Whose blue heaven? Musicality in the early Japanese talkies

• Main Author: DAVIS, Richard M
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2018
• Subjects: Japan; early sound film; musicals; offscreen space; modernity; Asian Studies; Music
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3127; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4384/viewcontent/Whose_Blue_Heaven___PV.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This article focuses on the advent of synchronized sound production in Japan in 1931 – three years later than the United States – and the generative ambiguities of how sound and music’s relationship to film was figured in that year’s anxious discourse. I argue that this ‘belatedness’ is echoed in re...