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The ephemeral as transcultural aesthetic: A contextualization of the early films of Ozu Yasujirō

ABSTRACT This article argues that through the privileging functions of camera lenses both fragmenting and highlighting, and through the formal processes of camera movement and editing, cinema is the material manifestation of an aesthetics of the ephemeral of modernity par excellence, being characterized by the time—space separation of modernity and the accompanying reflexive ‘ordering and reordering’ of knowledge. Therefore, following Anthony Giddens’ sociological understanding of the ‘consequences of modernity’, this article seeks to theorize the emergent technology of cinema, the techniques of its use and the resultant aesthetic of the ‘ephemeral’ at the historical juncture when it was exported from the United States and Europe to the non-western world with particular reference to Japan and the serious shōshimingeki/lower-middle classes films directed by Ozu Yasujirō- in the mid-1930s.