Ichikawa Kon

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Ichikawa Kon

• Flamboyant Stylist

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Ichikawa Kon

• Ichikawa made 80 feature films between 1946 and
  2006
• I dont have any unifying theme. I just make
  pictures I like

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Ichikawa Kon

• Born in 1915
• Entered Kyoto JO Studio as an animator in 1933.
• When JO was merged with PCL in 1937 and became
  Toho, he became an assistant director.

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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.
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Ichikawa Kon

• His childhood love of drawing and his dream of
  being an painter.
• His fascination with chambara and samurai films
• His love of the Disney animations
• I am a cartoonist and I think that the greatest
  influence on my films (besides Chaplin)is
  probably Disney.

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Ichikawa Kon

• Met Yumiko Nogi (later Wada Natto), a translator,
  at Toho Studios.
• Wada Natto became a screenwriter for most of
  Ichikawas films.
• She agreed to marry him after the completion of
  his first film.

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• Debuted as director with Musume Dojoji (A Girl at
  Dojoji Temple) in 1945
• Mainly worked on screwball comedies and satires
  in his early career

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• Mr. Pu (1953) is about a school teacher who goes
  paralyzed with the fear 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.

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• 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)

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Ichikawa from metteur en scène to auteur.
1951 5 films
1952 5 films
1953 4 films
1954 4 films
1955 2 films
1956 3 films
1957 3 films
1958 1 film
1959 3 films
1960 3 films
1961 1 film
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Ichikawas Films

• In the later part of the 50s Ichikawa turned to
  more serious subjects.
• The Burmese Harp (1956) a lyrical epic about a
  Japanese soldier who became a Buddhist monk from
  the guilt of his complicity with killing.

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Ichikawas 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.

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Ichikawas Films

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

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• Punishment Room (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.

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Ichikawas Films

• Odd Obsession (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.

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Ichikawa as Auteur

• Do Ichikawas films have any consistent themes
  and styles which qualify him as auteur?
• Eclectic motifs, social and personal concerns,
  themes and styles

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Ichikawa as Auteur

• Mere illustrator - Oshima Nagisa
• Elements which may make 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

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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

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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.

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The Burmese Harp ? Takeyama Michios Biruma no
TategotoEnjo ? Mishima Yukios Kinkakuji
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Odd Obsession, Makioka Sisters ? Tanizaki
Junichiros Kagi and SasameyukiKokoro, I Am a
Cat ? Natsume Sosekis Kokoro and Wagahai wa
Neko de aru
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Fires on the Plain ? Ooka Shoheis
NobiPunishment Room ? Shintaro Ishiharas Shokei
no Heya
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Bridge of Japan ? Izumi Kyokas Nihonbashi Hakai
? Shimazaki Tosons Hakai
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Ichikawas 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 with Wada Natto

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Ichikawas Literary Adaptation

• Wada Natto - Ichikawas scriptwriter since Human
  Patterns (1949) and wife - she provided 34
  scripts, most of which were the adaptations of
  literary works
• Special talent for adapting non-cinematic
  sources.

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Ichikawas Literary Adaptation

• Ichikawas talent to adapting into the film the
  text whose 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.
• Takeyamas The Burmese Harp (the best seller)
• Misimas The Temple of Golden Pavilion (based on
  a real and controversial event)
• Tanizakis Makioka Sisters (epic length
  psychological novel)
• Sosekis I am a cat and Kokoro (literary
  classics)
• Ishiharas Punishment Room (youth subjects)

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Ichikawas Literary Adaptation

• He is able to etch complex characters
• The stuttering young monk who burns down Golden
  Pavillion in Enjo
• The elderly husband who resorts to injections and
  voyeurism in order to remain sexually active in
  Odd Obsession

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Ichikawas 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

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Ichikawas 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 isnt easy)
• Exaggerated visual styles - stylization

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Flamboyant technical tricks
• Direct address to the audience
• Stop motions
• Pale, subdued, sepia colours
• As seen in Odd Obsession

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• A cinema character directly speaks to the camera.

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Visual repetition the same motif in reversed
  composition. Stop motion

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Female sexuality and eroticism
• Colours of skin like wet porcelain

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Frequent close-ups without expression on
  mask-like faces

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Deep-space photography

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Literary story retold in stylistic photography
• Miyagawa Kazuos cinematography
• Wide screen, low-key lighting, pictorial
  composition and deep space
• As seen in Enjo

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Exemplary wide-screen photography
• Expansive horizontal space
• A lone figure framed in the temple gate

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Psychological distance is represented visually by
  separating the two characters in low-key
  lighting.

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Deep space photography and low-key lighting
• A monk looking on his temple burning down to the
  ground.

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Occasional close-ups

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Pictorial Composition
• Decentred widescreen compositions
• Exaggerated raw colours, composition by colours
• Chiaro-scuro lighting and high-contrast
  photography
• As seen in Actors Revenge, 1963

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Exaggerated raw colour (blue), dramatic lighting,
  and deep space composition

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Frequent extreme close-ups and placing of figures
  to extreme corners in wide screen

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Female eroticism in close ups

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Dramatic lighting - a shaft of light going across
  the actors face

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Dramatic lighting - strong light flood the face
  of the actor

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Foreshortening technique creating a sense of depth

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• The style nurtured and developed in fiction films
  were applied for his documentary visual tricks
  through pictorial composition, multiple cameras,
  telephoto lens, etc.
• Tokyo Olympiad (1965)

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Long telephoto lenses loss of depth, sometimes
  blurred

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Telephoto lens can separate athletes from others
  and the setting surrounding them

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Blurred silhouette shot with splash reflecting
  light

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Close-up shot of the sun with colours reversed
  from those in the national flag

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• An gymnastic action divided into a sequence of
  motions

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Aerial shot directly looking down below

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Extreme close-up shots

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

• Insertions of non-diegetic close up shots

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style

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

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Ichikawa as Auteur Style