” American Sexuality Magazine, 2007.
• “The Importance of Being Historical: Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto’s Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema.” Post Script: Essays in Film and Humanities 20.1 (Fall 2000): 96- 101.

Public Humanities Work

• “What Films Should We Teach?: A Conversation about the Cannon,” Public Books. March 23, 2023.  LINK

• Ph.D. in Cinema Studies, New York University, 2003
• M.A. in Cinema Studies, New York University, 1997
• M.A. in Area Studies, University of Tokyo, 1995
• B.A. in American Studies, University of Tokyo, 1993