Film viewing of 'The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari', followed by Public Lecture by Prof Kenko Kawasaki
About the event
Lecture by Prof Kenko Kawasaki
The Lure of the Uncanny: Film reception, body modification and expressionism in modernist Japanese literature
The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (Das Cabinet des Doktor Caligari), a silent film produced in Germany in 1919 and released in 1920, is a milestone of German expressionist cinema. As a cultural production that followed the Great War, the film is regarded as visually expressing the general unrest and fear that led to the rise of the Nazi Regime against a background of the Spanish influenza epidemic.
German Expressionism had a profound impact on prewar Japanese literary culture, with countless Japanese writers captivated by representations of “the uncanny” and notions of transforming both the body and the world. What could the pioneers of twentieth-century Japanese literature, who included Tanizaki Junichirō, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Uchida Hyakken, Osaki Midori and Yumeno Kyūsaku, have discerned in The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari? This film showing and lecture will seek to elucidate what those writers found.
The lecture will be delivered in Japanese with simultaneous English interpreting.
Register to attend in-person Register to attend online
Limited spaces available for the in-person attendance, and we recommend registering earlier. The online aspect of the event will be hosted via Zoom and the Zoom link will be sent on the 17th August.
About the speaker
Kenko Kawasaki, PhD, is a Research Fellow at Nihon University in Tokyo, Japan, and a Visiting Researcher at the Japanese Studies Center, Tsinghua University, China. Her research focuses on Modernism in Japanese literature from the 1920s to the 21st century and issues related to gender and sexuality, especially shōjo culture. She has also investigated the correlation and conflict between propaganda, censorship, and military intelligence, on the one hand, and literary, cinematic, and theatrical expression, on the other. Kawasaki was the recipient of the 1995 Suntory Academy Award for Their Showa: Hasegawa Kaitarō, Rinjirō, Shun, Shirō. She is the author of monographs entitled Osaki Midori: Beyond the Dunes (2010), Her Other Persona: Li Xianglan/ Yamaguchi Yoshiko / Shirley Yamaguchi"(2019), Takarazuka: The Transformation of Japanese Modernism (2020), Cinema and literary identities: Reading modern Japanese literature through Dr. Caligari (2024), and Chika Sagawa (2025). Her article entitled “Girls (and Boys) Debating Democracy in Aoi sanmyaku” appeared in Japanese Studies Volume 42, Issue 3, 2022.
