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Japanese film director (1911–2000) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kōzaburō Yoshimura (吉村 公三郎, Yoshimura Kōzaburō, 9 September 1911 – 7 November 2000) was a Japanese film director.[1][2][3]
Born in Shiga Prefecture, he joined the Shōchiku studio in 1929.[2] He debuted as director with a short film in 1934, but, after being denied a promotion by head of the studio Shirō Kido,[4] continued working as an assistant director for filmmakers Yasujirō Ozu and Yasujirō Shimazu on films like Our Neighbor, Miss Yae and What Did the Lady Forget?[5] It was the 1939 film Warm Current that established his status as a director.[1][2][3] During the Sino-Japanese war he directed a number of military dramas such as The Story of Tank Commander Nishizumi (1940), for which he toured the actual battlefields in China.[6]
Yoshimura's 1947 The Ball at the Anjo House, starring Setsuko Hara, was named the best picture of the year by film magazine Kinema Junpo[1] and is regarded as one of his major works.[2][7] The film marked the start of a long relationship with screenwriter and film director Kaneto Shindō. In 1950, the two of them left Shōchiku and started the independent production company Kindai Eiga Kyōkai.[1][2] For his 1951 Clothes of Deception, produced by Daiei Film, Yoshimura received the Mainichi Film Award for Best Director.[8] Since the mid-1950s, Yoshimura's films were produced mostly by Daiei.[5]
Donald Richie and Joseph L. Anderson pointed out the lack of a cohesive visual style in Yoshimura's films, arguing that due to the wide range of material which Yoshimura chose, his style had to adopt to each individual film.[4] According to Richie and Anderson, the one distinguishable cinematic element of his later films was Yoshimura's quick editing.[4] The director's "most typical films" (Alexander Jacoby) were contemporary dramas focussing on sympathetically drawn female characters,[9] which earned him the comparison with Kenji Mizoguchi.[4][9]
Notable examples of Yoshimura's later work include Night River (1956), An Osaka Story (1957, a project he had taken over from Mizoguchi), Night Butterflies (1957) and Bamboo Doll of Echizen (1963).[2][4][9] He is credited with furthering the careers of actresses such as Fujiko Yamamoto, Ayako Wakao and his regular collaborator Machiko Kyō,[1] from whom he elicited outstanding performances.[9] In 1976, he received a Medal of Honor (Purple Ribbon) for artistic accomplishments.[1]
A retrospective on Yoshimura and Kaneto Shindō was held in London in 2012, organised by the British Film Institute and the Japan Foundation.[7]
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