BIOGRAPHY

Of the few Japanese directors who command an international reputation, Kon Ichikawa remains perhaps the least known and the least well understood. The handful of his films which received widespread international distribution in the 1950s and 1960s – The Burmese Harp (1956), Fires on the Plain (1959), The Key (1959), Alone on the Pacific (1962), An Actor's Revenge (1963) – testify to that trait which has ironically proved his greatest critical stumbling block: an eclecticism of both theme and style which seems to defy auteurist notions of consistency. Many have dismissed him as “just an illustrator”, though there is another irony in the fact that the source of that comment was Nagisa Oshima, a director whose films are similarly eclectic in style and content. In any case, the criticism is hardly fair. While Ichikawa's work lacks the obvious integrity of Ozu's, Mizoguchi's or Kurosawa's, its outward variety belies an overall unity, revealed as one probes (in Tom Milne's phrase) “beneath the skin”.

In fact, Ichikawa worked under somewhat different conditions from the other acknowledged masters of Japanese cinema. The commercial pressures he faced appear to have been rather stronger: it is on record that several projects (including one of his most famous, An Actor's Revenge) were imposed on him by the studio in revenge for the failure of his more personal works to make a profit. Yet he managed, at the same time, to stamp his personality on diverse material. An obvious comparison is with Howard Hawks, whose comedies, which focus on the battle of the sexes, are often described as the thematic obverse of his action films, about camaraderie in an almost exclusively male world. Ichikawa, similarly, divided his films into “light” and “dark”, a division which has some justice – though our own preferred categories would be “ironic” and “sentimental”.

FILMOGRAPHY

*       A Girl at Dojo Temple (Musume Dojoji) (1945)
*       A Thousand and One Nights with Toho (Toho Senichi-ya) (1947) codirector
*       A Flower Blooms (Hana hiraku) (1948)
*       365 Nights (Sanbyaku-rukojugoya) (1948)
*       Human Patterns (Ningen moyu) (1949)
*       Passion Without End (Hateshinaki jonetsu) (1949)
*       Sanshiro of Ginza (Ginza Sanshiro) (1950)
*       Heat and Mud (Netsu deichi) (1950)
*       Pursuit at Dawn (Akatsuki no tsuiseki) (1950)
*       Nightshade Flower (Ieraishan) (1951)
*       The Lover (Koibito) (1951)
*       Man Without a Nationality (Mukokuseki sha) (1951)
*       Stolen Love (Nusumareta koi) (1951)
*       Wedding March (Kekkon koshinkyoku) (1951)
*       Bengawan Solo (1951)
*       Mr Lucky (Rakkii-san) (1952)
*       Young People (Wakai hito) (1952)
*       The Woman Who Touched the Legs (Ashi ni sawatta onna) (1952)
*       This Way, That Way (Ano te, kono te) (1952)
*       Mr Pu (Pu-san) (1952)
*       The Blue Revolution (Aoiro Kakumei) (1953)
*       The Lovers (Aijin) (1953)
*       The Youth of Heiji Zenigata (Seishun Zenigata Heiji) (1953)
*       All of Myself (Watashi no Subete o) (1954)
*       A Billionaire (Okuman Choja) (1954)
*       Twelve Chapters on Women (Josei ni kansuru junisho) (1954)
*       Ghost Story of Youth (Seishun kaidan) (1955)
*       The Heart (Kokoro) (1955)
*       The Burmese Harp (Biruma no tategoto) (1956)
*       Punishment Room (Shokei no heya) (1956)
*       Nihonbashi (1956)
*       The Crowded Streetcar (Man'in Densha) (1957)
*       The Men from Tohoku (Tohoku no Zummutachi) (1957)
*       The Pit (Ana) (1957)
*       Conflagration (Enjo) (1958)
*       Goodbye, Hello (Sayonara, Konnichiwa) (1959)
*       The Key (Kagi) (1959)
*       Fires on the Plain (Nobi) (1959)
*       A Woman's Testament (Jokyo) (1960)
*       Bonchi (1960)
*       Her Brother (Ototo) (1960)
*       Ten Dark Women (Kuroi junin no Onna) (1961)
*       The Outcast (Hakai) (1962)
*       I am Two (Watashi wa nisai) (1962)
*       Alone on the Pacific (Taiheiyo hitoribotchi) (1962)
*       An Actor's Revenge (Yukinojo no Henge) (1963)
*       Money Talks (Zeni no Odori) (1964)
*       Tokyo Olympiad (1964)
*       Topo Gigio and the Missile War (Topo Jijo no botan senso) (1967)
*       Youth (Seishun) (1968)
*       Kyoto (Kyo) (1969)
*       Japan and the Japanese (Nihon to Nihonjin) (1969)
*       To Love Again (Ai futatabi) (1971)
*       The Wanderers (Matatabi) (1973)
*       Visions of Eight (1973) codirector
*       I am a Cat (Wagahai wa neko de aru) (1975)
*       Between Women and Wives (Tsuma to onna no aida) (1976)
*       The Inugami Family (Inugami-ke no ichizoku) (1976)
*       The Devil's Bouncing-Ball Song (Akuma no Temari-uta) (1977)
*       Island of Horrors (Gokumento) (1977)
*       Queen Bee (Joohachi) (1978)
*       The Phoenix (Hinotori) (1978)
*       The House of Hanging (Byoinzaka no kubi kukuri no ie) (1979)
*       Koto (The Ancient City) (1980)
*       Lonely Heart (Kofuku) (1981)
*       The Makioka Sisters (Sasameyuki) (1983)
*       Ohan (1984)
*       The Burmese Harp (Biruma no Tategoto) (1985)
*       The Hall of Crying Deer (Rokumeikan) (1986)
*       Actress (Eiga joyu) (1987)
*       Princess of the Moon (Taketori monogatari) (1987)
*       Crane (Tsuru) (1988)
*       Noh Mask Murders (Tenkawa densetsu satsujin jiken) (1991)
*       Fusa (1993)
*       The Loyal 47 Ronin (Shijushichinin no shikaku) (1994)
*       The 8-Tomb Village (Yattsuhaka mura) (1996)
*       Dora-Heita (1999)
*       Shinsengumi (2000)
*       Kah-chan (2001)

RETROSPECTIVE

PRINCESS FROM THE MOON (1987)

THE PHOENIX (1978)