Kon Ichikawa

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Kon Ichikawa (市川崑 Ichikawa Kon) (born November 20, 1915, Ujiyamada, Mie Prefecture, Japan) is one of the better known Japanese film directors.

1 Early career
- 1.1 Natto Wada
2 1950 - 1965
3 1965 - present
4 Legacy
5 Selected filmography
6 References
7 External links

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Early career

In the 1930s Ichikawa attended a technical school in Osaka. Upon graduation, in 1933, he found a job with a local rental film studio, J.O. Studio, in their animation department. Eventually he was moved to the feature film department as an assistant director when the company became a complete production company, working under such luminaries as Yutake Abe and Nobuo Aoyagi.

In the early 1940s J.O. Studios merged P.C.L. and Toho Film Distribution, forming Toho Film Company. Ichikawa moved to Tokyo. It was at Toho that Kon met Natto Wada. Natto was a translator for Toho. They agreed to marry sometime after Kon completed his first directorial effort. They were both the products of previous failed marriages.

His first film in 1946 was a puppet play, A Girl at Dojo Temple (Musume Dojoji), which was confiscated by the interim U.S. Occupation authorities under the pretense that it was too traditional. Thought lost for many years, it is now archived at the Cinémathèque Française.

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Natto Wada

Original name Yumiko Mogi. Born September 13, 1920 in Himeji, Hyogo prefecture, Japan. She graduated with a degree in English Literature from Tokyo Women's Christian University. Married Kon Ichikawa on April 10, 1948. Died February 18, 1983 of breast cancer<ref>James Quandt (ed.), Kon Ichikawa, Cinematheque Ontario, Toronto, 2001, page 35.</ref>.

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1950 - 1965

It was after Kon's marriage to Natto Wada that the two began collaberating, first on Design of a Human Being (Ningen moyo) and Endless Passion (Hateshinaki jonetsu) in 1949. The period 1950 - 1965 is often referred to as Kon's Natto Wada period. It's the period that contains the majority of his most hightly respected works.

The majority of Kon Ichikawa's most highly regarded films were screenwritten by his wife, Natto Wada. This partnership began in 1949 with Design of a Human Being (Ningen moyo) and continued through to 1965 with Tokyo Olympiad (Tokyo orimpikku). She wrote thirty-four screenplays during that period, most of which were adaptations. Nadda had a talent for adapting other sources to the screen and that's where most of their partnership concentrated.

He gained western recognition during the 1950s and 1960s with a number of bleak films - two antiwar films with The Burmese Harp (Biruma no tategoto) and Fires on the Plain (Nobi), Alone on the Pacific (Taiheiyo hitori-botchi) and the technically formidable period-piece An Actor's Revenge (Yukinojo henge) about a Kabuki actor.

Of his many literary adaptations, works including Tanizaki Junichiro's The Key (Kagi), Natsume Soseki's The Heart (Kokoro) and I Am a Cat (Wagahai wa neko de aru), about a mouse turned into a cat viewing the world from its unique perspective, and Yukio Mishima's Conflagration (Enjo), in which a priest burns down his temple to save it from spiritual pollution, were brought to the screen.

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1965 - present

After Tokyo Olympiad Natto Wada retired from screenwriting and it marked a significant change in Kon's films from that point onward. Concerning her retirement, Kon spoke, "She doesn't like the new film grammar, the method of presentation of the material; she says there's no heart in it anymore, that people no longer take human love seriously."<ref>James Quandt (ed.), Kon Ichikawa, Cinematheque Ontario, Toronto, 2001, page 40.</ref>

Of the change Natto's departure marked, it is hard to extricate Natto from his work. The two worked very closely and shared many ideals. Whereas Kon can be said to be responsible for much for the black wit in his films (that trend certainly continue beyond Natto's departure), she also had a sardonic side, as evidence in many of her essays. Whereas people will attribute much of the humanity of his earlier films to Natto, humanity is still a major theme in his films post-Natto. About the only thing critics can agree on is that post-Natto Ichikawa's films had a definite lesser quality to them (with a few notable exceptions).

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Legacy

Kon's films are marked with a certain darkness and bleakness, punctuated with sparks of humanity.

It can be said that his main trait is technical expertise, irony, detachment and a drive for realism married with a complete spectrum of genres. Some critics class him with Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu as one of the masters of Japanese cinema.

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