From Pathology to Experience: Affective Form and the Ethics of Coexistence in Contemporary Japanese Cinema

Abstract

This article examines Shō Miyake’s All the Long Nights as an affective and cultural intervention into contemporary representations of psychological distress. Rather than framing premenstrual syndrome and panic disorder as exceptional pathologies to be overcome, the film situates them as ongoing conditions of subjectivity embedded in everyday life. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, affect theory, and Raymond Williams’s concept of “structures of feeling,” the article argues that the film displaces linear narratives of crisis and recovery in favor of a non-dramatic mode of coexistence grounded in vulnerability. Through a restrained visual form characterized by static shots, dispersed spatial organization, and homogenized temporal rhythms, psychological disruption is translated into a perceptual experience rather than an explanatory narrative. Emotional distress is rendered as a continuous state that coexists with routine social practices, transforming trauma from an individualized problem into a shared condition of lived experience. The use of 16mm film further foregrounds material texture and sensory immediacy, aligning spectators’ bodily perception with that of the characters. Ultimately, the film articulates an ethics of being-with that reimagines affective relations and psychic repair within the socio-cultural context of post-disaster Japan.