Jidai-geki
Jidai - geki (Japanese时代 剧, Jidai: " age", geki, " Drama ", " stage play "), even Jidai - geki eiga (时代 剧 映 画eiga, " film" ) is a Japanese film genre that roughly as historical film can be translated and whose roots lie in Noh and Kabuki theater. The term is first mentioned in 1923.
Be called so films that play before the modernization of Japan with the Meiji period. Jidai - geki have as a venue often the Edo period (1603-1868 ). Films from the previous Sengoku period (1477-1573) are also known as Sengoku jidai (戦 国 时代), and movies where sword fights are at the forefront as Ken - geki (also Chambara ) (剣 剧).
History
Although there are movies that fit into this genre since the early days of Japanese cinema, the term Jidai - geki came in 1923 in the Japanese language. Makino Shozo used the term in that year to promote his film Woodcut Artist ( see woodcut).
Of the many thousands of films in this genre outside of Japan are relatively few available. Especially Akira Kurosawa helped this genre in the Western world in the fifties to prominence.
End of the eighties the demand for Jidai - geki films was nearly extinct until the late nineties Ryuhei Kitamura directors like ( Aragami, Azumi ) and Hiroyuki Nakano ( Samurai Fiction, Red Shadow) could revive the genre again.
Apparently the word Jidai has the American director George Lucas so fascinated that he gave the name of the Order of Knights Jedi, by extension, in its popular Star Wars movies.