Background
Ichikawa, Kon was born on November 20, 1915 in Ujiyamada, Japan.
director producer screenwriter
Ichikawa, Kon was born on November 20, 1915 in Ujiyamada, Japan.
Educated at Ichioka Commercial School, Osaka.
Ichikawa was a cartoonist when he left school, and he worked on animated films during the 1930s and the war years. This led to employment as an assistant director at Toho and his first project—Musume Dojoji—a puppet film banned by the occupying authorities. Animation has remained one ol Ichikawa’s interests: thus Pusan, Topo Gigio e i sei Ladri, and Being Two Isn't Easy, which uses cartoon to illustrate a child’s view of the world. That playfulness may or may not be complementary to the anguish that dominates many ol the films. The sudden sliding into humor may be creative, or evasive. Perhaps Ichikawa proves how many differences of understanding separate us from Japanese cinema. It may also be that his oscillation shows the distracted modern Japanese torn between his past and present.
Director: (films) Musume Dojoji, 1946, Toho senichi-ya, 1947, Hana hiraku - Machiko yori, 1947, Sambyakurokujugo ya - Tokyo-hen, 1948, Sambyakurokujugo ya - Osaka-hen, 1948, Sambyaku-rokujugo ya, 1949, Ningen moyo, 1949, Hateshinaki jonetsu, 1949, Netsudeichi, 1950, Ginza Sanshiro, 1950, Nusumareta koi, 1951, Koibito, 1951, Bungawan soro, 1951, Kekkon koshinkyoku, 1951, Mukokuseki-sha, 1952, Rakki-san, 1952, Ashi ni sawatta onna, 1952, Ano te kono te, 1952, Aoiro kakumei, 1953, Seishun Zenigata Heiji, 1953, Aijin, 1953, Josei ni kansuru junisho, 1954, Okuman choja, 1954, Kokoro, 1955, Seishun kaidan, 1955, Biruma no tategoto, 1956, Shokei no heya, 1956, Nihonbashi, 1956, Manin densha, 1957, Tohoku no zunmu-tachi, 1957, Ana, 1957, Nobi, 1959, Kagi, 1959, Jokyo, 1960, Kuroi junin no onna, 1961, Hakai, 1962, Watashi wa nisai, 1962, Dokonjo monogatari - zeni no odori, 1963, Yukinojo henge, 1963, Taiheiyo hitori-botchi, 1963, Tokyo orimpikku, 1965, Genji monogatari, 1966, Kyoto, 1969, Nihon to nihonjin, 1970, Ai futatabi, 1971, Matatabi, 1973, Visions of Eight, 1973, Tsuma to onna no aida, 1976, Inugamike no ichizoku, 1976, Akuma no temari-uta, 1977, Gokumon-to, 1977, Jo-oh-bachi, 1978, Byoinzaka no kubikukuri no ie, 1979, Koto, 1980, Kofuku, 1981, Sasame-yuki, 1983, Ohan, 1984, Biruma no tatekoto, 1985. Director, director: (films) Rokumeikan, 1986, Eiga joyu, 1987, Taketori monogatari, 1987, Tsuru, 1988, Tenkawa densetsu satsujin jiken, 1991, Kaettekite Kogarashi Monjiro, 1993, Shijushichinin no shikaku, 1994, Yatsu haka-mura, 1996, Shinsengumi, 2000, Dora-heita, 2000, Kah-chan, 2001, Yume juya, 2006, Inugamike no ichizoku, 2006.
Ichikau'a is a director of contradictions, a haphazard obsessive, disconcertingly versatile for the Western spectator who expects concentration and integrity in Oriental cinema. With Mizoguchi, such anticipation seems justified. The greatest characteristic of his films is the elegiac, narrative camera style and the vindication of traditional material—although that appreciation may owe something to our being familiar with only his late work. Ichikawa, in contrast, is restless, speculative, and unresolved; it is easy to call him flashy, unstable, and modish. Donald Richie has commented on the unpredictable talent of Ichikawa and quoted the director: “People are always surprised at my humor and then they are always surprised at the bleakness of whatever philosophy I have. To me they seem perfectly complementary.”
At the same time, Ichikawa has frankly conceded that he sometimes makes films to order. And it is ultimately difficult to reconcile the technological preoccupation with muscle in Tokyo Olympiad and the gloating over flesh in The Key. The first was a film made in the spirit of the Japanese photographic industry—all ingenious lens effects, picking out spectacular detail, but oblivious of the overall effect, whether sport or public occasion. The Key is a study of sexual obsession within a family, compelling but lewd, perhaps reflective of Japanese society but mordantly unsympathetic to characters. Both films seemed inspired by a cold-eyed interest in the mechanics of the body. Against that, Alone on the Pacific is a charmingly homespun account of the mundane heroics of a singlehanded trans-Pacific sailor. While The Burmese llai'f) is sometimes hailed as a monument of humanist cinema. Which is to say nothing of the startling cross-fertilization of identities in An Actor’s Revenge; the calm anguish of The Sin; the frenzy of Conflagration, based on a Yukio Mishima novel; or the remorseless ordeal ol Fires on the Plain. When all is said and done, the variety is alarming, the inconsistency his most striking trait.