Shunji Iwai's Films In The Visual Field Of Existentialism

As one of the most famous philosophy of the 20th century in the West, Existentialism appears in Germany after the First-World-War . The large indemnity of defeat, the cession of colonies and the influence of the global economic crisis drove Existentialism's appearance. And after the Second-World-War, due to the impact of the Fascist, as the representative of many western capitalist nations, France suffered from unemployment, economic crisis and environmental pollution for a long time. Many small and medium-bourgeois intellectuals were extremely disappointed to the life, and got into a unprecedented confusion. In this case, Existentialism growed quickly and spreaded to every place of the world and spreaded to every area of arts and even people's daily life.Existentialism spreaded the most wildly in Japan of Asia, especially after the Second-World-War. As a defeated nation, there was a mood of pessimism all over the homeland. Even though the Japanese economy restored and developed largely afterwards, but the following malpratices of capitalism presented unceasingly:the bubble economy, the big earthquake and the gas incident......Shunji Iwai was born in the 60' of 20th century, as a member in this phase, his creation impacted by the background consequentially, therefore we can strongly feel the impression of Existentialism from his films.The introduction of this article has a brief description of the Japanese film's production and development,and shows the studies to Shunji Iwai and his films in the academia until now. The fist chapter introduces Existentialism roughly and analyses the impact of Existentialism to Japan. The second chapter discusses the existential character of Shunji Iwai's films deeply, including the plight of survival, the alienation of human nature as well as the self-selection. The last chapter goes on discusses the existential character of Shunji Iwai's films from the angle of their views of space-time and non-theatrical structure. Through such studies, I hope to interpretate Shunji Iwai's films from the angle of Existentialism and explore the unique artistic charm in his films.