Passionate agendas: Melodrama in the work of Yoshimura Kozaburo

Yoshimura Kozaburo (1911–2000) directed 44 films over nearly six decades. He entered cinema history with Danryū (Warm Current) (1939) a critically acclaimed melodrama, before making National Policy films during the Second World War. In his post-war films and writings, however, we can discern a reconceptualization of melodrama both in theory and practice in order to engage the consequences of thinking in images and the responsibility of the filmmaker after 1945.