| Kaneto Shindō 新藤 兼人 |
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| Born | April 28, 1912 Hiroshima, Japan |
| Occupation | Film director, screenwriter, Art Director and producer. |
| Years active | 1934 - present |
| Influenced by | Kenji Mizoguchi, Sigmund Freud, Kōzaburō Yoshimura, Hiroshima |
| Spouse | Nobuko Otowa |
Kaneto Shindō (新藤 兼人 Shindō Kaneto, born April 28, 1912), Hiroshima, Japan) is a Japanese film director and screenwriter. His best known films include Children of Hiroshima, The Naked Island, Onibaba, Kuroneko and A Last Note.
Shindō has often made films dealing with Hiroshima or the atomic bomb.[1] Like his early mentor Kenji Mizoguchi, many of his works feature strong female characters (some demonic, as in Onibaba), most of which were played by the actress Nobuko Otowa (1925–1994), who eventually became his wife.
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Born in Hiroshima, Shindō's family went from wealthy landowners to bankruptcy and he grew up in poverty with his farmer parents.[2] Shindō first joined the film developing lab of Shinkō Kinema in 1934 as an apprentice.[3] By the late 1930s he moved to the art department and began working as an assistant to his mentor Kenji Mizoguchi on several films, most notably being in charge of the sets for The 47 Ronin.[4] Shindō has acknowledged Mizoguchi as being the main influence on his body of work. He also began writing scripts at this time[3] and made his debut as a screenwriter with the film Nanshin josei in 1940. His scripts were filmed by such directors as Kon Ichikawa, Keisuke Kinoshita, Fumio Kamei and Tadashi Imai. He has had over two hundred scripts produced, including those he directed himself.
After serving in World War II and suffering the death of his first wife, Shindō moved to the Shōchiku Film Company and began his long collaboration writing scripts for director Kōzaburō Yoshimura. Their collaboration has been called "one of the most successful film partnerships in the postwar industry. Shindo playing Dudley Nichols to Yoshimura's John Ford."[5] The duo scored a critical hit with A Ball at the Anjo House in 1947.[3] Shindō and Yoshimura were both unhappy at Shōchiku Studios, which viewed the two as having a "dark outlook" on life.[2] In 1950 they both left Shōchiku and formed the independent production company, Kindai Eiga Kyōkai, which has produced most of Shindō's films ever since.
In 1951, Shindō made his debut as a director with the autobiographical Aisai monogatari (The Story of a Beloved Wife), starring his future second wife Nobuko Otowa in the role of his deceased first wife.[6] After directing Avalanche in 1952, Shindō was invited by the Japan Teachers' Union to make a film about the dropping of the atomic bomb on his hometown of Hiroshima. Children of Hiroshima stars Nobuko Otowa as a young teacher who returns to Hiroshima for the first time since the bomb was dropped hoping to find any surviving former students. Both controversial and critically acclaimed on its release, it premiered at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival.
After this international success, Shindō made Shukuzu in 1953. The film stars Nobuko Otowa as Ginko, a poor girl who must become a geisha in order to support her family, and cannot marry the rich client whom she falls in love with because of his family honor. While reviewing this film, Japanese film critic Tadao Satō said that Shindō had "inherited from his mentor Mizoguchi his central theme of worship of womanhood...Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Shindo's view of women blossomed under his master's encouragement, but once in bloom revealed itself to be of a different hue...Shindō differs from Mizoguchi by idealizing the intimidating capacity of Japanese women for sustained work, and contrasting them with shamefully lazy men."[2]
Between 1953 and 1959 Shindō continued to make political films that were social critiques of poverty and women's suffering in present day Japan. These included Onna no issho, an adaptation of Maupassant's Une Vie in 1953; Dobu, a 1954 film about the struggles of unskilled workers and petty thieves that again starred Otowa as a tragic prostitute; and Lucky Dragon Number 5 in 1959. Lucky Dragon No. 5 tells the true story of a Japanese fishing crew who are irradiated from the fallout of an atomic bomb test at the nearby Bikini Islands. The film received the Peace Prize at a Czech film festival, but was not a success with either critics or audiences.[2]
By this time Shindō had formed an established "stock company" of actors and crew that he would work with regularly for the majority of his career. This included Nobuko Otowa, actor Taiji Tonoyama, composer Hikaru Hayashi and cinematographer Kiyomi Kuroda.[2]
Shindō's first major international success was the film The Naked Island in 1960. With Kindai Eiga Kyōkai close to bankruptcy, Shindō poured what little financial resources he had left into this low budget film, which he has described as "a cinematic poem to try and capture the life of human beings struggling like ants against the forces of nature."[7]
The Naked Island stars Nobuko Otowa and Taiji Tonoyama as a couple who live on a deserted island with their two young sons and no water supply. Every day they must climb down a cliff and canoe over to another island to retrieve fresh water to drink and irrigate their crops. There is practically no dialog in the film, as the couple neither speak to or look at each other through their struggle to survive. When one of their sons is injured, Tonoyama must travel to a neighboring island to find a doctor, but he is too late.
The film was a financial success worldwide and saved both Shindō's company and career. It was awarded the Grand Prize at the 1961 Moscow Film Festival and received lesser awards at festivals in Australia and Germany. The critical response to the film was mixed, with some praising the film for its simplicity and lack of sentimentality. Others, such as filmmaker Nagisa Ôshima, criticized the film for its depiction of Japanese people and felt that the film's international success was a "reflection of the image foreign people hold of Japanese people."[2]
After making two more films of social relevance (Human(s) in 1962 and Mother in 1963), Shindō shifted his focus as a filmmaker to the individuality of a person, specifically a person's sexual nature. He explained: "Political things such as class consciousness or class struggle or other aspects of social existence really come down to the problem of man alone....I have discovered the powerful, very fundamental force in man which sustains his survival and which can be called sexual energy...My idea of sex is nothing but the expression of the vitality of man, his urge for survival."[2] From these new ideas came Shindō's most famous and praised film, Onibaba in 1964.
Onibaba stars Nobuko Otowa as a 14th century Japanese peasant who survives in a strange, reed filled marshland with her daughter-in-law, played by Jitsuko Yoshimura. The two women survive by murdering wandering samurai and then selling their possessions to a local merchant. When the younger woman falls in love with a returning soldier, Otowa uses a demon mask from one of the dead samurai to scare her daughter-in-law and prevent her from visiting the samurai at night.
The film was both Shindō's first horror film and jidai-geki (period piece) film. The film was an international success, winning numerous awards and the Grand Prix at the Panama Film Festival[2], and Best Supporting Actress (Jitsuko Yoshimura) and Best Cinematography (Kiyomi Kuroda) at the Blue Ribbon Awards in 1964.
After making The Conquest, another jidai-geki, in 1965, Shindō continued his cinematic exploration of human sexuality with Lost Sex in 1966. In the film, a middle aged man who has become temporarily impotent after the Hiroshima Bombing in 1945, once again loses his virility due to nuclear tests at the Bikini Islands. In the end, he is cured by his housekeeper. Impotence was again the theme of Shindō's next film, Libido, released in 1967. But this time the afflicted male protagonist dies before being cured. Gender politics and strong female characters played a strong role in both of these films. As Japanese film critic Tadao Satō points out, "By contrasting the comical weakness of the male with the unbridled strength of the female, Shindō seemed to be saying in the 1960s that women had wrought their revenge. This could have been a reflection of postwar society, since it is commonly said in Japan women have become stronger because men have lost all confidence in their masculinity due to Japan's defeat."[2]
In 1968 Shindō made Kuroneko (Black Cat), another horror film and jidai-geki reminiscent of Onibaba. The film again centers around a vengeful and murderous mother and daughter-in-law pair (played by Nobuko Otowa and Kiwako Taichi) whose victims are 14th Century samurai. After being raped and left to die in their burning hut by a group of soldiers, Otowa and Taichi return to Earth as demons who entice and lead unsuspecting samurai to a hut in the woods were they are seduced and killed by the daughter-in-law. One of the victims ends up being Otowa's returning son, but even he cannot be spared. The film won awards for Best Actress (Otowa) and Best Cinematography (Kiyomi Kuroda) at the Mainichi Film Awards in 1968.
Shindō then made his first comedy film in 1968, Strong Women, Weak Men, although he retained his interest in human sexuality. In this film a mother (Otowa) and her teenage daughter (Eiko Yamagishi) leave their impoverished coal-mining small town to find work in the city of Kyoto. They become cabaret hostesses and quickly acquire enough cynical street smarts to get as much money out of their predatory johns as they can. Wanting to take a more sympathetic view of regular people and their more insincere vices, Shindō said of the film "common people never appear in the pages of history. Silently they live, eat and die...I wanted to depict their bright, healthy, open vitality with a sprinkling of comedy."[2]
Again Shindō explored new genres with his next two films, which were crime dramas. Heat Wave Island, released in 1969, stars Otowa as a former Inland Sea island farmer (much like her character in The Naked Island) who has moved to the mainland in order to find work, but instead ends up dead. The film begins with the discovery of her corpse, which leads to an investigation that uncovers the narcotics, prostitution, and murder in which so many poor farmers like Otowa had found themselves trapped after World War II. Similarly, Live Today, Die Tomorrow! (released in 1971) portrays a poor 19-year-old laborer who tries to make quick money with a minor robbery, but ends up killing a security guard and gets caught up in the criminal lifestyle until finally caught.
Shindō's 1974 film My Way was a throwback to films of his early career and was an exposure of the Japanese government's mistreatment of the country's migratory workers. Based on a true story, an elderly women resiliently spends nine months attempting to retrieve her husband's dead body, fighting government bureaucracy and indifference all along the way.[2]
In 1975, Shindō made the documentary Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director, a tribute to his mentor who had died in 1956. The film uses film clips, footage of the hospital where the director spent his last days and interviews with actors, technicians and friends to paint a loving portrait of the director who had helped Shindō begin his career, but never lived to see his student's greatest triumphs.[2]
He followed this with two more biographical documentaries. The Life of Chikuzan, released in 1977, is about the life of Japanese folk singer Chikuzan Takahashi. Hokusai manga, released in 1981, is about the life of the 18th century Japanese wood engraver Katsushika Hokusai. In between these two films, Shindō made the film The Strangling. This film was in competition at the 1979 Venice Film Festival, where Nobuko Otowa won the award for Best Actress.
In 1984 Shindō made a very personal film, The Horizon. Based on the life of his long lost sister, the film chronicles her experiences as a poor farm girl who is sold as a mail-order bride to a Japanese American and never sees her family again. She spends time in a Japanese internment camp during World War II and lives a life of difficulty and disappointment.[2]
Shindō's 1995 film A Last Note would prove to be a bittersweet experience for the director. During production of the film, Nobuko Otowa was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and died in December 1994. The film won numerous awards, including Best Film awards at the Blue Ribbon Awards, Hochi Film Awards, Japan Academy Prizes, Kinema Junpo Awards and Mainichi Film Awards, as well as awards for Best Director at the Japanese Academy, Nikkan Sports Film Awards, Kinema Junpo Awards and Mainichi Film Award. Otowa is, however, credited as having appeared in Shindō's 2000 film By Player.
Still active in his late nineties, his recent films have focused on issues faced by the elderly. In 2011 his film Postcard was selected as the Japanese submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.[8] This was the first time that a film by Shindō had been selected and, at 99, would make him the oldest director in the history of the category if the film is nominated.
He has directed over 40 films and written over 200 scripts.[3]
From 1972 to 1981 he served as chair of the Japan Writers Guild.[9]
Shindō has said that he sees film "as an art of 'montage' which consists of a dialectic or interaction between the movement and the nonmovement of the image."[2] Although criticized for having little visual style early in his career, he was praised by film critic Joan Mellen who called Onibaba "visually exquisite." When interviewed by Mellen after the release of the film Kuroneko, Shindō stated that there was "a strong Freudian influence throughout all of [his] work."[2]
The strongest and most apparent themes in Shindō's work involve social criticism of poverty, women and sexuality. Shindō has described himself as a socialist. Film critic Donald Richie has called him a communist, stating that "the party line is never completely invisible and any audience feels manipulated when the purpose of the director becomes this noticeable." Tadao Satō has pointed out that Shindō's political films are both a reflection of his impoverished childhood and the condition of Japan after World War II, stating that, "Contemporary Japan has developed from an agricultural into an industrial country. Many agricultural people moved to cities and threw themselves into new precarious lives. Kaneto Shindō's style of camerawork comes from this intention to conquer such uneasiness by depicting the perseverance and persistence of farmers."[2]
Women and human sexuality also play a major role in Shindō's films. Joan Mellen wrote that "at their best, Shindō's films involve a merging of the sexual with the social. His radical perception isolates man's sexual life in the context of his role as a member of a specific social class...For Shindō our passions as biological beings and our ambitions as members of social classes, which give specific and distorted form to those drives, induce an endless struggle within the unconscious. Those moments in his films when this warfare is visualized and brought to conscious life raise his work to the level of the highest art."[2]
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