Heinosuke Gosho

Template:Nihongo was a Japanese film director and screenwriter who directed Japan's first successful sound film, The Neighbor's Wife and Mine, in 1931. His films are mostly associated with the shōshimin-eiga (lit. "common people drama") genre. Among his most noted works are Where Chimneys Are Seen, An Inn at Osaka, Takekurabe and Yellow Crow.<ref name="Anderson-Richie">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Jacoby">Template:Cite book</ref>

Life

Gosho was born on January 24, 1902, in Kanda, Tokyo, to merchant Heisuke Gosho and his father's geisha mistress. At the age of five, after Heisuke's eldest son died, Gosho left his mother to be the successor to his father's wholesale business. He studied business at Keio University, graduating in 1923.<ref name="kinenote" />

Through his father's close relation to film director Yasujirō Shimazu, Gosho was able to join the Shochiku film studios and worked as assistant director to Shimazu.<ref name="kinenote" /> In 1925, Gosho debuted as a director<ref name="Anderson-Richie" /> with the film Nantō no haru.<ref name="kinenote" /> His films of the 1920s are nowadays regarded as lost.<ref name="Jacoby" />

Gosho's first notable success, and Japan's first feature length sound film, was the 1931 comedy The Neighbor's Wife and Mine about a writer distracted by a noisy next-door jazz band. Naming Ernst Lubitsch's The Marriage Circle and Charles Chaplin's A Woman of Paris as the greatest foreign influences, Gosho's work oscillated between comedy and drama, sometimes mixing the two, which earned his films the reputation of making the viewer "laugh and cry at the same time".<ref name="Anderson-Richie" /> Other Gosho trademarks were his fast editing style and his repeated relying on literary sources, such as the works of Yūzō Yamamoto and Ichiyō Higuchi.<ref name="Jacoby" /><ref name="Richie">Template:Cite book</ref> Together with Shirō Toyoda, Gosho was one of the first directors to adapt the works of the junbungaku ("pure literature") movement for the screen, which opposed "popular" literature in favour of "serious" literature and a more complex handling of its subjects. A prominent example is The Dancing Girl of Izu (1933), a successful adaptation of Yasunari Kawabata's story of the same name, about the unfulfilled love between a student and a young country woman.<ref name="Nolletti">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Cazdyn">Template:Cite book</ref> Of his 36 1930s films, only slightly more than a half-dozen are extant.<ref name="Nolletti" />

A firm believer in humanism, Gosho tried to reduce militarist content in his wartime films, and showed solidarity with dismissed co-workers during the Toho studios strike of 1948.<ref name="Anderson-Richie"/> In 1950 he started the independent production company Studio Eight together with Shirō Toyoda and other former studio employees. Studio Eight's first production was Gosho's 1951 drama Dispersed Clouds about an unhappy young woman from Tokyo finding fulfilment as assistant of a country doctor.<ref name="Hirano">Template:Cite book</ref> His best-known works of this era are the social realist marriage drama Where Chimneys Are Seen (1953), which was shown in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival,<ref name="Berlinale 1953">Template:Cite web</ref> and Yellow Crow (1957), the portrait of a troubled father-son-relationship, which received the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.<ref name="Golden Globe 1958">Template:Cite web</ref> Although his films grew darker in tone by the mid-1950s, evident in works like An Inn at Osaka, about a group of Osaka residents struggling with an unrestrained materialistic environment, he stayed true to his ideals of "tolerance, compromise and rationality".<ref name="Jacoby" />

Gosho was also one of the first major Japanese directors to work extensively for television as a writer.<ref name="Anderson-Richie" /> Due to the rapid changes in the film industry at the time, Gosho's work in the 1960s alternated mostly between melodrama and shomin-geki, sometimes not exceeding well-made commercial entertainment.<ref name="Nolletti" /> Notable films of this era are Hunting Rifle (1961), based on Yasushi Inoue's novella about an adulterous couple, An Innocent Witch (1965), the account of a young prostitute falling victim to superstition, and Rebellion of Japan (1967), a love story set against the backdrop of the February 26 Incident.<ref name="Nolletti" /><ref name="Anderson-Richie"/><ref name="Jacoby" /> His last feature-length directorial effort was the puppet film Meiji haru aki (1968).

Between 1964 and 1980, Gosho served as president of the Directors Guild of Japan.<ref name="Directors Guild of Japan">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Nenpyo">Template:Cite web</ref> Although having repeatedly worked with internationally known actresses and actors like Kinuyo Tanaka, few of his films have been seen in the West. In 1989–1990, a retrospective of his work was held by the Japan Society and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.<ref name="Nolletti" />

Gosho also wrote haiku poems and served as director of the Japanese Haiku Art Association.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Selected filmography

Year	English Title	Japanese Title	Romanisation	Alternate titles
1930	Record of Love and Desire	愛慾の記	Aiyoku no ki	Desire of Night
1931	The Neighbor's Wife and Mine	マダムと女房	Madamu to nyōbō
1933	The Dancing Girl of Izu	恋の花咲く　伊豆の踊子	Koi no hana saku Izu no odoriko
1934	Everything That Lives	生きとし生けるもの	Ikitoshi ikeru mono
1935	Burden of Life	人生のお荷物	Jinsei no onimotsu
	Somniloquy of the Bridegroom	花婿の寝言	Hanamuko no negoto
	Song of the Flower Basket	花籠の歌	Hanakago no uta
1936	Woman of the Mist	朧夜の女	Oboroyo no onna
	The New Road (Part one)	新道前篇	Shindō zenhen
	The New Road (Part two)	新道後篇	Shindō kōhen
1940	Incompatible Relations	木石	Bokuseki
1942	New Snow	新雪	Shinsetsu
1947	Once More	今ひとたびの	Ima hitotabi no
1951	Dispersed Clouds	わかれ雲	Wakare-gumo
1953	Where Chimneys Are Seen	煙突の見える場所	Entotsu no mieru basho	Four Chimneys
1954	An Inn at Osaka	大阪の宿	Ōsaka no yado
	The Valley Between Love and Death	愛と死の谷間	Ai to shi no tanima
	The Cock Crows Twice	鶏はふたゝび鳴く	Niwatori wa futatabi naku
1955	Growing Up	たけくらべ	Takekurabe	Adolescence Template:Aka Growing Up Twice a.k.a. Child's Play
1956	Twice on a Certain Night	ある夜ふたたび	Aru yo futatabi
1957	Yellow Crow	黄色いからす	Kiiroi karasu
	Elegy of the North	挽歌	Banka	Northern Elegy a.k.a. Dirge
1958	Ragpicker's Angel	蟻の街のマリア	Ari no machi no Maria
1961	Hunting Rifle	猟銃	Ryōju
	As the Clouds Scatter	雲がちぎれる時	Kumo ga chigireru toki
1962	Mother, Get Married	かあちゃん結婚しろよ	Kaachan kekkon shiroyo
1965	An Innocent Witch	恐山の女	Osorezan no onna
1966	Our Wonderful Years	かあちゃんと11人の子ども	Kaachan to jūichinin no kodomo
1967	Rebellion of Japan	宴	Utage
1968	A Woman and the Beancurd Soup	女と味噌汁	Onna to Misoshiru
	Four Seasons of the Meiji Period	明治春秋	Meiji haru aki

Bibliography

• Nolletti, Arthur (2005). The Cinema of Gosho Heinosuke: Laughter through Tears. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Template:ISBN

External links

• Template:Jmdb name
• Template:IMDb name