The is a group of loosely-connected Japanese filmmakers during the late 1950s and into the 1970s. Although they did not make up a coherent movement, these artists shared a rejection of traditions and conventions of classical Japanese cinema in favor of more challenging works, both thematically and formally. Coming to the fore in a time of national social change and unrest, the films made in this wave dealt with taboo subject matter, including sexual violence, radicalism, youth culture and delinquency, Korean discrimination, queerness, and the aftermath of World War II. They also adopted more unorthodox and experimental approaches to composition, editing and narrative. The trend borrows its name from the French Nouvelle vague, a concurrent movement that similarly scrapped the established traditions of their national cinema. Unlike the French counterpart, Japanese New Wave originated within the film studio establishment in an attempt to invigorate local cinema (which was being undermined by television productions) with new ideas from young directors. Failing to thrive within the studio system, these filmmakers eventually formed independent production companies. Most notably, Art Theatre Guild significantly boosted the movement by producing and distributing several of the most renowned New Wave titles. History David Desser in his Eros plus Massacre places the marginal comment: Superficial comparisons between the Japanese New Wave cinema and the French New Wave, typically to imply greater integrity to the latter, have served the cultural cliché that the Japanese are merely great imitators, that they do nothing original. (...) To see the Japanese New Wave as an imitation of the French New Wave (an impossibility since they arose simultaneously) fails to see the Japanese context out of which the movement arose. (...) While the Japanese New Wave did draw benefits from the French New Wave, mainly in the form of a handy journalistic label which could be applied to it (the "nūberu bāgu" from the Japanese pronunciation of the French term), it nevertheless possesses a high degree of integrity and specificity. Unlike the French nouvelle vague, the Japanese movement initially began within the studios, albeit with young and previously little-known filmmakers. The term was first coined within the studios (and in the media) as a Japanese version of the French New Wave movement. Nonetheless, the Japanese New Wave filmmakers drew from some of the same international influences that inspired their French colleagues, and as the term stuck, the seemingly artificial movement surrounding it began