Journeys of self-discovery. Tourism as a narrative structure in contemporary Japanese cinema by female directors

Abstract

This communication aims to study three contemporary Japanese films directed by female filmmakers, analysing the connection between cinema and tourism as an emergent research topic in Communication Studies. The plots of these films rely on tourist travel as a structural device for the development of the characters and seem to convey a critical discourse regarding conventional lifestyles of present Japan. Using a methodological approach based on the qualitative analysis of the audio visual discourse as well as concepts from Intercultural Communication, Cultural Studies and Film Studies, four variables will be analysed: characters, spaces, effects of the tourist travel, and audio visual style. The corpus of films is composed by the following works: Kamome Diner (かもめ食堂, Naoko Ogigami, 2006), Glasses (めがね, Naoko Ogigami, 2007) and Bread of Happiness (しあわせのパン, Yukiko Mishima, 2012).