Ichikawa Kon

Flamboyant Stylist

Ichikawa Kon

Ichikawa has made 80 feature films between 1946 and 2006

“I don't have any unifying theme. I just make pictures I like…”

Ichikawa Kon

• Born in 1915• Entered Kyoto JO St

udio as an animator in 1933.

• When JO was merged with PCL in 1937 and became Tohô, he became an assistant director.

Ichikawa belongs to the generation of the directors who started career during WWII. He became a prominent post-war film director along with Kurosawa Akira and Kinoshita Keisuke.

• Debuted as director with Musume Dojoji (A Girl at Dojoji Temple) in 1945

• Mainly worked on screwball comedies and satires in his early career

• Mr. Pu (1953) is about a school teacher who goes stultified with the fear and paranoia of A-bomb and The Millionaire (1954) is an absurd comedy on a man who is determined to avoid to be a nuclear target and moves to a derelict house only to find his neighbour making an A-bomb.

• Cold War - fear of the outbreak of a nuclear war

• Daigo Fukuryu Maru, exposed and contaminated by nuclear fallout near Bikini Atoll, 1st March, 1954

• Godzilla (1954)

• Ichikawa from metteur en scène to auteur.

5 films in 1951; 5 films in 1952; 4 films in 1953; 4 films in 1954; 2 films in 1955; 3 films in 1956; 3 films in 1957; 1 film in 1958; 3 films in 1959; 3 films in 1960; 1 film in 1961

Ichikawa’s Films• In the later part of the 50

s Ichikawa turned to more serious subjects.

• The Burmese Harp (Biruma no Tategoto, 1956) a lyrical epic about a Japanese soldier who became a Buddhist monk from the guilt of his complicity with killing.

Ichikawa’s Films

• Enjo (1958) is about a novice monk who sets fire on Kinkakuji (the Golden Pavillion) as he does not want to watch its purity and beauty being tainted by human corruption and greed.

Ichikawa’s Films

• Fires on the Plain (Nobi, 1959) is about a soldier in the retreating army in the Philippines who refuses to eat human flesh despite the desperate shortage of food.

• Punishment Room (Shokei no Heya,1956) is about a college student who has no respect for his hard-working parents. He rapes one of his classmates and provoke the gang of the youth to criminal actions.

Ichikawa’s Films

• Odd Obsession (Kagi , 1959) is about a man getting on in years who sets out to find a way to resurrect his flagging virility and sexual passion by deliberately making his own wife flirting with a young, handsom doctor.

Ichikawa as Auteur

• Do Ichikawa’s films have any consistent themes and styles which qualify him as auteur?

• Eclectic motifs, social and personal concerns, themes and styles

Ichikawa as Auteur• ‘Mere illustrator’ - Oshima

Nagisa• Elements which may mak

e Ichikawa an auteur: the total control of filmmaking (he “designed sets, adjusted the lighting, touched up actresses' make-up [and] went to music school so he could write scores”

Ichikawa as Auteur

• James Quandt (ed.), Kon Ichikawa, Cinémathèque Ontario, Toronto, 2001

• His abiding concern is with the recent history of his country; his background and experiences still demonstrably shape the abiding concerns of his films. A native of the Kansai region, he set many films in its major cities of Osaka and Kyoto

Alexander Jacoby

Ichikawa as Auteur• Working in every available

genre and turning out several films for every major company and claiming that he makes the films that he likes, he has been the most successful in adapting literary works into films.

The Burmese Harp Takeyama MichioEnjo Mishima Yukio

Odd Obsession, Sasameyuki Tanizaki Jun’ichiroKokoro, I Am a Cat Natsume Soseki

Fires on the Plain ← O’oka ShoheiPunishment Room ← Shintaro Ishihara

Bridge of Japan ← 　 Izumi KyokaHakai ← Shimazaki Toson

Ichikawa’s Literary Adaptation

• Retelling literary stories in effective and entertaining ways

• Require the power to interpret the literary text accurately (and originally) and the skill to visualize it.

Ichikawa’s Literary Adaptation

• Wada Natto - Ichikawa’s scriptwriter since Human Patterns (Ningen Moyo, 1949) and wife - she provided 34 scripts, most of which were the adaptations of literary works

• Special talent for adapting non-cinematic sources.

Ichikawa’s Literary Adaptation• Ichikawa’s talent to adapting into the film the text w

hose visualization is considered almost impossible or extremely difficult, contextually and technically

• He adapt not only literary works but also the most well-known and the best loved works.

• Takeyama’s The Burmese Harp (the best seller)• Misima’s The Temple of Golden Pavilion (based on a

controversial event)• Tanizaki’s Sasameyuki (epic length psychological n

ovel)• Soseki’s I am a cat and Kokoro (literary classics)• Ishihara’s Punishment Room (controversial subjects)

Ichikawa’s Literary Adaptation

• He is able to etch complex characters • The stuttering young monk who burns down Gol

den Pavillion in Enjo• The elderly husband who resorts to injections a

nd voyeurism in order to remain sexually active in Odd Obsession

Ichikawa’s Literary Adaptation

• The member of a pariah class who tries to deny his identity and to "pass" in regular society in Hakai

• The soldier who survived in a extreme and insane condition and kept his sanity in Fires on the Plain

Ichikawa’s Literary Adaptation

• Actions are seen and filmed from the view point of a black cat (I am a cat) or a two-years old boy (Being two isn’t easy)

• Exaggerated visual styles - stylization

Ichikawa as Auteur: Style

• Flamboyant technical ‘tricks’ • Direct address to the audience• Stop motions • Pale, subdued colours like a water-col

our painting or sepia colours.As seen in Odd Obsession

Ichikawa as Auteur: Style

Pictorial Composition• Decentred widescreen compositions• Exaggerated raw colours, composition by colours• Chiaro-scuro lighting and high-contrast photography

Actor’s Revenge, 1963

Ichikawa as Auteur: Style

• The style nurtured in fiction films are applied for documentary: pictorial composition; multiple cameras, telephoto lens, etc.

Tokyo Olympiad (1965)

Ichikawa as Auteur: Style

• The most stylistic documentary film since Leni Riefenstahl’s Fest der Volker and Fest der Schönheit (1938)

Ichikawa as Auteur: Style