Kenji Mizoguchi

Mizoguchi was born in Hongō, Tokyo, as the second of three children, to Zentaro Miguchi, a roofing carpenter, and his wife Masa.{{cite book | last1 = Le Fanu | first1 = Mark | year = 2005 | title = Mizoguchi and Japan | publisher = London: BFI Publishing | isbn = 978-1-84457-057-7}}{{cite book|last1=Andrew |first1=Dudley | author-link=Dudley Andrew |last2=Andrew |first2=Paul |year=1981 |title=Kenji Mizoguchi: A Guide to References and Resources |publisher = G.K. Hall |location=Boston |isbn=9780816184699}}{{cite book|title=Kenji Mizoguchi and the Art of Japanese Cinema |first=Tadao |last=Sato |publisher=Bloomsbury |year=2008 |isbn=9781847882318}} The family's background was relatively humble until the father's failed business venture of selling raincoats to the Japanese troops during the Russo-Japanese War. The family was forced to move to the downtown district of Asakusa and gave Mizoguchi's older sister Suzu up for adoption, which in effect meant selling her into the geisha profession.

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, where he finished primary school. His return coincided with an onset of crippling rheumatoid arthritis, which left him with a walking gait for the rest of his life. In 1913, his sister Suzu secured him an apprenticeship as a designer for a yukata manufacturer, and in 1915, after the mother's death, she brought both her younger brothers into her own house. Mizoguchi enrolled for a course at the Aoibashi Yoga Kenkyuko art school in Tokyo, which taught Western painting techniques, and developed an interest in opera, particularly at the Royal Theatre at Akasaka where he helped the set decorators with set design and construction.

In 1917, his sister again helped him to find work, this time as an advertisement designer with the Yuishin Nippon newspaper in Kobe. The film critic Tadao Sato has pointed out a coincidence between Mizoguchi's life in his early years and the plots of {{Transliteration|ja|shinpa}} dramas, which characteristically documented the sacrifices made by geisha on behalf of the young men they were involved with. Probably because of his familial circumstances, "the subject of women's suffering is fundamental in all his work; while sacrifice – in particular, the sacrifice a sister makes for a brother – makes a key showing in a number of his films, including some of the greatest ones (Sansho the Bailiff/Sansho Dayu [1954], for example)." After less than a year in Kobe, however, Mizoguchi returned "to the bohemian delights of Tokyo" (Mark Le Fanu). In 1920, Mizoguchi entered the film industry as an assistant director at the Nikkatsu studios in Mukojima, Tokyo. Three years later, he gave his directorial debut with Ai ni yomigaeru hi (The Resurrection of Love).

After the 1923 earthquake in Tokyo, Mizoguchi moved to Nikkatsu's studios in Kyoto. His early works included remakes of German Expressionist cinema and adaptations of Eugene O'Neill and Leo Tolstoy. While working in Kyoto, he studied kabuki and noh theatre, and traditional Japanese dance and music. He was also a frequent visitor of the tea houses, dance halls and brothels in Kyoto and Osaka, which at one time resulted in a widely covered incident of him being attacked by a jealous prostitute and then-lover with a razor.{{cite book|title=Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts |editor1-first=Alastair |editor1-last=Phillips |editor2-first=Julian |editor2-last=Stringer |publisher=Routledge |location=London and New York |year=2007 |page=95 |isbn=9780415328470}} His 1926 Passion of a Woman Teacher (Kyōren no onna shishō) was one of a handful of Japanese films shown in France and Germany at the time and received considerate praise, but is nowadays lost like most of his 1920s and early 1930s films. By the end of the decade, Mizoguchi directed a series of left-leaning "tendency films", including Tokyo March and Metropolitan Symphony (Tokai kokyōkyoku).

In 1932, Mizoguchi left Nikkatsu and worked for a variety of studios and production companies. The Water Magician (1933) and Orizuru Osen (1935) were melodramas based on stories by Kyōka Izumi, depicting women who sacrifice themselves to secure a poor young man's education. Both have been cited as early examples of his recurring theme of female concerns and "one-scene-one-shot" camera technique, which would become his trademark.{{cite news|title= A Closer Look at a Japanese Master |work= The Los Angeles Times|date=6 January 1997|url= https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-06-ca-15763-story.html|access-date=23 November 2010|first=Kevin|last=Thomas}} The 1936 diptych of Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion, about modern young women (moga) rebelling against their surroundings, is considered to be his early masterpiece.{{cite web|url=http://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=65886&key_search=%E6%B5%AA%E8%8F%AF%E6%82%B2%E6%AD%8C |title=浪華悲歌 |website=Kinenote |language=ja |access-date=1 October 2022}}{{cite web|url=https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%B5%AA%E8%8F%AF%E6%82%B2%E6%AD%8C-689713 |title=浪華悲歌 |website=Kotobank |language=ja |access-date=2 October 2022}}{{cite book |last1=Anderson |first1=Joseph L. |last2=Richie |first2=Donald |date=1959 |title=The Japanese Film – Art & Industry |location=Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo |publisher=Charles E. Tuttle Company }} Mizoguchi himself named these two films as the works with which he achieved artistic maturity.{{cite web |url=https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/best-japanese-film-every-year-from-1925-now |title=The Best Japanese Film of Every Year – From 1925 to Now |date=14 May 2020 |publisher=British Film Institute |access-date=3 January 2022}} Osaka Elegy was also his first full sound film,{{cite magazine|title=Form and Function in "Osaka Elegy" |magazine=Film Comment |last=McDonald |first=Keiko |volume=6 |number=2 |date=Winter 1982 |pages=35–44}} and marked the beginning of his long collaboration with screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda.{{cite web|url=http://www.timeout.com/london/film/osaka-elegy-1936 |title=Osaka Elegy |magazine=Time Out |access-date=2 October 2022}}

1939, the year when Mizoguchi became president of the Directors Guild of Japan, saw the release of The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, which is regarded by many critics as his major pre-war, if not his best work.{{cite news |last=Rosenbaum |first=Jonathan |title=The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums |url=http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-story-of-the-last-chrysanthemums/Film?oid=1072307 |work=Chicago Reader |location=Chicago |access-date=7 October 2022}}{{cite news |last=Macpherson |first=Don |title=The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums |url=http://www.timeout.com/london/film/the-story-of-the-late-chrysanthemums |work=Time Out |access-date=7 October 2022}} Here, a young woman supports her partner's struggle to achieve artistic maturity as a kabuki actor at the price of her health.

During World War II, Mizoguchi made a series of films whose patriotic nature seemed to support the war effort. The most famous of these is a retelling of the classic samurai tale The 47 Ronin (1941–42), an epic jidaigeki (historical drama). While some historians see these as works which he had been pressured into,{{cite book|title=Kyoto: A Cultural and Literary History |first=John |last=Dougill |year=2006 |publisher=Signal Books |isbn=9781904955139}} others believe him to have acted voluntarily.{{cite book|title=To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema |first=Noël |last=Burch |year=1979 |publisher=University of California Press |page=243 |isbn=9780520038776}} Fellow screenwriter Matsutarō Kawaguchi went as far as, in a 1964 interview for {{Lang|fr|Cahiers du Cinéma}}, calling Mizoguchi (whom he otherwise held in high regard) an "opportunist" in his art who followed the currents of the time, veering from the left to the right to finally become a democrat.{{cite magazine|title=Six entretiens autour de Mizoguchi: Kawaguchi Matsutaro |magazine=Cahiers du Cinéma |date=August–September 1965 |volume=XXVII |pages=5–8}}

1941 also saw the permanent hospitalisation of his wife Chieko (m. 1927), whom he erroneously believed to have contracted venereal disease.{{cite AV media |people= |date=2001 |title=Aru eiga-kantoku no shōgai Mizoguchi Kenji no kiroku |trans-title=Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director |type=DVD |language=ja |publisher=Asmik Ace}}

Image:Yoshikata Yoda, Kinuyo Tanaka, Kenji Mizoguchi - in Paris, 1953.jpg

During the early post-war years following the country's defeat, Mizoguchi directed a series of films concerned with the oppression of women and female emancipation both in historical (mostly the Meiji era) and contemporary settings. All of these were written or co-written by Yoda, and often starred Kinuyo Tanaka, who remained his regular leading actress until 1954, when both fell out with each other over Mizoguchi's attempt to prevent her from directing her first own film.{{cite web|url=https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2018/cteq/eternal-breasts-1955/ |title=Kinuyo Tanaka's The Eternal Breasts (1955) |first=Gwendolyn Audrey |last=Foster |date=March 2018 |website=Senses of Cinema |access-date=8 October 2022}}{{cite book| last=Gonzalez-Lopez |first=Irene |date=2017 | title=Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom and Female Subjectivity |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |page=14 |isbn=978-1-4744-4463-7}} Utamaro and His Five Women (1946) was a notable exception of an Edo era jidaigeki film made during the Occupation, as this genre was seen as being inherently nationalistic or militaristic by the Allied censors.{{cite web|url=http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/cteq/utamaro/ |title=Utamaro and his Five Women |first=Freda |last=Freiberg |website=Senses of Cinema |date=March 2003 |access-date=2 October 2022}} Of his works of this period, Flame of My Love (1949) has repeatedly been pointed out for its unflinching presentation of its subject.{{cite web|url=https://www.timeout.com/movies/my-love-has-been-burning |title=My Love Has Been Burning |website=Time Out |first=Rod |last=McShane |access-date=8 October 2022}} Tanaka plays a young teacher who leaves her traditionalist milieu to strive for her goal of female liberation, only to find out that her allegedly progressive partner still nourishes the accustomed attitude of male preeminence.

Mizoguchi returned to feudal era settings with The Life of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954), which won him international recognition, in particular by the Cahiers du Cinéma critics such as Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette,{{cite magazine|title=Mizoguchi vu d'ici |first=Jacques |last=Rivette |magazine=Cahiers du Cinéma |number=81 |date=March 1958}} and were awarded at the Venice Film Festival. While The Life of Oharu follows the social decline of a woman banished from the Imperial court during the Edo era, Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff examine the brutal effects of war and reigns of violence on small communities and families. In between these three films, he directed A Geisha (1953) about the pressures put upon women working in Kyoto's post-war pleasure district. After two historical films shot in colour (Tales of the Taira Clan and Princess Yang Kwei Fei, both 1955),{{cite book|title=Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema |last=Sharp |first=Jasper |publisher=Scarecrow Press |location=Lanham, Maryland |year=2011 |isbn=9780810857957}}{{cite web|title=Yokihi |url=https://www.viennale.at/de/film/yokihi |website=Viennale |language=de |access-date=8 October 2022}} Mizoguchi once more explored a contemporary milieu (a brothel in the Yoshiwara district) in black-and-white format with his last film, the 1956 Street of Shame.

Mizoguchi died of leukemia at the age of 58{{cite news |url=https://info.japantimes.co.jp/weekly/feature/fl20060826aj.htm |title=Kenji Mizoguchi: The enduring relevance of a master of cinema |last=Jacoby |first=Alexander |work=The Japan Times Weekly |date=26 August 2006 |access-date=8 October 2022 |archive-date=3 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210303042340/https://info.japantimes.co.jp/weekly/feature/fl20060826aj.htm |url-status=dead }} in the Kyoto Municipal Hospital. At the time of his death, Mizoguchi was working on the script of An Osaka Story, which was later realised by Kōzaburō Yoshimura.{{cite web|url=http://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=25198 |title=大阪物語(1957) |website=Kinenote |language=ja |access-date=8 October 2022}}

‘On 24 August 1956, Japan's greatest film-maker died in Kyoto. And one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Kenji Mizoguchi was the equal of a Murnau or a Rossellini... If poetry appears at every second, in every shot that Mizoguchi makes, it is because, as with Murnau, it is the instinctive reflection of the inventive nobility of its author’. Jean-Luc Godard, Arts, 5 February 1958.https://www.mcjp.fr/fr/kenji-mizoguchihttps://www.cinematheque.fr/media/mizoguchi.pdf

‘There is no doubt that Kenji Mizoguchi, who died three years ago, was his country's greatest filmmaker. He knew how to discipline for his own use an art born in other climes and from which his compatriots had not always made the most of. And yet there is no slavish desire on his part to copy the West. His conception of setting, acting, rhythm, composition, time and space is entirely national. But he touches us in the same way as Murnau, Ophüls or Rossellini’. Éric Rohmer, Arts, 25 September 1959.https://www.cinelounge.org/Perso/94/Kenji-Mizoguchi

‘Comparisons are as inevitable as they are unfashionable: Mizoguchi is the Shakespeare of cinema, its Bach or Beethoven, its Rembrandt, Titian or Picasso’, James Quandt, Mizoguchi the Master, (retrospective of Mizoguchi centenary films), Cinematheque Ontario and The Japan Foundation, 1996.https://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/202/300/offscreen/2010/v14n01/www.offscreen.com/index.php/lib/cat/asian/P60/default.htmhttps://offscreen.com/view/mizoguchi

In 1975, Kaneto Shindō, a set designer, chief assistant director and scenarist for Mizoguchi in the late 1930s and 1940s, released a documentary about his former mentor, Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director, as well as publishing a book on him in 1976.{{kaneto-shindo-aru-eiga-kantoku}} Already with his autobiographical debut film Story of a Beloved Wife (1951), Shindō had paid reference to Mizoguchi in the shape of the character "Sakaguchi",{{cite book|title=The Waves at Genji's Door: Japan Through Its Cinema |first=Joan |last=Mellen |publisher=Pantheon Books |year=1976 |page=250}} a director who nurtures a young aspiring screenwriter.

Mizoguchi's films have regularly appeared in "best film" polls, such as Sight & Sound's "The 100 Greatest Films of All Time" (Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff){{cite web|url=https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/greatest-films-all-time |title=The 100 Greatest Films of All Time |website=British Film Institute |access-date=8 October 2022}} and Kinema Junpo's "Kinema Junpo Critics' Top 200" (The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu and The Crucified Lovers).{{cite web|title=Kinema Junpo Critics' Top 200 |url=https://mubi.com/lists/kinema-junpo-critics-top-200 |website=MUBI |access-date=8 October 2022}} A retrospective of his 30 extant films, presented by the Museum of the Moving Image and the Japan Foundation, toured several American cities in 2014.{{cite web|url=https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Kenji-Mizoguchi-Will-Receive-of-Retrospective-at-Moving-Image-52-68-20140411 |title=Kenji Mizoguchi Will Receive of Retrospective at Moving Image, 5/2-6/8 |website=Broadway World |date=11 April 2014 |access-date=8 October 2022}} Among the directors who have admired Mizoguchi's work are Akira Kurosawa,{{cite book|author=Donald Richie|title=The Films of Akira Kurosawa, Third Edition, Expanded and Updated|date=20 January 1999|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-22037-9|page=97}} Orson Welles,{{cite book |last1=Welles |first1=Orson |first2=Peter |last2=Bogdanovich |title=This is Orson Welles |publisher=Da Capo Press |year=1998 |page=146}} Andrei Tarkovsky,{{Cite web |url=http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Tarkovsky-TopTen.html |title=Tarkovsky's Choice |access-date=2009-04-13 |archive-url=http://arquivo.pt/wayback/20090706074126/http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Tarkovsky-TopTen.html |archive-date=2009-07-06 |url-status=dead}} Martin Scorsese,{{cite web|url=https://www.criterion.com/current/top-10-lists/214-martin-scorsese-s-top-10 |title=Martin Scorsese's Top 10 List |website=The Criterion Collection |date=29 January 2014 |access-date=8 October 2022}} Werner Herzog,{{cite book|title=Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed |first=Paul |last=Cronin |publisher=Faber & Faber |year=2019 |isbn=9780571336067}} Theo Angelopoulos{{cite book|title=The Films of Theo Angelopoulos: A Cinema of Contemplation |chapter=Angelopoulos, the Continuous Image, and Cinema |first=Andrew |last=Horton |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=1997 |isbn=9780691011417}} and many others. Film historian David Thomson wrote, "The use of camera to convey emotional ideas or intelligent feelings is the definition of cinema derived from Mizoguchi's films. He is supreme in the realization of internal states in external views."{{Cite book |last=Thomson |first=David |title=The New Biographical Dictionary of Film |year=2010 |edition=Fifth |pages=674}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book|last= Andrew|first= Dudley| author-link = Dudley Andrew |title=Sanshô Dayû|year=2000|publisher=BFI Publication|url-access=registration|via=GoogleBooks | url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Sansho_Dayu_Sansho_the_Bailiff_/nd7bDwAAQBAJ?kptab=editions&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj00ZK1gvWJAxVpSPEDHclEDdoQmBZ6BAgIEAk}}
• {{cite book|last=Kardozi|first=Karzan| author-link = Karzan Kardozi |title=100 Years of Cinema, 100 Directors, Vol 8: Kenji Mizoguchi|year=2024|publisher=Xazalnus Publication|url-access=registration|via=The Moving Silent | url=https://themovingsilent.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/book-100-years-of-cinema-from-d-w-griffith-to-richard-linklater/}}
• {{cite book|last= Kirihara|first= Donald |title=Patterns of Time: Mizoguchi and the 1930s|year=1992|publisher= Univ of Wisconsin Press|url-access=registration|via=GoogleBooks | url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Patterns_of_Time/OCsSZn-DAiwC?kptab=editions&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjsr6fAg_WJAxWMQvEDHRsHK3cQmBZ6BAgFEAg}}
• {{cite book|last= Sato|first= Tadao| author-link = Tadao Sato |title=Kenji Mizoguchi and the Art of Japanese Cinema|year=2008|publisher= Berg Publication|url-access=registration|via=National Library of Australia | url=https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/4455843/}}
• {{cite book|last= Spicer|first= Paul|title=The Films of Kenji Mizoguchi|year= 2011|publisher=University of Portsmouth|url-access=registration|via=University of Portsmouth | url=https://pure.port.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/6061330/SPICER_167321.pdf}}
• {{cite book|last= Yoda|first= Yoshikata|title=Souvenirs de Kenji Mizoguchi|year= 1997|publisher=Cahiers du cinéma|url-access=registration|via=Cahiers du cinéma | url=https://www.cahiersducinema.com/boutique/produit/souvenirs-de-kenji-mizoguchi/}}

{{Commons category|Kenji Mizoguchi}}

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{{Kenji Mizoguchi}}

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Category:1898 births

Category:1956 deaths

Category:Japanese film directors

Category:Recipients of the Medal with Purple Ribbon

Category:Recipients of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 4th class

Category:Samurai film directors

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