Kawashima, Yuzo

Early years

Born in a merchant family in 1918 , Yuzo Kawashima became interested in literature and cinema from a young age. The films of the great American filmmaker David Wark Griffith made an indelible impression on the young Kawashima, and he just got his dream about working in a movie ^[3] . After graduating from high school, the young man went to Tokyo, where he becomes a member of the cinema clubs Eigashudan and Nihon Eiga Kenkyukai ^[3] , enters Meiji University ^[4] , where he will study literature. When the Ofuna studio of the Setiku film company announced in 1938 the next competitive selection for the vacant positions of assistant directors, the twenty-year-old Kawashima successfully passed the difficult exam and fell into the top eight elite, whom the studio selected from 2,000 applicants.

Movie career

After Yuzo Kawashima worked as an assistant for such masters of directing as Yasujiro Shimazu and Yasujiro Ozu , as well as for those who had just recently started their career in the profession, and subsequently became classics of Kodzaburo Yoshimura and Keisuke Kinoshita , in 1944 he got the opportunity to debut an independent production by making the film "The Man Who Comes Forever" ^[4] . This debut work of his was not successful with the viewer, so in his two subsequent films he was only a co-director. The first Kawashima films successful in commercial distribution, films shot in 1948 , “The Follower” and “Oh Citizens!” Showed elements of the director’s future style ^[2] . In his productions of that period, Kawashima turned mainly to comedy material, becoming by the mid -1950s one of the recognized masters of the comedy film company Shёtiku, although he himself was extremely dissatisfied with his work of those years and the harsh dictatorship of studio bosses.

In 1951, Kawashima became acquainted with Shokhey Imamura , who then came to the studio as he once did in 1938, by competitive recruitment and who received the position of assistant director. Common views on life and rebellious spirit united and brought these two artists together. Together they left “Setika” in 1954 , moving to the film company “Nikkatsu”, rebelling against the notorious “spirit of the Ofuna studio - the spirit of moderation and conformism ^[5] . The Imamura was his chief assistant in the film The Burden of Love ( 1955 ), a social satire that shows the story of a government minister who advocates birth control but is unable to control birth rates in his own family. Kawashima demonstrated mastery of the ability to manipulate a large number of characters in the film "Our City" ( 1956 ), a story about life in the Osaka suburb of the Meiji period in 1930 . At the same time, in the films Twenty-Four Views of the Ginza ( 1955 ) and Paradise Suzaki: The Red Light District ( 1956 ), where the action mostly takes place in Tokyo's nightlife bars and brothels, Kawashima's interest in the unsightly aspects of Japanese life is demonstrated society.

In 1957, Yuzo Kawashima directed the best film “The Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate ” (starring Frankie Sakai) according to the script of the former assistant and best friend of Imamura, giving a new depth to the traditional comedy. In this film, the events in the brothel of the Meiji Restoration period , where the director’s attention is focused on showing the sexual and financial problems of the characters, are witty and obscene. And although the cooperation between Kawashima and the Imamura was not so long, nevertheless, each of them was enriched by joint experience. The comedies of Kawashima, their black humor and somewhat burlesque spirit made a strong impression on the young Imamuru and was then reflected in his first independent productions ^[5] . Kawashima, in turn, began to turn more to the lower classes of society and social problems, which Imamur's friend instilled in him. While Imamura began his independent directorial career, Kawashima left Nikkatsu and his further work was shot in the pavilions of Tokyo Film and Toho studios ^[3] .

The success of the film “The Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate” contributed to the appearance of a number of satirical and farcical comedies shot by Kawashima at the turn of the 1950s - 1960s , where the actor Frankie Sakai always played the main role. The most characteristic of these comedies was “Room for Rent” ( 1959 ), a fun portrait of the life of the lower classes in Osaka.

The director also successfully worked with more traditional dramatic material: The Wild Goose Temple ( 1962 ), based on the novel by Tsutomu Mitsukami - a masterfully created melodrama about the ambiguous relationship between the corrupt priest, his lover and his psalmist; while “Shadow of the Flower” and “Women Are Born Twice” (both films of 1961 ) were gentle and touching studies of the life of the mistress of the bar and the geisha , marked by a subtle psychological pattern of the characters of the heroines and a sympathetic attitude towards the fallen women. “Graceful Monster” ( 1962 ) - one of the director’s last films was shot using unusual angles in a confined space and is very close to the “new wave” tapes.

The director died at the age of 45 from a heart attack caused by a rather rare disease - a pulmonary heart. Over the 19 years of his career, Yuzo Kawashima made 51 films ^[4] .

In 1991, the director and close friend of Kawashima, Shokhei Imamura presented four of his films in retrospect in Rotterdam . These were his four main works: “Paradise Suzaki: The Red Light District” ( 1956 ), “The Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate” ( 1957 ), “Women Are Born Twice” ( 1961 ) and “The Graceful Monster” ( 1962 ) ^[3] . In 2003, the House of Culture of Japan in Paris will pay tribute to the memory of Yuzo Kawashima by staging his retrospective show ^[3] . In February 2012, a mini-retrospective of Yuzo Kawashima films was staged as part of the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival ^[6] .

Recognition

Mainity Film Award (1964)

• Special award for career achievements (posthumous) ^[7] .

• Yuzo Kawashima on the Internet Movie Database

• Jacoby Alexander . A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors. - Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press, 2008 .-- ISBN 978-1-933330