"On Terada Torahiko and the Physics of Film" February 23, 2017 Joseph Regenstein Library Room 122 1100 E 57th St Chicago, IL 60637 Terada Torahiko (1878-1935) was known not only as a professor of physics at the University of Tokyo, but also for being one of Natsume Soseki’s students, one who made a name for himself also as a poet and essayist. In the last few years of his life, he was also deeply intrigued by the cinema, writing many essays on the medium, including one published in English in a European science journal. His approach, combining influences ranging from haiku aesthetics to the theory of relativity, performed an important intervention in Japanese thinking on cinema in the 1930s, especially in theorizing the relation of film form to reality. This talk will use Terada to consider the issues involved in studying the history of Japanese film theory and Terada’s unique solution to the problem of what I call the “theory complex” in Japan. Sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies and the University of Chicago Library.

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