Kon Ichikawa

On the lighter side, Ichikawa's characters also include a 19th-century cat; a good-hearted, hapless teacher; and a baby who narrates how the world looks from his vantage point. He is especially adept at mixing comedy and tragedy within the same story.

More recently, Actress (1987) is a tribute to the fiercely independent Japanese actress Kinuyo Tanaka, who starred in many of Kenji Mizoguchi's films and was herself a director in later life.

He married Wada Natto who became his scenarist until her death in 1983.

Keisuke Kinoshita, Akira Kurosawa, Kon Ichikawa and Masaki Kobayashi founded their own company, Yonki No Kai ('Club of The Four Knights'), in 1969 to assert an independent film making process and escape the studio system. They managed to produce only one movie, Kurosawa's Dodes'ka-den (1970).

His epic documentary Tokyo Olympiad (1965) (released the following year) and Alone on the Pacific (1963) explore, with dignity and imagination, the limits of human endurance.

Masumura Yasuzo apprenticed under him and consequently remade The Girl Who Touched His Legs in 1960.

He has also worked in the thriller genre, with Ana (1957), Inugami-ke no ichizoku (1976) and Gokumon-to (1977). Ichikawa tends to present strongly etched, complex characters: the stuttering acolyte who desires to preserve the "purity" of the Golden Pavilion (ENJO); the elderly husband who resorts to injections and voyeurism in order to remain sexually active (KAGI); the member of a pariah class who tries to deny his identity and to "pass" in regular society (HAKAI).

The West was first introduced to Ichikawa when his The Burmese Harp (1956) won the San Giorgio Prize at the 1956 Venice Film Festival.

A great visual stylist and perfectionist, Ichikawa excels at screen adaptations of literary masterpieces, including Soseki Natsume's Kokoro (1955), Yukio Mishima's Enjô (1958), Jun'ichirô Tanizaki's Kagi (1959) and Wagahai wa neko de aru (1975) and Tôson Shimazaki's The Outcast (1962).

Kon Ichikawa has been influenced by artists as diverse as Walt Disney and Jean Renoir, and his films cover a wide spectrum of moods, from the comic to the overwhelmingly ironic and even the perverse. Ichikawa began his career as a cartoonist, and this influence is apparent in his skillful use of the widescreen, and in the strong, angular patterns seen in many of his compositions. He has directed Mr. Pu (1953), a popular film based on Junichi Yokoyama's "Mr. Pu" comic strip. At various points in his career Ichikawa has shown that he is capable of appealing to a popular audience without compromising his artistry.

He apprenticed under Abe Yutaka and consequently remade The Girl Who Touched His Legs in 1950.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 442-451. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

He has also remade film classics, such as Yutaka Abe's Ashi ni sawatta onna (1926) (Ichikawa's version: 1952) and Teinosuke Kinugasa's Yukinojô henge: Daiippen dainihen (1935) (Ichikawa's version: 1963), transposing them to contemporary settings.