Films are not only to be passively watched, they are also to be actively "read." The viewer deciphers not just the story but all the other indications of the director's intent -- script inclusions and elisions, camera movements, editing. Only after this has been done can the full import of the film become apparent.
Such reading becomes more difficult when viewing "foreign" films, that is, those containing assumptions not our own. Such inferences and presumptions are based upon cultural norms accepted without question in the foreign country involved, but missing in that of the viewer.
The difficulty becomes aggravated when the cultural context is markedly different, as is the case with traditional Japan and the contemporary West. Cultural specificity is missing and there is a problem. It is to the solving of this that Dr. Keiko McDonald's interesting and valuable work devotes itself.