They rank among the very best of Japanese cinema. Luckily, the films we can see should be enough to win you over. A mere fraction of his films have been released in subtitled versions, and even in Japan much of his work is currently unavailable for viewing. Newcomers to his work also face the perennial issue of accessibility. There’s also the frequent dramatic focus on the psychology of the solitary individual who, by choice or by accident, is set apart from Japanese society. There’s no overt political comment or agenda that compares to contemporaries like Shohei Imamura or Nagisa Oshima.Īnd yet, looking more closely, you’ll be sure to notice his painterly eye for a strong image (he’d started his career as an illustrator). Some of these were hugely successful at the box office, but the lack of distinctive visual tropes or recurrent themes in his work has led to him being considered a solid helmsman rather than an auteur.
He was also appointed to such prestigious commissions as the official chronicle of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Tokyo Olympiad (1965), and the multiscreen work Japan and Japanese for the 1970 Osaka Expo. Alongside literary adaptations (notably 1955’s Kokoro and 1958’s Conflagration) and contemporary satires, he made abrasive youth movies ( Punishment Room, 1956), period gangster movies ( The Wanderers, 1973) and commercial thrillers ( The Noh Mask Murders, 1991).
Ichikawa is often seen as a key modernist figure, bridging the gap from the classical golden age of the 1950s to the more formally experimental 60s. Kon Ichikawa directing The Burmese Harp (1956)
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