Takeshi “Beat” Kitano and ‘Ma’: Emptiness that Transforms Aesthetic Experience

Nicholas F. Puleo
Dr. Anton Daughters and Dr. Masahiro Hara, Faculty Mentors

Takeshi “Beat” Kitano, one of Japan’s great living directors, has taken the Japanese aesthetic concept of ma (?)—observable in Japanese music, theater, literature, painting, etc—and successfully migrated it into film.  I will show—through visualizations and highlighting exemplary scenes—that Takeshi Kitano employs this well-established Japanese aesthetic concept in ways that must be described as his own grammar of film-making.  The aesthetic concept, then, becomes not merely aesthetic, but is manipulated to have a new meaning in the context of established film grammar, making Kitano’s films capable of conveying unique emotional states and setting them apart as something distinct in cinema.    

Keywords: japanese aesthetics , film analysis , ma

Topic(s):Asian Studies
Japanese
Anthropology

Presentation Type: Oral Presentation

Session: TBA
Location: TBA
Time: TBA