Kenji Mizoguchi

Kenji Mizoguchi
Born	(1898-05-16)May 16, 1898 Hongo, Tokyo, Japan
Died	August 24, 1956(1956-08-24) (aged 58) Kyoto, Japan
Other names	Goteken
Occupation	Film director, screenwriter, editor
Years active	1923–1956

Kenji Mizoguchi (溝口 健二, Mizoguchi Kenji, May 16, 1898 – August 24, 1956) was a Japanese film director and screenwriter.

Mizoguchi's work is renowned for its long takes and mise-en-scène.^[1] According to writer Mark Le Fanu, "His films have an extraordinary force and purity. They shake and move the viewer by the power, refinement and compassion with which they confront human suffering."^[2]

His film Ugetsu (1953) brought him international attention and appeared in the Sight & Sound Critics' Top Ten Poll in 1962 and 1972. Other acclaimed films of his include The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939), The Life of Oharu (1952), Sansho the Bailiff (1954), and The Crucified Lovers (1954). Today, Mizoguchi is often cited as one of the most acclaimed filmmakers in Japanese and world cinema.

Biography[]

Early years[]

Mizoguchi was born in Hongō, Tokyo,^[3] one of three children. His father was a roofing carpenter. The family was modestly middle-class until his father tried to make a living selling raincoats to soldiers during the Russo-Japanese War. The war ended too quickly for the investment to succeed; his family circumstances turned abject and they gave his older sister up "for adoption" and moved from Hongo to Asakusa, near the theatre and brothel quarter.^[3] In effect, his sister Suzuko, or Suzu, was sold into the geisha profession - an event which profoundly affected Mizoguchi's outlook on life. Between this and his father's brutal treatment of his mother and sister, he maintained a fierce resistance against his father throughout his life.

In 1911, Mizoguchi's parents, too poor to continue paying for their son's primary school training, sent him to stay with an uncle in Morioka, in northern Japan, for a year - a period that saw the onset of crippling rheumatoid arthritis that was to afflict him during adolescence and leave him with a lop-sided walking gait for the rest of his life.^[4] The year 1912, back with his parents, was spent almost entirely in bed. In 1913, Mizoguchi's sister Suzu secured him work as an apprentice, designing patterns for kimono and yukata. In 1915 his mother died, and Suzu brought her younger brothers into her own house and looked after them. In 1916, he enrolled for a course at the Aoibashi Yoga Kenkyuko art school in Tokyo, which taught Western painting techniques. At this time too he pursued a new interest in opera, particularly at the Royal Theatre at Akasaka where he began, in due course, to help the set decorators.

In 1917 his sister again helped him to find work, this time a post with the Yuishin Nippon' newspaper in Kobe, as an advertisement designer. The film critic Tadao Sato has pointed out a coincidence between Mizoguchi's life in his early years and the plots of shinpa dramas. Such works characteristically documented the sacrifices made by geisha on behalf of the young men they were involved with. Probably because of his familiar circumstances, "the subject of women's suffering is fundamental in all his work; while the sacrifice a sister makes for a brother - makes a key showing in a number of his films - Sansho Dayu for example."^[4] After less than a year in Kobe, however, he returned "to the bohemian delights of Tokyo."^[4] Mizoguchi entered the Tokyo film industry as an actor in 1920; three years later he would become a full-fledged director, at the Nikkatsu studio, directing Ai-ni yomigaeru hi (), his first movie, during a workers' strike.

Film career[]

Mizoguchi's early works were mainly genre films, remakes of German Expressionism and adaptations of Eugene O'Neill and Leo Tolstoy. In these early years, Mizoguchi worked quickly, sometimes churning out a film in just a few weeks. The majority of the nearly seventy films he directed from the 1920s and 1930s are now lost.

Kenji Mizoguchi travelling through Europe, 1953

After the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, Mizoguchi moved to Nikkatsu’s Kyoto studios, and was working there until a scandal caused him to be temporarily suspended: Yuriko Ichijo, a prostitute with whom he was living, attacked him with a razor-blade, leaving lacerations on his back. "Working in Kyoto—the home of the traditional arts—had a decisive influence. Mizoguchi studied kabuki, noh, and traditional Japanese dance and music."^[5]

Several of Mizoguchi's later films were keikō-eiga or "tendency films," in which Mizoguchi first explored his socialist tendencies and moulded his famous signature preoccupations. Later in his life, Mizoguchi maintained that his career as a serious director did not begin until 1936, when Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion were released.

In his middle films, Mizoguchi began to be hailed as a director of "new realism": social documents of a Japan that was making its transition from feudalism into modernity. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939) won a prize with the Education Department; like the two above-mentioned films, it explores the depreciated role of women in a male-centred society. During this time, Mizoguchi also developed his signature "one-scene-one-shot" approach to cinema. The meticulousness and authenticity of his set designer would contribute to Mizoguchi's frequent use of wide-angle lenses.

During the war, Mizoguchi was forced to make artistic compromises, producing propaganda for the military government; the most famous of these films is a retelling of the Samurai bushido classic The 47 Ronin (1941), an epic jidaigeki ("historical drama").

Among the many important directors who have admired Mizoguchi's work are Akira Kurosawa,^[6] Orson Welles,^[7] Masahiro Shinoda, Kaneto Shindo, Jean-Luc Godard,^[8] Andrei Tarkovsky,^[9] Jean-Marie Straub, Víctor Erice, Jacques Rivette and Theo Angelopoulos.^[10]

Mizoguchi once served as president of the Directors Guild of Japan.^[11]

Post-war recognition[]

Screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda, Actress Kinuyo Tanaka, and Kenji Mizoguchi visit Paris, 1953

Immediately after the war, Mizoguchi's work, like that of his contemporary Yasujirō Ozu, was regarded by Japanese audiences as somewhat old-fashioned and dated.^{[citation needed]} He was rediscovered, however, in the West - and particularly by Cahiers du Cinéma critics such as Jacques Rivette. After a phase inspired by Japanese women's suffrage, which produced radical films like Victory of the Women (1946) and My Love Has Been Burning (1949), Mizoguchi turned to the jidaigeki — or period drama, remade from stories from Japanese folklore or period history — together with long-time screenwriter and collaborator Yoshikata Yoda. It was to be his most celebrated series of works, including The Life of Oharu (1952), which won him international recognition and which he considered his best film, and Ugetsu (1953), which won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Sansho the Bailiff (1954) reworks a premise from feudal Japan (and the short story by Mori Ōgai). Of his ninety feature films, only two — Tales of the Taira Clan (1955) and Princess Yang Kwei Fei (1955) — were made in colour.^{[citation needed]}

Mizoguchi died in Kyoto of leukemia at the age of fifty-eight, by which time he had become recognized as one of the three masters of Japanese cinema, together with Yasujirō Ozu and Akira Kurosawa. At the time of his death, Mizoguchi was working on a film called Osaka Story. In all, he made (according to his memory) about seventy-five films, although most of his early ones were lost. In 1975, Kaneto Shindo filmed a documentary about Mizoguchi, Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director, as well as writing a book published in 1976.^[12] A retrospective series of his thirty surviving films, sponsored by the Japan Foundation, toured several American cities in 2014.

Filmography[]

DVD releases (English subtitled)[]

UK and US[]

• Osaka Elegy (Naniwa erejii, 1936) - Artificial Eye (region 2 PAL, Blu-ray); The Criterion Collection (region 1 NTSC)
• Sisters of the Gion (Gion no kyōdai, 1936) - Artificial Eye (region 2 PAL, Blu-ray); The Criterion Collection (region 1 NTSC)
• The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (Zangiku monogatari, 1939) - Artificial Eye (region 2 PAL, Blu-ray; The Criterion Collection (region 1 NTSC)
• The 47 Ronin (Genroku chūshingura, 1941) - Image Entertainment (region 1 NTSC)
• Utamaro and His Five Women (Utamaro o meguru gonin no onna, 1946) - Artificial Eye (region 2 PAL, Blu-ray)
• Women of the Night (Yoru no onnatachi, 1948) - The Criterion Collection (region 1 NTSC)
• Oyū-sama (1951) - Eureka! Masters of Cinema (region 2 NTSC, Blu-ray)
• The Lady of Musashino (Musashino fujin, 1951) - Artificial Eye (region 2 PAL)
• The Life of Oharu (Saikaku ichidai onna, 1952) - Artificial Eye (region 2 PAL; The Criterion Collection (region 1 NTSC)
• Ugetsu monogatari (1953) - Eureka! Masters of Cinema (region 2 NTSC, Blu-ray); The Criterion Collection (region 1 NTSC)
• Gion bayashi (1953) - Eureka! Masters of Cinema (region 2 NTSC, Blu-ray)
• Sansho, the Bailiff (Sanshō dayū, 1954) - Eureka! Masters of Cinema (region 2 NTSC); The Criterion Collection (region 1 NTSC)
• Uwasa no onna (1954) - Eureka! Masters of Cinema (region 2 NTSC)
• Chikamatsu monogatari (1954) - Eureka! Masters of Cinema (region 2 NTSC; The Criterion Collection (region 1 NTSC)
• Yōkihi (1955) - Eureka! Masters of Cinema (region 2 NTSC)
• Street of Shame (Akasen chitai, 1956) - Eureka! Masters of Cinema (region 2 NTSC); The Criterion Collection (region 1 NTSC)

Other[]

• Tokyo Koshinkyoku (1929) - Digital MEME
• Tojin Okichi (1930, fragment) - Digital MEME
• Taki no Shiraito (1933) - Digital MEME
• Orizuru Osen (1935) - Digital MEME

Notes[]

References[]

• Welles, Orson; Bogdanovich, Peter (1998). This is Orson Welles. Da Capo Press. p. 146. ISBN 0-306-80834-X.
• Andrew, Dudley; Andrew, Paul (1981). Kenji Mizoguchi, a Guide to References and Resources. G.K. Hall. ISBN 0-8161-8469-0.
• Le Fanu, Mark (2005). Mizoguchi and Japan. London: BFI Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84457-057-7.
• Sato, Tadao (2008). Kenji Mizoguchi and the Art of Japanese Cinema. ISBN 978-1-84788-230-1.

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kenji Mizoguchi.

• Kenji Mizoguchi at IMDb
• Kenji Mizoguchi at the Japanese Movie Database (in Japanese)
• Acquarello: "Kenji Mizoguchi". Strictly Film School
• Jacoby, Alex: "Kenji Mizoguchi". Senses of Cinema, Great Directors: A Critical Database
• Kenji Mizoguchi's grave