In Japanese Cinema and Punk, Mark Player examines how the do-it-yourself ethos of punk empowered a new generation of Japanese filmmakers during a period of crisis and change in Japan's film industry.

Drawing on first-hand interviews with key figures from the jishu eiga (self-made film) tradition, including Ishii Gakuryu, Yamamoto Masashi, Tsukamoto Shin'ya, and Fukui Shozin, Player explores how punk's bricolage style was leveraged to create exciting intermedial film aesthetics. These aesthetics were influenced by punk rock, graffiti art, street performance, animation, and evolving music technologies.

By considering the practical, phenomenological, and political ramifications of blending diverse media elements, Player offers in-depth analyses of films such as Burst City (1982), Robinson's Garden (1987), and Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989). He further traces the changing sociocultural position of Japan's punk movement throughout the 1980s-from its euphoric early-80s peak to the growing disillusionment caused by its mainstream co-optation and convergence.