Ozu has been occupying a very special place in my intellectual journey. In 2003, the year I received my Ph.D. in Cinema Studies at NYU, the Ozu Centennial International Symposium was held at the New York Film Festival. I was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University's Expanding East Asian Studies Program and co-organized the symposium with Professors Paul Anderer and Richard Peña. For the first time as a professional, I had conversations with scholars from all over the world. In conjunction, I had an opportunity to co-translate Kiju Yoshida's Ozu's Anti-Cinema into English. Since then, somewhat following Yoshida's intellectual journey on cinema through the lens of Ozu, I have been asking myself what cinema is. What can cinema do in the world? In other words, I have developed into a scholar of cinema studies by studying cinema with Ozu.

However, I have been hesitant to write a book on a single director because, when I think of the historiography of Japanese cinema studies, it has been heavily inclined to the study of authorship. Besides, there are already many wonderful books on Ozu. Donald Richie. David Bordwell. Shigehiko Hasumi, to name a few. Why should I add another book to the packed bookshelf?

But this time, I asked, why shouldn't I? Ozu has always been my home base as a scholar for various reasons. I thought that if I focus on how I have trained myself as a film scholar, conversing not only with Ozu's films but also with the writings of critics and scholars on them, it would be useful to other researchers. In fact, my editor at Duke University Press, Ken Wissoker, gave me an inspiration. When Ken and I discussed my previous book, Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema (2020), at the College Art Association conference in Washington, DC, in 2016, he suggested I someday write a "methodology book." His words stayed in my mind, and a decade later, I have finally been able to do that.

Ozu's films have been the gatekeepers of my research in cinema studies. How Ozu's films were received and studied internationally prepared the methodological basis for my first monograph, Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom (2007). I located Japanese cinema in the transnational network of cinema. I utilized archival resources in various languages and demonstrated that the stardom of Sessue Hayakawa, a Japanese silent film actor, was constructed through a cross-cultural negotiation on race, ethnicity, and gender/sexuality among the United States, Japan, and France.

The lighting in Ozu's films inspired me to examine the aesthetics of shadow in my second monograph, The Aesthetics of Shadow: Lighting and Japanese Cinema (2013). I challenged the traditional view of darkness that Tanizaki Jun'ichirō famously discussed in In Praise of Shadows (Inei raisan, 1933–34) as the essence of Japanese aesthetics.

Ozu's layered mise-en-scène, often linked to ukiyo-e woodblock prints, led me to the aforementioned book, Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema, in which I analyzed the mutual influence between European and Japanese arts, including early cinema, during the Japonisme vogue. Japonisme was the nodal point in a transmedial network of multiple elements that made the modern invention of cinema possible, including transference between fine art and film, Orientalist aesthetics, global imperialism, and relations of power in the cultural sphere.

I must add that this Ozu book has a strong connection to my cat book. Chapter 1 of this book, titled "Cats and the Gaze of Things," can be read as a sequel to my 2019 book Cinema Is a Cat: A Cat Lover's Introduction to Film Studies. Cinema Is a Cat is a non-traditional, rather pedagogical book. I introduce film theory and history by analyzing cat films, such as Breakfast at Tiffany's, Cat People, and To Catch a Thief. I believe Ozu was interested in cats. Cats play important roles in his filmography, including Record of a Tenement Gentleman (Nagaya shinshiroku, 1947) and Floating Weeds (Ukikusa, 1959). I think the question of the animal, or the thought of the nonhuman to decenter the human, is a crucial area for film theory, and Ozu's films make us aware of it.