Editing Kon Ichikawa (section)

===Early life===
Ichikawa was born in [[Ise, Mie]] Prefecture as Giichi Ichikawa (市川儀一).<ref name=filmbook>{{cite video|title=Ichikawa Kon Film Book| date=March 2012 |language=ja|publisher=Nihon Eiga Senmon Channeru}}</ref> His father died when he was four years old, and the family kimono shop went bankrupt, so he went to live with his sister.<ref name=filmbook/> 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.<ref name=filmbook/> 

As a child, Ichikawa loved drawing and his ambition was to become an artist.<ref name="filmbook" /> He also loved films and was a fan of "[[chambara]]" or samurai films.<ref name="filmbook" /> In his teens he was fascinated by [[Walt Disney]]'s "[[Silly Symphonies]]" and decided to become an animator.<ref name="filmbook" /> 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 the greatest influence on my films (besides [[Charlie Chaplin|Chaplin]], particularly ''[[The Gold Rush]]'') is probably [[Walt Disney|Disney]]."<ref>[[Donald Richie|Richie, Donald]]. "The Several Sides of Kon Ichikawa". in {{harvp|Quandt|2001|p=53}}.</ref>