Gendai-geki: History and Key Facts

Gendai-geki (現代劇) is a genre of film and television or theater play in Japan. Unlike the jidai-geki genre of period dramas, whose stories are set in the Edo period, gendai-geki stories are contemporary dramas set in the modern world. These films take place in the world the audience lived in at that moment.

For decades, Japanese cinema was divided into two primary genres:Jidai-geki — period dramas Gendai-geki — films about contemporary life: an important distinction. Shomin-geki were popular Japanese movies in the early 1930s that showed the daily lives of ordinary middle-class city families. Ozu Yasujiro, the best-known director of this genre, used these films to show how shaky middle-class life could be, especially when people were worried about losing their jobs.

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