Japan in transnational Hollywood: Industry and identity, 1985-1995

This dissertation examines the process of intensified merging of Hollywood and Japanese cinema in the 1980s and 1990s. This process is occurring within, and in connection to, a broader context of political, social, and cultural change, specifically globalization and the ending of the Cold War. I argue that the merging of Hollywood and Japanese cinema is visible in industrial terms as well as in textual-thematic terms. Each chapter highlights particular areas of controversial collaboration between Japanese and non-Japanese, defined in Chapter 1 as transnational "collaboration zones." Chapter 2 is a critical analysis of Japanese investments in Hollywood cinema from 1985 to 1995. The subsequent four chapters are detailed examinations of films released in that period, combining production histories, textual analyses, and reception studies. All of the films reflect ambivalently on postwar legacies and war remembrance. Subjects include collaboration with the enemy, survivor's guilt, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, postwar nuclear umbrella agreements, censorship, hyper-capitalism, and corruption. A concluding chapter reflects upon the timing of these films, and how transnational Japan-Hollywood cinema connections have altered or remained consistent from the late 1990s to the present.