Associate Professor of Japanese Kyoko Omori was one of six invited presenters at the Kinema Club XII held at Yale University on April 13. In her paper, “Usher Unsilenced: Tokugawa Musei, Benshi Performance, and Modernist Adaptation,” Omori sought to shed light on the trans-mediatic underpinnings of Japanese popular modernism.
To do so, she examined the career and significance of Musei as a “benshi” (a live oral performer alongside silent films), as well as a popular writer, from the early twentieth century. In particular, Omori discussed artistic and cultural logic of Musei’s efforts as a live narrator for Western films, particularly La chute de la maison Usher by French modernist director Jean Epstein, which itself was a transcultural and translingual cinematic adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
