Kinoshita, Keisuke

views updated

Keisuke Kinoshita

One of Japan's most popular filmmakers after World War II, Keisuke Kinoshita (1912-1998) was a prolific director, writer, and producer, specializing in sentimental dramas and comedies and the use of innovative, expressionistic sets.

Rarely have any of Kinoshita's fifty or so films been shown outside of Japan, but in that country he was a well-known director who pioneered the use of color in film and repeatedly touched on domestic themes that resonated with Japanese audiences. Despite his conventional plots and subject matter, Kinoshita was often willing to experiment with avant-garde techniques.

Movie Buff

As a child, Kinoshita was a hopeless movie buff. His father was a grocer in the town of Hamamatsu in the Shizuoka prefecture of Japan. His parents wanted him to learn a trade, so he went to a technical high school, but Kinoshita was completely focused on making movies. He enrolled in the Oriental Photography School in order to learn how to become a cinematographer and break into movies.

At first Kinoshita made only halting strides toward attaining his dream. He applied at one of Japan's biggest movie studios, Shochiku, hoping to be an assistant cameraman, but he was hired to work in the lab processing film. It took awhile before he was allowed to become an assistant cinematographer for the director Yasujiro Shimazu.

For three years, Kinoshita served as Shimazu's assistant cinematographer, but he was often so engrossed in watching acting rehearsals that he would not do his job properly. Another assistant, Kozaburo Yoshimura, who would go on to become a famous director himself, recommended that Kinoshita learn to become a director. It took another two years before a position was available as Yomishura's assistant. For six years, Kinoshita worked under Shimazu, learning much about filmmaking but suffering from Shimazu's dictatorial impulses.

First Films

In 1943, Kinoshita's first two directorial efforts were released: Ikite iru Magoroku (Magoroku Is Alive) and Hanasaku minato (Blooming Port). The latter was a formulaic comedy about a clash between sophisticated urbanites and rural naifs, but it displayed Hinoshita's love for simplicity and honesty. Since World War II was dominating life in Japan, Hinoshita tried to fit in, directing a wartime propaganda film called Rikugun (Army), but it was decried by military censors for being insufficiently doctrinaire.

A prolific director, Kinoshita made 12 more films in the 1940s, focusing mainly on domestic dramas and comedies in efforts like Osone-ke no ashita (Morning for the Osone Family) (1946), the first film he produced as well as directed. Despite its clichéd subject matter, the film was unusual because it was shot almost entirely on a set inside a house. Many of his films featured honest, simple women as the central protagonists, including Onna (Woman) (1948), which was shot entirely outdoors on a rocky hillside.

In 1950, Kinoshita wrote his first film, Konyaku yubiwa (Engagement Ring), and he wrote most of the subsequent films he directed. His films became popular during the 1950s, and he continued to direct and release an average of two movies a year. His characters were often optimistic and kind.

Kinoshita's Karumen kokyo in kaeru (Carmen Comes Home), which he directed in 1951, was the first feature film in Japan shot entirely in color. This satirical domestic comedy was followed by Karumen junjo su (Carmen Falls in Love) (1952), one of many instances in which Kinoshita followed a title character (always a woman) through more than one movie.

Social Dramas

In 1953, Kinoshita abandoned his customary light-hearted fare for a disturbing social drama, Nihon no higeki (A Japanese Tragedy). Its protagonist is a middle-class woman forced by economic straits to offer her household goods and her body on the black market to support her children; now older and estranged from her adult children, she tries to arrange good marriages for them, but is rebuked because of their shame and vanity. On the website Strictly Film School, reviewer Acquarello calls the film "a bleak, affecting, and insoluble portrait of postwar existence … a relevant and insightful account of the personal toll of war and the slow, agonizing process of recovery.… In the end, a lone image of [the protagonist] Haruko in long shot standing at the top of a train station staircase as commuters hurriedly rush past captures the emotional desolation of the individual human struggle against a formidable and unrelenting tide…" In this film, one of Kinoshita's best, the director uses newsreel footage, flashbacks, and frequent shots of trains in motion to heighten the realism.

In his next film, Nijushi no hitomi (Twenty-Four Eyes) (1954), Kinoshita adapted a popular novel into a heartrending drama about a teacher and her twelve students, whom she first teaches during a relatively happy time and then again encounters years later during a period of economic depression and strife. Acquarello notes: "Filmed from a low camera angle, and using exquisitely composed crane, long, and medium shots, Keisuke Kinoshita visually conveys a sense of distance that, in turn, reflects the innocence of the children's perspective." He calls it "a haunting, compassionately realized, and profoundly affecting portrait of humanism, innocence, and the personal toll of war." That Kinoshita was able to combine such compelling drama with his successful comedy-dramas and reach mass audiences in Japan is a measure of his range and ability as a master director in touch with his native land and its contemporary problems.

Kinoshita touched on the tradition of Kabuki theater in his 1955 film, Nogiku no gotoki kimi nariki (She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum), in which all his characters wear masks. His willingness to experiment with technique is evident in Narayama Bushiko (Ballad of Narayama) (1958). He uses a theatrical stage setting, jarring spotlights, vivid colors, and intentionally anachronistic images to adapt a popular novel about family, duty, and custom. Acquarello calls it a "… portrait of love and humanity struggling against the rigidity of tradition, obedience, and sense of duty … a haunting allegory on the perils of blind allegiance, martyrdom, and repression—a humanist reflection of the profound introspection, cultural erosion, and ideological ambivalence of postwar Japan."

Eventually Acclaimed

Kinoshita's heyday was the 1950s, but during that time critics did not embrace his sentimental style, even though Japanese audiences responded positively. He made nine more films in the 1960s, but none of them were acclaimed, and only five more films in his declining years, from 1976 to 1988. He also produced Akira Kurosawa's worldwide hit Dodes'ka-den in 1970.

Eventually Kinoshita was hailed as one of Japan's foremost directors, for his wide range and innovative techniques within the context of popular contemporary films. In 1991, he was awarded an honor from the Japanese government for his contributions to national culture. In 1999, a panel of Japanese critics named Kinoshita's Nijushi no hitomi (Twenty-Four Eyes) as one of that country's ten greatest films of all time.