Kon Ichikawa (å¸‚å· å´', Ichikawa Kon, 20 November 1915 â€" 13
February 2008) was a Japanese film director. His work displays a vast
range in genre and style, from the anti-war films The Burmese Harp
(1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959), to the documentary Tokyo
Olympiad (1965), which won two BAFTA Film Awards, and the 19th-century
revenge drama An Actor's Revenge (1963). His film Odd Obsession (1959)
won the Jury Prize at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival.Ichikawa was born
in Ise, Mie Prefecture as Giichi Ichikawa (å¸‚å· å„€ä¸€). His father
died when he was four years old, and the family kimono shop went
bankrupt, so he went to live with his sister. He was given the name
"Kon" by an uncle who thought the characters in the kanji å´'
signified good luck, because the two halves of the Chinese character
look the same when it is split in half vertically. As a child he loved
drawing and his ambition was to become an artist. He also loved films
and was a fan of "chambara" or samurai films. In his teens he was
fascinated by Walt Disney's "Silly Symphonies" and decided to become
an animator. He 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. Decades later, he told the American
writer on Japanese film Donald Richie, "I'm still a cartoonist and I
think that the greatest influence on my films (besides Chaplin,
particularly The Gold Rush) is probably Disney."He moved to the
feature film department as an assistant director when the company
closed its animation department, working under such luminaries as
Yutaka Abe and Nobuo Aoyagi.In the early 1940s J.O Studio merged with
P.C.L. and Toho Film Distribution to form the Toho Film Company.
Ichikawa moved to Tokyo. His first film was a puppet play short, A
Girl at Dojo Temple (Musume Dojoji 1946), which was confiscated by the
interim U.S. Occupation authorities under the pretext that it was too
"feudal", though some sources suggest the script had not been approved
by the occupying authorities. Thought lost for many years, it is now
archived at the Cinémathèque Française.
February 2008) was a Japanese film director. His work displays a vast
range in genre and style, from the anti-war films The Burmese Harp
(1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959), to the documentary Tokyo
Olympiad (1965), which won two BAFTA Film Awards, and the 19th-century
revenge drama An Actor's Revenge (1963). His film Odd Obsession (1959)
won the Jury Prize at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival.Ichikawa was born
in Ise, Mie Prefecture as Giichi Ichikawa (å¸‚å· å„€ä¸€). His father
died when he was four years old, and the family kimono shop went
bankrupt, so he went to live with his sister. He was given the name
"Kon" by an uncle who thought the characters in the kanji å´'
signified good luck, because the two halves of the Chinese character
look the same when it is split in half vertically. As a child he loved
drawing and his ambition was to become an artist. He also loved films
and was a fan of "chambara" or samurai films. In his teens he was
fascinated by Walt Disney's "Silly Symphonies" and decided to become
an animator. He 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. Decades later, he told the American
writer on Japanese film Donald Richie, "I'm still a cartoonist and I
think that the greatest influence on my films (besides Chaplin,
particularly The Gold Rush) is probably Disney."He moved to the
feature film department as an assistant director when the company
closed its animation department, working under such luminaries as
Yutaka Abe and Nobuo Aoyagi.In the early 1940s J.O Studio merged with
P.C.L. and Toho Film Distribution to form the Toho Film Company.
Ichikawa moved to Tokyo. His first film was a puppet play short, A
Girl at Dojo Temple (Musume Dojoji 1946), which was confiscated by the
interim U.S. Occupation authorities under the pretext that it was too
"feudal", though some sources suggest the script had not been approved
by the occupying authorities. Thought lost for many years, it is now
archived at the Cinémathèque Française.
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