Keisuke Kinoshita
Keisuke Kinoshita (early 1950s)
Born	Masakichi Kinoshita[1] (1912-12-05)December 5, 1912 Hamamatsu,Empire of Japan
Died	December 30, 1998(1998-12-30) (aged 86) Tokyo, Japan
Occupations	Film director Screenwriter
Years active	1933–1944, 1946–1988
Notable work	Carmen Comes Home (1951) A Japanese Tragedy (1953) Twenty-Four Eyes (1954) She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (1955) The Ballad of Narayama (1958)
Relatives	Chuji Kinoshita (brother) Hiroshi Kusada (brother-in-law) Yoshiko Kusuda (sister)

Keisuke Kinoshita (木下 惠介,Kinoshita Keisuke; December 5, 1912 – December 30, 1998) was aJapanesefilm director andscreenwriter.^[2] While lesser-known internationally than contemporaries such asAkira Kurosawa,Kenji Mizoguchi andYasujirō Ozu, he was a household figure in his home country, beloved by both critics and audiences from the 1940s to the 1960s. Kinoshita's films were marked by a sense of sentimentality, purity, and beauty, and often featured experimentation in both technique and subject matter.

Kinoshita entered the film industry in 1933 as a film processor. He moved on to the position of camera assistant, then assistant director. In 1943, Kinoshita was promoted to director and released his first film,Port of Flowers. A prolific filmmaker, Kinoshita directed 43 films in the first 23 years of his career, and then five more after a stint in television production. Among his best known films areCarmen Comes Home (1951),A Japanese Tragedy (1953),Twenty-Four Eyes (1954),She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (1955) andThe Ballad of Narayama (1958).

Keisuke Kinoshita was bornMasakichi Kinoshita on December 5, 1912, inHamamatsu,Shizuoka Prefecture, as the fourth of eight children of merchant Shūkichi Kinoshita and his wife Tama. His family manufactured pickles and owned a grocery store.^[1] A film fan already in early years, he vowed to become a filmmaker, but faced opposition from his parents.^[3] So he attended high school and began studying for college.^[3]

One day, when Kinoshita was in high school, a film crew arrived in Hamamatsu for location shooting.^[3] Amongst the crew was the actor Junosuke Bando, who Kinoshita would befriend when Bando came to the Kinoshita family's grocery store.^[3] Bando helped Kinoshita run away toKyoto, where most period films were made, but Kinoshita's grandfather came and took Kinoshita back home the next day.^[3] Kinoshita's determination to become a filmmaker convinced his parents into letting him pursue a career in film.^[3]

Kinoshita's mother secured him an introduction to theShochiku Kamata Studio, whereYasujiro Ozu andMikio Naruse worked.^[3][4] But Kinoshita was told that he could not become an assistant director without a university education, but that he may be able to become a photographer.^[3] He applied to the Oriental Photography School, but was told that he needed at least half a year of practical experience in order to be admitted.^[3] He then worked in photography shops in Tokyo until he had enough experience to apply to the Oriental Photography School.^[3] He graduated, then was successfully admitted into Shochiku in 1933, but was told that they no longer needed camera assistants, and that he would have to work in the film processing laborator.^[3] Kinoshita was then moved to work as a camera assistant underYasujirō Shimazu.^[3] After two years, Shimazu asked Kinoshita's superior for Kinoshita to be moved to the position of assistant director, but the request was denied.^[3] After one more year, Shimazu himself made Kinoshita his assistant director.^[3] Kinoshita credits Shimazu as his most important mentor.^[3] Kinoshita continued to work as Shimazu's assistant for six years, until Kinoshita becameKōzaburō Yoshimura's assistant.^[3][5] Around the time, Kinoshita began scriptwriting.^[3] In 1940, Kinoshita was drafted into theSino-Japanese War and went to China, but returned the following year due to an injury.^[1]

Kinoshita re-entered Shochiku and was promoted to director in 1943. Kinoshita's first four films were allpropaganda supporting theJapanese war effort, though Kinoshita would undercut the propaganda with comedy and empathetic portrayals of ordinary people suffering because of the war.^[6] Adapting a popular play by Kazuo Kikuta,^[7] he made the comedyPort of Flowers with a large cast and budget.^[6] The same year saw the emergence of another new director, Akira Kurosawa, but it was Kinoshita who won the much coveted New Director Award at the end of that year.^{[citation needed]}

In 1944, Kinoshita released his fourth film,Army.^[6] Like his previous films,Army was propaganda.^[6] Yet, the famous final scene showed a mother grieving her son's departure for the front instead of cheering him.^[8][9] Although it passed the censors, Kinoshita met with harsh criticism and was not allowed to direct another film until the end of theSecond World War. He later argued, "I can't lie to myself in my dramas. I couldn't direct something that was like shaking hands and saying, 'Come die.'"^[10][11][12] He returned to his hometown Hamamatsu, where he waited for the war to end.^[1]

Kinoshita's first post war film wasMorning for the Osone Family (1946) about a family torn apart by war and conflicts between its liberal-minded and pro-militarist members. The final scene, with the remaining family greeting the rising sun, was demanded by theAmerican censorship board against Kinoshita's objections.^[13] In the following years, he worked in a variety of genres, including comedy, period and contemporary drama, ghost story, and thriller.^[10] Starting withPhoenix in 1947, Kinoshita took onMasaki Kobayashi as an apprentice, who would continue to assist Kinoshita until 1953.^[6] In 1949, the highly successful romantic comedyHere's to the Young Lady was released, starringSetsuko Hara.^[13]

In 1951, Kinoshita travelled to France to meet his idol, French directorRené Clair. As Kinoshita stated, another reason for the travel was to see his home country from a different perspective.^[14] The same year saw the release of the musical comedyCarmen Comes Home, Japan's first colour feature.^[8] Due to technical and financial reasons, a black-and-white version was also filmed and released.^[15][16]Carmen Comes Home was the first collaboration of Kinoshita with actressHideko Takamine, who appeared in many of his later films. Early on, Kinoshita gathered a steady group of co-workers around him: Takamine,Kinuyo Tanaka,Yoshiko Kuga,Keiji Sada andYūko Mochizuki had repeated starring or bigger supporting roles, while his brother Chuji (also credited Tadashi) scored, and cinematographer Hiroshi Kusuda photographed many of his films. In 1953, Kinoshita wrote the script for Masaki Kobayashi's first feature length film,Sincerity.^[6] Kinoshita's sister and wife of Hiroshi Kusada, Yoshiko Kusuda, wrote the screenplay forFarewell to Dream (1956).^[17]

The mid-1950s marked the release of two of Kinoshita's most acclaimed films,Twenty-Four Eyes (1954), a portrait of a school teacher who sees the dreams of her young pupils fall apart due to economical constraints and the war, andYou Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (1955), aMeiji era period drama about the unfulfilled love between two teenagers.^[8][18] Also highly popular was the lighthouse keeper dramaTimes of Joy and Sorrow (1957),^[19] which was repeatedly remade in later years, including one version by Kinoshita himself.^[20]The Ballad of Narayama (1958), a highly stylisedperiod drama about the legendaryubasute practice, was entered into the19th Venice International Film Festival, but met with very mixed reactions.^[21]

By the mid 1960s, Kinoshita had turned solely to television work. Film historianDonald Richie saw the period war dramaThe River Fuefuki (1960) andThe Scent of Incense (1964), which follows a troubled mother-daughter-relationship over a span of 4 decades, as the director's last notable works.^[22][23] Alexander Jacoby also found the 1960 satireSpring Dreams noteworthy, which he called "quirkily enjoyable".^[8] In 1969, he along withAkira Kurosawa ,Masaki Kobayashi, andKon Ichikawa formed theYonki-no-kai Productions company.

Like directors of the previous generation as Ozu and Naruse, Kinoshita stayed loyal to one film studio (Shochiku) before turning to television, and often worked for Shochiku even in later years,^[24] while other directors of his generation as Yoshimura andKaneto Shindō, and even the olderHeinosuke Gosho, had started working independently for different studios by the early 1950s.^[13][25]

Although few concrete details have emerged about Kinoshita's personal life, his homosexuality was widely known in the film world. Screenwriter and frequent collaborator Yoshio Shirasaka recalls the "brilliant scene" Kinoshita made with the handsome, well-dressed assistant directors he surrounded himself with.^[26] His 1959 filmFarewell to Spring has been called "Japan's first gay film" for the emotional intensity depicted between its male characters.^[27]

Kinoshita died on December 30, 1998, of a stroke.^[28] His grave is inEngaku-ji inKamakura, very near to that of his fellow Shochiku director, Yasujirō Ozu.

Kinoshita's films varied greatly in genre, but the two main veins of Kinoshita's work were comedy and melodrama, and all were marked with sentimentality and a deep sense of purity and beauty.^[3] A major theme was the depiction of national history in personal terms, chronicling families or communities over a certain span of time. Also, his films often concentrated on the sufferings of children in oppressive circumstances, and showed a general sympathy with the socially marginalised. Working less on an analytical but an intuitive level, Kinoshita's films showed, according to Alexander Jacoby, an occasional simplicity and naivety, yet in the cases ofTwenty-Four Eyes andYou Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum, they were among the most purely moving of Japanese cinema.^[8] Donald Richie also pointed out the satire and comedy of character in Kinoshita's comedy films, and an emotional earnestness which exceeded sentimentality in his serious films.^[14] Sometimes critical of his later work, Richie detected an increasing traditionalism in films likeThe Ballad of Narayama,The River Fuefuki andScent of Incense.^[29]

Although he often adapted literary works from writers likeTōson Shimazaki,Kunio Kishida andIsoko Hatano, many of his screenplays were based on his original idea. Kinoshita explained his prolific output with the fact that he "can't help it. Ideas for films have always just popped into my head like scraps of paper into a wastebasket."^[30] Some of his scripts were realised by other directors, including the acknowledged directorial debut of actress Kinuyo Tanaka,Love Letter (1953).

Kinoshita was also an avid stylist who experimented with cinematic form in his films. He usedexpressionist camera angles inCarmen's Innocent Love,^[8]daguerreotype-like framing of images inShe Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum,^[31] or partialtinting to evoke the impression of Japanesewoodblock prints inThe River Fuefuki.^[22] InA Japanese Tragedy, he interspersed newsreel footage, and drew uponkabuki stage effects inThe Ballad of Narayama.^[32]The Snow Flurry told its story in a fragmented,nonlinear manner, preceding theNew Wave.^[33]

Kinoshita's birth town Hamamatsu established the "Keisuke Kinoshita Memorial Museum" to commemorate him.^[34]

A retrospective on Kinoshita with 15 of his films was held at theLincoln Center, New York, in 2012.^[35] In 2013, five of Kinoshita's films —Jubilation Street (1944),Woman (1948),Engagement Ring (1950),Farewell to Dream (1956) andA Legend or Was It? (1963) — were screened in the Forum section of the63rd Berlin International Film Festival.^[36]

In 1946Masaki Kobayashi became Kinoshita's assistant^[37] and later formed with him, Akira Kurosawa, andKon Ichikawa a directors group calledShiki no kai (The Four Horsemen Club). The goal was to produce films for a younger audience, but only one project was realised, Kurosawa'sDodes'ka-den (1970).^[38]

DirectorTadashi Imai was an outspoken admirer of Kinoshita's work,^[39] andNagisa Ōshima namedThe Garden of Women as the film which led to his decision to become a filmmaker himself in his 1995 documentary100 Years of Japanese Cinema.^[40]

In 2000, Kinoshita was voted as the third favorite Japanese director ofKinema Junpo readers.^[41]Twenty-Four Eyes was voted at position #6 on the 2009 All Time Best Japanese Movies list by readers ofKinema Junpo.^[42]

• Bock, Audie (1978).Japanese Film Directors. Kodansha. pp. 189–217.ISBN 0-87011-304-6.

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• Keisuke Kinoshita atIMDb
• Keisuke Kinoshita at theJapanese Movie Database(in Japanese)

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