Recessionary cinema in post-bubble Japan

If the shift to a predominantly financial economy has generated cultural expressions reflecting the speed and abstraction of global capital, what cultural forms does the deceleration of finance capital produce during prolonged recession? This article examines that question through Japanese cinema. After the Bank of Japan drastically lowered interest rates following the 1985 Plaza Accord, Japan experienced a massive asset price bubble in real estate and stock markets during the late 1980s. The bubble burst in the early 1990s, triggering a sharp market collapse and extended economic stagnation. This article argues that the financial stasis of this period manifested in the slow aesthetics of post-bubble Japanese cinema. Focusing on director Yamashita Nobuhiro’s first two films, Donten seikatsu (Hazy Life 1999) and Baka no hakobune (No One’s Ark 2003), it links the conventions and industrial context of slow cinema to the workings of economic recession. Yamashita’s use of the long take transmutes dead time into visual form, while his actors’ emotionally muted performances evoke the flat affective atmosphere of a present where financial precarity has become mundane. These slow cinematic conventions produce what I call ‘recessionary cinema’: an aesthetic style that mediates the effects of financial deceleration on everyday life.