"I can hardly be accused of being an expert on Japanese film," Adam Mars-Jones assures us early in "Noriko Smiling," his monograph on Yasujiro Ozu's "Late Spring." Such protestations at the beginning of a work are not, in an age that distrusts expertise and celebrates ignorance, unusual. In most cases, though, a writer who makes this move goes on to demonstrate, however obliquely, that he or she is not, in fact, ignorant at all. Mars-Jones takes a different approach.
Having asserted his ignorance in the second paragraph of his book, he then devotes the remainder to offering evidence in support of his claim, and it has to be said: The case he builds is airtight.
What better way for a nonexpert to make a flamboyant entry into a field than to take on an expert — perhaps the expert — in this case the eminent film scholar Donald Richie? This is the tactic Mars-Jones employs. The problem is, if you're going to attack an expert, you must read the expert thoroughly, and this Mars-Jones appears not to have done. He seems to believe, for example, that "The Japanese Film," a book Richie wrote (with Joseph L. Anderson) more than half-a-century ago is Richie's final statement on the field to which he has devoted his life.
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