ryuganji: film news from japan

The name Yamamoto Satsuo might not ring a bell for some, but maybe you’ve heard of “Shinobi no Mono”? “Shiroi Kyoto” (The Ivory Tower)? “Karei naru Ichizoku” (The Perfect Family)? “Zatoichi the Outlaw”? “Botan Doro” (A Tale of Peonies and Lanterns)”? These are just a few of the films that might turn up in Tokyo Filmex’s Yamamoto Satsuo retrospective, announced today. The line-up won’t be revealed until the festival’s press conference on the 26th of this month, but in the meantime, here’s a profile from Yamamoto’s Japanese Wikipedia entry:

Yamamoto dropped out of [Waseda] university to join Shochiku, where he worked as an assistant director to Naruse Mikio and others. He followed Naruse when he moved to PCL, and became a director in his own right after the company was reborn as Toho. During WWII he directed several pro-war propaganda films for them despite being a fervent member of the Japanese Communist Party, and after the war he rallied against the company as a driving force behind the union during the 1948 Toho labour dispute (in which the JCP was heavily involved), after which was ultimately fired.

He subsequently worked on independent films and made numerous intensely rebellious and substantial socially conscious works. From the 1960s onward, he directed a succession of major films including the Yamasaki Toyoko adaptations “The Ivory Tower” and “The Perfect Family”, the “Men and War” trilogy, and “Kotei no inai Hachigatsu”. This body of epic works led to him being dubbed “the red Cecil B. DeMille”. He died of pancreatic cancer on August 11th, 1983 at the age of 73.

Also check out this brief obit by the New York Times.