Tanaka, Shigeru. "The Whistling River"

January 16, 2000. www.cs.uiowa.edu/~stanaka/j.html

The author, a film curator at the University of Okoboji, explores the Japanese Film history before and after World War II, as well as current developments in Japanese film. Attempting to touch most directors and films, Shigeru Tanaka presents an informative site with a non-scholarly approach. The web site presents a variety of interesting links that will lead you to books and journals on the Japanese movie culture, as well as to a site about the Kinema Club and the movie "My neighbor Totoro" by Hayao Miyazaki. The site map could be divided in 7 parts: intro, history, news, update, vote, links and outro. Although only containing limited information, this site provides us some useful and surprising data, such as the dates of the upcoming movies, books, and theater performances. This site seems to reach for a non-scholar audience who loves the Japanese film history and wants to share information among themselves&emdash;the author offers his personal email for correspondence. When talking about the Early Cinema, Tanaka explains that although the majority of the directors tried to please the government, there were directors, such as Fumio Kamei that went against the tide to present a movie advocating an anti-war message.

Sites such as the "Whistling River" are important for two reasons. The first reason is that they are extremely informative, and the second reason is that the information presented is basic and easy to comprehend. The "Whistling River" inspires the urge to dig further into the information about the censorship of the military government by Emperor Hirohito, and also the effects that the end of the war had in the Japanese film scene.

Romulo Craveiro Braga