Shōshimin-eiga (小市民 映画),[1] literally "petty bourgeois film" or "lower middle class film",[2] is a genre of Japanese realistfilms which focus on the everyday lives of ordinary or middle class people.[3][4][5] An alternate term for the shōshimin-eiga is the pseudo-Japanese word shomin-geki, literally "common people drama",[2] which had been invented by Western film scholars.[1] The term shōshimin-eiga as a definition of a specifically Japanese film genre presumably first appeared in 1932 in articles by critics Yoshio Ikeda and Ichiro Ueno.[6]
^Berra, John (2012). Directory of World Cinema: Japan2. Intellect. pp. 304–305. ISBN9781841505510.
^Russell, Catherine (2008). The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity. Durham and London: Duke University Press. p. XV. ISBN978-0-8223-4290-8.
^Wada-Marciano, Mitsuyo (2008). Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s. University of Hawai'i Press. pp. 12–13, 49–50. ISBN9780824831820.
^Yuki, Takinami (2018). "Modernity, Shoshimin Films, and the Proletarian-Film Movement". In Choi, Jinhee (ed.). Reorienting Ozu: A Master and His Influence. Oxford University Press. p. 139. ISBN9780190254971.