Nobuhiko Obayashi
Obayashi in 2019
Born	(1938-01-09)9 January 1938 Onomichi,Hiroshima,Japan
Died	10 April 2020(2020-04-10) (aged 82) Tokyo, Japan
Occupation(s)	Film director,screenwriter,editor,film producer
Years active	1960–2020
Spouse	Kyoko Obayashi[1][2]
Children	Chigumi[1][2]

Nobuhiko Obayashi (大林 宣彦,Ōbayashi Nobuhiko, 9 January 1938 – 10 April 2020) was a Japanesedirector,screenwriter andeditor of films and television advertisements. He began his filmmaking career as a pioneer of Japaneseexperimental films^[3][4] before transitioning to directing more mainstream media, and his resulting filmography as a director spanned almost 60 years. He is best known as the director of the 1977horror filmHouse, which has garnered acult following. He was notable for his distinct surreal filmmaking style, as well as theanti-war themes commonly embedded in his films.^[5]

Obayashi was born on 9 January 1938 in the city ofOnomichi, Japan.^[6] After his father, a doctor,^[5] was called to the battlefront duringWorld War II, he was raised in his early infancy by his maternal grandparents. Through his childhood and adolescence, Obayashi followed many artistic pursuits, including drawing, writing, playing the piano, and possessed a growing interest in animation and film. He made his first8 mm film in 1944 at the age of 6, thehand-drawn animatedshortPopeye's Treasure Island.^[7][8][9]

In 1955 Obayashi, at the urging of his father, began procedures to enter medical school and become a physician. However, he abandoned the prospect of a career in medicine in favor of following his artistic interests atSeijo University.^[10] In 1956 he was accepted to the university's liberal arts department, where he began to work with8 and16 mm film.^[11] Toward the end of his stay at the university Obayashi began working on a series ofshort experimental films. Together—withTakahiko Iimura,Yoichi Takabayashi, andDonald Richie—Nobuhiko Obayashi established the Japanese experimental-film group Film Independent, or "Japan Film Andepandan," who were awarded at the 1964Knokke-Le-Zoute Experimental Film Festival [fr].^[12] Along with works by other filmmakers such asShuji Terayama and Donald Richie, Obayashi's films would develop the tone of Japanese experimental cinema through the 1960s. In these early experimental films Obayashi employed a number ofavant-garde techniques that he would carry into his later mainstream work. Though these films tended to be of a personal nature, they received public viewership due to distribution by theArt Theatre Guild.

Following his departure from university, Obayashi continued to work on his experimental films. Dentsu, a TV commercial project in Japan looking for new talent, asked members of Film Independents if they would like to direct commercials; Obayashi was the only one from the group to accept the offer, and thus began earning a living as a director in the new field of television advertisements.^[13] Obayashi's TV commercials had a visual appeal similar to that of his experimental works. In the 1970s he began a series of Japanese ads featuring well-known western stars such asKirk Douglas,Charles Bronson andCatherine Deneuve.^[14] During the course of his career, Obayashi directed around 3,000 television commercials.^[15] He made his feature filmdirectorial debut with the horror filmHouse, released in 1977.^[3][16] The film employed a mixture of trick photography and avant-garde techniques to achieve its distinctive, surreal visuals, and has gone on to be considered acult classic.^[17] It earned Obayashi theBlue Ribbon Award for Best New Director.^[18]

Through the 1980s and onwards Obayashi continued to make feature films and broadened his mainstream appeal. He directed a number ofcoming-of-age films such asI Are You, You Am Me (1982),The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (1983), andLonely Heart (1985)—which together form his "Onomichi trilogy", named after the town where he was born^[10][19]—as well asChizuko's Younger Sister (1991).

His 1988 filmThe Discarnates was entered into the16th Moscow International Film Festival.^[20] His 1998 filmSada, based on the true story ofSada Abe, was entered into the48th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won theFIPRESCI Prize for "its unique combination of innovative style and human observation."^[16][21]

In 2016, Obayashi was diagnosed with stage-four terminalcancer^[1][14] and was only given a few months to live.^[22] Despite this, he started production onHanagatami, a passion project of his which had been over 40 years in the making.^[23] The film was released in 2017 and was met with acclaim, winning prizes such as theBest Film Award at the 72ndMainichi Film Awards.^[24] It is the third installment in a thematic trilogy of modern anti-war films by Obayashi, along withCasting Blossoms to the Sky (2012) andSeven Weeks (2014).

He shot and edited his final film, titledLabyrinth of Cinema, while receiving cancer treatment.^[14]Labyrinth of Cinema premiered at the 2019Tokyo International Film Festival.^[25]

Obayashi died on 10 April 2020 at the age of 82,^{[2][15][26][27][28]} fromlung cancer inTokyo.^[1][29] His family held a funeral for him at a temple in Tokyo on 13 April.^[30]

• Medal with Purple Ribbon (2004)
• Order of the Rising Sun, 4th Class, Gold Rays with Rosette (2009)^[31]
• Person of Cultural Merit (2019)^[32]

• Federation of Motion Picture Producers in Asia (1989).34th Asia-Pacific Film Festival, 18-21 December 1989, Jakarta, Indonesia.Asia-Pacific Film Festival. Retrieved10 April 2020.
• Galbraith IV, Stuart (1996).The Japanese Filmography: A Complete Reference to 209 Filmmakers and the Over 1250 Films Released in the United States, 1900 through 1994.McFarland & Company.ISBN 978-0786400324.
• Galbraith IV, Stuart (2008).The Toho Studios Story: A History and Complete Filmography.Scarecrow Press.ISBN 978-0810860049.
• Sharp, Jasper (2008).Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema. FAB Press.ISBN 978-1903254547.

• Nobuhiko Obayashi atIMDb

• 1938 births
• 2020 deaths
• Deaths from lung cancer in Japan
• Japanese fantasy film directors
• Japanese horror film directors
• Writers from Hiroshima Prefecture
• People from Onomichi, Hiroshima
• Persons of Cultural Merit
• Recipients of the Medal with Purple Ribbon
• Recipients of the Order of the Rising Sun, 4th class
• Japanese science fiction film directors

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