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47-643: Red Quay ( 赤い波止場 , Akai hatoba ) is a 1958 black-and-white action Japanese film directed by Toshio Masuda . Red Quay was one of the many successful collaborations between director Toshio Masuda and actor Yujiro Ishihara which defined the Nikkatsu action film genre. Tominaga Jiro, who slaughtered five yakuza in Tokyo and now he is staying at the Matsuyama group in Kobe . Tominaga accidentally witnesses

94-529: A film noir –like setting which were popular in the mid-1960s. He also worked frequently with Kobayashi and Rusty Knife was credited with making the actor a star. By the late 1960s, Ishihara had scaled back his Nikkatsu output in favour of other studios and his own production company. Nikkatsu viewed new Diamond Line star Tetsuya Watari as a potential successor and they had Masuda remake a number of Ishihara films with him. Masuda loosely remade his own Red Quay into Velvet Hustler (1967) which stars Watari as

141-537: A "happy-go-lucky" hitman who goes on the run after killing a yakuza boss. The character partially was based on Jean-Paul Belmondo 's character in the French New Wave film Breathless (1960). The vigor and humour of the film was something of a departure for both men. The two returned to regular modus operandi in Gangster VIP (1968), which was based on the memoirs of real-life yakuza Goro Fujita. It

188-428: A Storm which was released during the 1957 New Years season. Theatre owners were displeased that there were no further Ishihara films scheduled before Golden Week of the following year. The studio then order Masuda to make a film with Ishihara in ten days. Producer Takiko Mizunoe brought him a script by Shintarō Ishihara . Masuda found it much too long to be completed in the given time, rewrote it and then completed

235-736: A career in the film industry. He thought he would have been bored as a salaryman and that filmmaking would better suit him but suggested he probably would not have followed through had his friends not sought similar careers. After graduating in 1949, he moved to Tokyo to study screenwriting at the Shintoho Studio's Scenario Academy. In 1950, the Shintoho Company hired Toshio Masuda. He worked as screenwriter and an assistant director under Umetsugu Inoue , Nobuo Nakagawa and Mikio Naruse . He served as 2nd AD on Naruse's Ginza Cosmetics (1951) and Mother (1952). Inoue became

282-409: A detective in near-future Tokyo and Omar Sharif as a Chinese Triad boss. Sharif replaced Yūsaku Matsuda who had died of cancer. The film was a critical and commercial failure. Masuda continues to direct and write for television. As an assistant director and screenwriter at both Shintoho and Nikkatsu Studios, Toshio Masuda apprenticed under a number of directors. He has said Mikio Naruse had

329-536: A fan of " chambara " or samurai films. In his teens he was fascinated by Walt Disney 's " Silly Symphonies " and decided to become an animator. He attended a technical school in Osaka . Upon graduation, in 1933, he found a job with a local rental film studio, J.O Studio , in their animation department. Decades later, he told the American writer on Japanese film Donald Richie , "I'm still a cartoonist and I think that

376-444: A mentor figure to Masuda. They began collaborating on scripts and Masuda moved in with Inoue. He also wrote rough drafts for a number of Inuoe's scripts. The Nikkatsu Company, having ceased film production during World War II, restarted in 1954 and lured assistant directors from other companies. Masuda joined the studio as an assistant director and writer. He continued to write scripts for and with his mentor Inoue, who had also made

423-436: A murder and find themselves pursued by the killers. The script was written by Ishihara's older brother, and future governor of Tokyo, Shintarō Ishihara . Yujiro Ishihara was by far the studio's biggest star and Nikkatsu frequently paired their young stars with young directors in order to make "new types of films". Masuda, who turned 30 during the production, made a total of 25 films with Ishihara, more than any other director at

470-443: A parody of Ten Dark Women . Ichikawa's films are marked with a certain darkness and bleakness, punctuated with sparks of humanity. It can be said that his main trait is technical expertise, irony, detachment and a drive for realism married with a complete spectrum of genres. Some critics class him with Akira Kurosawa , Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujirō Ozu as one of the masters of Japanese cinema. The Kon Ichikawa Memorial Room,

517-535: A reputation as a consistent box office hit-maker. Over the course of five decades, 16 of his films made the yearly top ten lists at the Japanese box office—a second place record in the industry. Between 1958 and 1968 he directed 52 films for the Nikkatsu Company. He was their top director of action films and worked with the company's top stars, including Yujiro Ishihara with whom he made 25 films. After

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564-582: A section of his 2007 book No Borders, No Limits: Nikkatsu Action Cinema to Masuda, predominately focusing on said cinema. Musician and writer Chris D. has expressed an interest in doing likewise. No Borders, No Limits is an expanded edition of the version that accompanied the Nikkatsu Action Cinema retrospective Schilling programmed for the Far East Film Festival. Abridged versions of the retrospective have appeared in

611-521: A significant change in Ichikawa's films from that point onward. Concerning her retirement, he said "She doesn't like the new film grammar, the method of presentation of the material; she says there's no heart in it anymore, that people no longer take human love seriously." His final film, 2006's Inugamis , a remake of Ichikawa's own 1976 film The Inugami Family , was entered into the 29th Moscow International Film Festival . Also in 2006, Ichikawa

658-567: A translator for Toho. They agreed to marry sometime after Ichikawa completed his first film as director. Natto Wada's original name was Yumiko Mogi (born 13 September 1920 in Himeji , Hyōgo Prefecture , Japan); the couple both had failed marriages behind them. She graduated with a degree in English literature from Tokyo Woman's Christian University . She married Kon Ichikawa on 10 April 1948, and died on 18 February 1983 of breast cancer . Ichikawa

705-441: A yakuza setting, favouring human drama over verisimilitude. The actors also were favoured over a distinctive visual style which, as writer Jasper Sharp suggested, may have accounted for his popular success in the star-based studio system. Despite production line genre work forming the bulk of his oeuvre, Masuda has always been able to express his views, even subversive ones, and reflect on societal issues through his films. Within

752-509: Is a list of the 16 films. Kon Ichikawa At his death in 2008, The New York Times recalled that " The Globe and Mail , the Canadian newspaper, called him in 2001 “the last living link between the golden age of Japanese cinema, the spunky New Wave that followed and contemporary Japanese film.”" Ichikawa was born in Ise, Mie Prefecture as Giichi Ichikawa (市川儀一). His father died when he

799-782: Is often referred to as Ichikawa's Natto Wada period. It's the period that contains the majority of Ichikawa's most highly respected works, such as Tokyo Olympiad ( Tōkyō Orinpikku ), for which he was awarded the Olympic Diploma of Merit , as well as the BAFTA United Nations Award and the Robert Flaherty Award (now known as the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary ). It is also during this period that Wada wrote 34 screenplays, most of which were adaptations. He gained Western recognition during

846-679: The Blue Ribbon Awards and Mainichi Film Awards . In Japan, his films are well-remembered by fans and called genre landmarks by critics. He remains little known abroad save for rare exceptions of his post-Nikkatsu work such as Tora! Tora! Tora! . However, a number of his films were screened in a 2005 Nikkatsu Action Cinema retrospective in Italy, and a few have since made their way to the United States. In 2009, he helped produce Space Battleship Yamato: Resurrection . Toshio Masuda

893-462: The 1950s and 1960s with two anti-war films, The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain , and the technically formidable period-piece An Actor's Revenge ( Yukinojo henge ) about a kabuki actor. Among his many literary adaptations were Jun'ichirō Tanizaki 's The Key ( Kagi ), Natsume Sōseki 's The Heart (Kokoro) and I Am a Cat ( Wagahai wa neko de aru ), in which a teacher's cat critiques

940-548: The American segments. The film was poorly received in the United States, but did well in Japan. Throughout the next 20 years Masuda helmed a string of major studio productions, including Catastrophe 1999: The Prophecies of Nostradamus (aka Last Days of Planet Earth , 1974) and three more big-budget war films for the Toei Company : The Battle of Port Arthur (1980), The Great Japanese Empire (1982) and The Battle of

987-605: The Nikkatsu ranks to become a top director. The financial success of his star-studded action films, beginning with Yujiro Ishihara in Rusty Knife , ensured that studio heads would continue to assign him top stars and action films. He continued to write for his own films but mostly due to time constraints as he would have preferred to hire other writers, which did after he left the studio. The films were made quickly and largely without studio supervision. In one example, Ishihara began drawing huge audiences with The Guy Who Started

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1034-796: The Sea of Japan: Go to Sea (1983). Masuda became involved in animated films when producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki decided to make his own product. Nishizaki wanted to meld a live action influence into an anime series and was a fan of Nikkatsu Action, including Masuda's films with Yujiro Ishihara. He invited Masuda to direct on Leiji Matsumoto 's science fiction television and film series Space Battleship Yamato (aka Star Blazers ). Between 1977 and 1983, Masuda directed or co-directed all five Yamato films. The original series has been credited as Japan's first animated television space opera . The eponymous first film gained popularity when it played against Star Wars (1977) in Japanese theatres and it has been cited as

1081-545: The United States. The Criterion Collection has optioned a number of films from the retrospective to be made available for the first time in the North American home video market. At the 1981 Japanese Academy Awards , Toshio Masuda was nominated for Best Director for his film The Battle of Port Arthur . He won the Kinema Junpo Readers' Choice Award for Best Film for the same film. In 1990, he

1128-485: The beginning of the golden age of anime. He also made room for more intimate subject matter such as his High Teen Boogie (1982), in which a teenage biker falls in love with a straight-laced girl. The corporate drama Company Funeral (1989) was selected for the Kinema Junpo annual Best Ten list. Masuda's most recent feature film was the crime thriller Heavenly Sin (1992). It starred Sayuri Yoshinaga as

1175-583: The breakdown of the studio system , he moved on to a succession of big-budget movies including the American-Japanese co-production Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) and the science fiction epic Catastrophe 1999: The Prophecies of Nostradamus (1974). He worked on such anime productions as the Space Battleship Yamato series. His corporate drama Company Funeral (1989) earned him a Japanese Academy Award nomination and wins at

1222-425: The difficult, fast-paced, production line environment of the Nikkatsu Company and did so on time and within budget. His films from this period remain little known outside Japan, largely eclipsed by the cult fame of Nikkatsu enfant terrible Seijun Suzuki . While preparing a Nikkatsu Action Cinema retrospective for the 2005 Udine Far East Film Festival , author and critic Mark Schilling found it likely that none of

1269-412: The film within 12 or 13 days. Many of the settings and style he used in his films came from European and Hollywood cinema, but he framed it all in a Japanese context, in the spirit of "borderless" action cinema. He did not want to make typical films and the more European flavour of his work set him apart from many of his contemporaries. He made many yakuza films but considered them "youth films" put in

1316-731: The five Masuda films he selected previously had been screened abroad. though Velvet Hustler was released on VHS cassette by Home Vision Entertainment on September 21, 2001 in North America. After the collapse of the studio system, Masuda's career continued unabated. His best known film in the West is the blockbuster American-Japanese co-production Tora! Tora! Tora! , but his contributions somewhat are overshadowed by co-directors Richard Fleischer and Kinji Fukasaku —the latter of which later achieved international cult notoriety for his own yakuza films —despite having been responsible for

1363-469: The foibles of the humans surrounding him, and Yukio Mishima 's Conflagration ( Enjo ), in which a priest burns down his temple to save it from spiritual pollution. The Key , released in the United States as Odd Obsession , was entered in the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, and won the Jury Prize with Antonioni 's L'Avventura . After Tokyo Olympiad Wada retired from screenwriting, and it marked

1410-401: The greatest impact on him. He credited Kon Ichikawa with teaching him how to use the camera. His primary mentor at Nikkatsu was Umetsugu Inoue from whom he learned the value of linking together large setpieces to draw in audiences. Masuda was more inclined toward drama than his mentor and created the setpieces but then incorporated character-based drama into his work. Masude quickly climbed

1457-513: The greatest influence on my films (besides Chaplin , particularly The Gold Rush ) is probably Disney ." He moved to the feature film department as an assistant director when the company closed its animation department, working under directors including Yutaka Abe and Nobuo Aoyagi . In the early 1940s J.O Studio merged with P.C.L. and Toho Film Distribution to form the Toho Film Company . Ichikawa moved to Tokyo. His first film

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1504-496: The lion's share of the Japanese segments of the film. Masuda's animated works, especially the Space Battleship Yamato series, are remembered by anime fans worldwide. The first Yamato film originally reached overseas audiences in 1978, including theatrical screenings in England and American television. The series has since expanded into a full blown franchise . A comprehensive, Japanese language book detailing Masuda's career

1551-433: The popularity of the ninkyo (honour versus duty) subgenre which began in 1963 and continued late into the decade. However, Masuda's biggest hit was Red Handkerchief in which Ishihara stars as a disgraced police detective–cum–construction worker who shoots and kills his girlfriend's father. It was the third-highest grossing domestic film of 1964 and a blueprint to the mood action subgenre, action–romantic drama hybrids in

1598-406: The project. Fox producer Elmo Williams had recommended him based on his Red Handkerchief and reputation as a "creative mind and a disciplined worker". The film depicts the attack on Pearl Harbor from the perspectives of both sides of the conflict. Masuda was responsible for the Japanese segments and asked director Kinji Fukasaku to join him, while American director Richard Fleischer filmed

1645-418: The scene where a restaurant owner Sugita is killed due to the trouble of drug trading at Kobe Port. Red Quay was released on 23 September 1958. This article related to a Japanese film of the 1950s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Toshio Masuda (director) Toshio Masuda ( 舛田 利雄 , Masuda Toshio , born October 5, 1927) is a Japanese film director. He developed

1692-495: The studio system, Toshio Masuda was a major figure in defining the Nikkatsu Action style. He has been called the studio's top action director and worked with the studio's biggest stars. He produced box office hits which are fondly remembered by Japanese fans into the 21st century, and are regarded as genre landmarks by Japanese critics. Masuda developed a reputation as a "pro's pro", who delivered consistently strong work in

1739-405: The studio. Rusty Knife also marked the first in a succession of hits for Masuda which would serve to keep him in the action genre throughout the next decade. Masuda and Ishihara's follow-up, Red Quay (1958), was based on the 1937 French film Pépé le Moko . In 1962, the duo's Hana and Ryu was the studio's number one hit. It was also Masuda's first jidaigeki (period drama) and predated

1786-595: The studio. Masuda was not happy with the studio system at the time, and in 1968, he quit to become a freelance director—only a few years before Nikkatsu ceased making action films and began producing softcore Roman Porno films in order to remain profitable. Remaining a sought after talent, Masuda was approached by the Twentieth Century-Fox Corporation to co-direct the blockbuster American-Japanese co-production Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) after renowned director Akira Kurosawa left

1833-587: The switch. He served as 1st AD to Kon Ichikawa on the sets of The Heart (1955) and The Burmese Harp (1956). Masuda was promoted to director in 1957 and debuted with A Journey of Body and Soul the following year. It was a B movie , a low-budget film meant to fill out a double feature , but he quickly ascended to the A list that same year. Rusty Knife (1958) marked Masuda's third film and first major hit. It starred Nikkatsu's top Diamond Line stars Yujiro Ishihara and Akira Kobayashi . They play two hoodlum brothers who attempt to go straight but witness

1880-665: Was again nominated for Best Director at the Japanese Academy Awards for Company Funeral . He won in the same category at the Blue Ribbon Awards and the Mainichi Film Awards . Between 1958 and 1992, Toshio Masuda directed 82 feature films, 52 of those over the course of his decade with the Nikkatsu Company. He developed a reputation as a "hitmaker" and 16 of his films breached the top ten list for domestic Japanese box-office revenues. Only one other director has superseded that record. The following

1927-524: Was among the first group of Toho staff that broke from the labor union during the Toho strikes , which became part of Shintoho . Due to a shortage of directorial talent at the new company, he made his debut as director with A Thousand and One Nights with Toho . It was after Ichikawa's marriage to Wada that the two began collaborating, first on Design of a Human Being ( Ningen moyo ) and Endless Passion ( Hateshinaki jonetsu ) in 1949. The period 1950–1965

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1974-601: Was born in Kobe , Japan. His father was a seaman. He enrolled in a technical training school, however, his mindset did not mesh with the school's military indoctrination, and he was expelled in July 1945. He next attended the Osaka University of Foreign Studies (now Osaka University) where he specialized in Russian literature. There he became enamoured with French cinema, which led him away from Russian grammar and toward

2021-454: Was four years old, and the family kimono shop went bankrupt, so he went to live with his sister. He was given the name Kon by an uncle who thought the characters in the kanji 崑 signified good luck, because the two halves of the Chinese character look the same when it is split in half vertically. As a child he loved drawing and his ambition was to become an artist. He also loved films and was

2068-431: Was released in 2007, titled Masuda Toshio: The Complete Action Films of Giant Star Toshio Masuda ( 映画監督舛田利雄 アクション映画の巨星舛田利雄のすべて Eiga kantoku Masuda Toshio: akushon eiga no kyosei Masuda Toshio no subete ). It includes an extensive interview with Masuda, approximately 500 pictures, poster images of his 52 Nikkatsu films and notes on all 82 feature films. Widely neglected by Western critics, writer Mark Schilling dedicated

2115-441: Was the first in what has been called Watari's signature film series and his breakthrough role. Masuda only directed the first film in the series but it provided another blueprint, this time to the studio's New Action subgenre, films which increased the sex and violence quotient while mirroring the tumultuous times of the late 1960s/early 1970s. Nikkatsu's box office returns suffered in the late 1960s and many stars and directors left

2162-475: Was the puppet play A Girl at Dojo Temple ( Musume Dojoji 1946), which was confiscated by the interim U.S. Occupation authorities under the pretext that it was too "feudal", but some sources suggest the script had not been approved by the occupying authorities. Thought lost for many years, it is now archived at the Cinémathèque Française . It was at Toho that he met Natto Wada . Wada was

2209-464: Was the subject of a feature-length documentary, The Kon Ichikawa Story , directed by Shunji Iwai . Ichikawa died of pneumonia on 13 February 2008 in a Tokyo hospital. He was 92 years old. The Magic Hour marked Ichikawa's last appearance and was dedicated to his memory. (This message can be seen in the end of this film.) In this film, a movie director played by Ichikawa is shooting Kuroi Hyaku-ichi-nin no Onna ('A hundred and one dark women'),

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