Mikio Naruse

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**Mikio Naruse**

Born:	August 20, 1905 Tokyo, Japan
Died:	July 2, 1969 Tokyo, Japan
Occupation:	Film director, writer and producer

Mikio Naruse (成瀬巳喜男, Naruse Mikio^?, August 20, 1905 – July 2, 1969) was a Japanese film director, writer and producer who directed some 89 films spanning from the end of the silent era (1930) through the sixties (1967). His contemporaries were Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi; together they were the three most prominent Japanese directors of the time, although his work remains the least well known outside Japan.

Naruse is known for imbuing his films with a bleak and pessimistic outlook. He made primarily shomin-geki (working-class drama) films with female protagonists, portrayed by actresses such as Hideko Takamine, Kinuyo Tanaka, and Setsuko Hara. Because of his focus on family drama and the intersection of traditional and modern Japanese culture, his films are frequently compared with the works of Ozu.

Naruse's style of melodrama is "like a great river with a calm surface and a raging current in its depths", said Akira Kurosawa.^[1]

1 Biographical information
2 Characteristics
3 Filmography
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Biographical information

Mikio Naruse was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1905. For a number of years he worked at Shochiku under Shiro Kido as a property manager and then as an assistant director. He was not permitted to direct a film at Shochiku until 1930, when he made his debut film, Mr. and Mrs. Swordplay (Chanbara fūfū).

Mikio Naruse's earliest extant work is Flunky, Work Hard (Koshiben gambare, also known as Little Man Do Your Best) from 1931, where he combined melodrama with slapstick, trying to meet the demands set by Shochiku's Kamata studio, who wanted a mix of laughter and tears. In 1933, he quit Shochiku, and began working for Photo-Chemical Laboratories (later known as Toho).

At Toho, he achieved growing critical and commercial success in the 1930s, culminating in Naruse's first major film: Wife! Be Like a Rose! (1935) (Tsuma yo Bara no Yo ni). It won the Kinema Junpo, and was the first Japanese film to receive theatrical release in the United States (where it was not well-received). The film concerns a young woman whose father deserted his family many years before for a geisha. As so often in Naruse's films, the portrait of the "other woman" is nuanced and sympathetic: it turns out, when the daughter visits her father in a remote mountain village, that the second wife is far more suitable for him than the first. The daughter brings her father back with her in order to smooth the way for her own marriage, but the reunion with the first wife--a melancholy poetess--is disastrous: they have nothing in common, and the father returns to wife number two.

In the war years, Naruse went through a slow breakup with his wife Sachiko Kiba (who starred in Wife! Be Like a Rose!). Naruse himself claimed to enter a period of prolonged slump as a result of this. The postwar period saw him work with collaborators more, taking on pure directing roles with scripts written by others. Notable successes included Mother (1952) (Okasan), a realistic look at family life in the postwar period, which received theatrical distribution in France, and 1955's Floating Clouds (Ukigomo), a doomed love story based (like many of Naruse's films) on a novel by Fumiko Hayashi.

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) (Onna ga kaidan o agaru) tells the story of an aging bar hostess trying to adapt to modern times. The film is notable for having almost no close-up shots or exterior scenes. Scattered Clouds (1967) (Miidaregumo) (a.k.a. Two in the Shadow) was his last film, and is regarded as one of his greatest works. A tale of impossible love between a widow and the driver who accidentally killed her husband, it was made 2 years before his death.

[edit] Characteristics

Naruse is known as particularly exemplifying the Japanese concept of mono no aware, the awareness of the transience of things, and a gentle sadness at their passing.

His films contain very simple screenplays, with minimal dialogue, unobstructive camera work and low-key production design. Earlier films employ a more experimental, expressionist style, but he is best known for the style of his later work: deliberately slow and leisurely, designed to magnify the everyday drama of ordinary Japanese people’s trials and tribulations, and leaving maximum scope for his actors to portray psychological nuances in every glance, gesture and movement.

He is known for filming economically. He often used money- and time-saving techniques that other directors shunned, such as shooting each actor delivering his or her lines of dialogue separately, and then splicing them together into chronological order in post-production (this reduced the amount of film wasted with each retake, and allowed a dialogue scene to be filmed with a single camera). Perhaps unsurprisingly, money is itself a major theme in these films, possibly reflecting Naruse's own childhood experience of poverty: Naruse is an especially mordant observer of the financial struggles within the family (as in Ginza Cosmetics, 1951, where the female protagonist ends up supporting all her relatives by working in a bar, or A Wife's Heart, 1956, where a couple is swindled out of a bank loan by the in-laws).

[edit] Filmography

Scattered Clouds (Midaregumo aka Two in the Shadow) - 1967
The Thin Line - 1967
Moment of Terror (Hikinige aka Hit and Run) - 1966
The Stranger Within a Woman (Onna No Naka Ni Iru Tanin) - 1966
Yearning (Midareru) - 1964
A Woman's Life (Onna No Rekishi) - 1963
The Wiser Age - 1962
Lonely Lane (A Wanderer's Notebook aka Horoki) - 1962
As a Wife, As a Woman (Tsuma Toshite Onna Toshite) - 1961
Approach of Autumn (Aki Tachinu) - 1960
Evening Stream (Yoru No Nagare) - 1960
Daughters, Wives and a Mother (Musume Tsuma Haha) - 1960
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Onna Ga Kaidan O Agaru Toki) - 1960
Whistling in Kotan (Kotan No Kuchibue) - 1959
Anzukko - 1958
Herringbone Clouds (Iwashigumo) - 1958
Untamed Woman (Arakure) - 1957
Flowing (Nagareru) - 1956
A Wife's Heart (Tsuma No Kokoro) - 1956
Sudden Rain (Shu-U) - 1956
Floating Clouds (Ukigumo) - 1955
The Kiss, Part III: Women's Ways (Kuchizuke, Part 3: Onna Doshi) - 1955
Late Chrysanthemums (Bangiku) - 1954
Sound of the Mountain (Yama No Oto) - 1954
Older Brother, Younger Sister (Ani Imoto) - 1953
Wife (Tsuma) - 1953
Fufu - 1953
Okuni to Gohei (Okuni and Gohei) - 1952
Lightning (Inazuma) - 1952
Mother (Okasan) - 1952
Repast (Meshi) - 1951
Ginza Cosmetics (Ginza Gesho) - 1951
Dancing Girl (Maihime) - 1951
Conduct Report on Prof. Ishinaka (Ishinaka Sensei Gyojoki) - 1950
White Beast (Shiroi Yaju) - 1950
Angry Street (Ikari No Machi) - 1950
Delinquent Girl (Furyo Shojo) - 1949
Spring Awakens (Haru No Mezame) - 1947
Both You and I (Ore Mo Omae Mo) - 1946
Until Victory Day (Shori No Hi Made) - 1945
A Tale of Archery at the Sanjusangendo (Sanjusangendo Toshiya Monogatari) - 1945
The Way of Drama (Shibaido) - 1944
This Happy Life (Tanoshiki Kana Jinsei) - 1944
The Song Lantern (Uta Andon) - 1943
Mother Never Dies (Haha Wa Shinazu) - 1942
A Face from the Past (Natsukashi No Kao) - 1941
Hideko the Bus-Conductor (Hideko No Shasho-San) - 1941
Travelling Actors (Tabi Yakusha) - 1940
The Whole Family Works (Hataraku Ikka) - 1939
Sincerity (Magokoro) - 1939
Tsuruhachi Tsurujiro - 1937
Kimiko - 1937
Avalanche (Nadare) - 1937
A Woman's Sorrows (Nyonin Aishu) - 1937
Morning's Tree-Lined Street (Asa No Namikimichi) - 1936
Wife! Be Like a Rose! (Tsuma yo Bara no Yo ni) - 1935
A Man with a Married Woman's Hairdo (Boku No Marumage) - 1933
Every Night Dreams (Yogoto No Yume) - 1933
Two Eyes (Sobo) - 1933
Apart from You (Kimi to Wakarete) - 1933
Not Blood Relations (Nasanu Naka) - 1932
Moth-eaten Spring (Mushibameru Haru) - 1932
Be Great! (Eraku Nare) - 1932
Flunky, Work Hard! (Koshiben Gambare) - 1931
Fickleness Gets on the Train (Uwaki Wa Kisha Ni Notte) - 1931
Under the Neighbours' Roof (Tonari No Yane No Shita) - 1931
The Strength of a Moustache (Hige No Chikara) - 1931
Mr. and Mrs. Swordplay (Chambara Fufu) - 1930
A Record of Shamless Newlyweds (Oshikiri Shinkonki) - 1930
Pure Love (Junjo) - 1930
Love Is Strength (Ai Wa Chikara Da) - 1930
Hard Times (Fukeiki Jidai) - 1930

[edit] References

↑ University of California, Berkeley Pacific Film Archive Film Notes, January/February 2006.

Bock, Audie. Japanese Film Directors. Kodansha America, 1985 (reprint). ISBN 0-87011-714-9.
Bock, Audie. Naruse: A Master of the Japanese Cinema (monograph). Japan Society Gallery, December 1985. ISBN 0-86559-067-2.