Shōhei Imamura facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Shōhei Imamura
今村 昌平
Born	(1926-09-15)15 September 1926 Tokyo, Empire of Japan
Died	30 May 2006(2006-05-30) (aged 79) Tokyo, Japan
Nationality	Japanese
Alma mater	Waseda University
Occupation	Film director, screenwriter, producer
Years active	1951–2002
Movement	Japanese New Wave
Awards	Palme d'Or (1983, 1997)

Shōhei Imamura (今村 昌平, Imamura Shōhei, 15 September 1926 – 30 May 2006) was a Japanese film director. His main interest as a filmmaker lay in the depiction of the lower strata of Japanese society. A key figure in the Japanese New Wave, who continued working into the 21st century, Imamura is the only director from Japan to win two Palme d'Or awards.

Biography

Early life

Imamura was born to an upper-middle-class doctor's family in Tokyo in 1926. For a short time following the end of the war, Imamura participated in the black market selling cigarettes and liquor. He studied Western history at Waseda University, but spent more time participating in theatrical and political activities. He cited a viewing of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon in 1950 as an early inspiration, and said he saw it as an indication of the new freedom of expression possible in Japan in the post-war era.

Upon graduation from Waseda in 1951, Imamura began his film career working as an assistant to Yasujirō Ozu at Shochiku Studios on films like Early Summer and Tokyo Story. Imamura was uncomfortable with the image of Japanese society portrayed in Ozu's films, as well as with his rigid directing of actors, although he later admitted that he profited from his apprenticeship for Ozu in terms of gaining technical knowledge. While Imamura's films were to have a quite different style from Ozu's, Imamura, like Ozu, was to focus on what he saw as particularly Japanese elements of society in his films. "I've always wanted to ask questions about the Japanese, because it's the only people I'm qualified to describe," he said. He expressed surprise that his films were appreciated overseas, even doubting that they could be understood.

Studio director

Imamura left Shochiku in 1954 to join the Nikkatsu studios, where he worked as an assistant director to Yūzō Kawashima. According to Donald Richie, Imamura shared with Kawashima an interest in depicting the "real" Japan with its "uncivilized", amoral protagonists, in opposition to the "official" version as depicted in the films of Ozu, Mizoguchi Kenji, and late career Kurosawa. He also co-wrote the screenplay to Kawashima's Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate, and much later edited a book about Kawashima, entitled Sayonara dake ga jinsei da.

In 1958, Imamura made his directorial debut at Nikkatsu. He continued to direct films the studio had assigned him to, including Nishi Ginza Station, a comedy based on a Frankie Nagai pop song, and the black comedy Endless Desire. My Second Brother, which portrayed a community of zainichi in a poor mining town, was described by Alexander Jacoby as an "uncharacteristically tender film".

His 1961 satire Pigs and Battleships, of which Imamura later said that it was the kind of film he always had wanted to make, depicted black market trades between the U.S. military and the local underworld at Yokosuka. Due to the film's controversial nature and Imamura's overrunning production time and costs, Nikkatsu did not allow Imamura to direct another project for two years, forcing him to concentrate on screenwriting. He followed this hiatus with the 1963 The Insect Woman, which was shown in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, and the 1964 Unholy Desire. All three films presented female protagonists who were survivors, persevering despite misfortunes. Imamura disliked the self-sacrificing women portrayed in films like Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu and Mikio Naruse's Floating Clouds, arguing that "they don't really exist...My heroines are true to life".

Independent filmmaker

In 1965, Imamura established his own production company, Imamura Productions. His 1968 film Profound Desires of the Gods investigated the clash between modern and traditional societies on a southern Japanese island. One of Imamura's more ambitious and costly projects, this film's poor box-office performance led to a retreat back into smaller productions, causing him to direct a series of documentaries over the next decade, often for Japanese television.

Imamura returned to fiction with the 1979 Vengeance Is Mine. Two large-scale remakes followed, Eijanaika (1981), a re-imagining of Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate, and The Ballad of Narayama (1983), a re-telling of Keisuke Kinoshita's 1958 The Ballad of Narayama. For the latter, Imamura received his first Palme d'Or at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival.

Black Rain (1989) portrayed the effect of the bombing of Hiroshima on a family years after the incident. Film scholar Alexander Jacoby discovered an uncommon, "almost Ozu-like quietism" in this film. The Eel (1997) again secured Imamura a Palme d'Or, this time shared with Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry.

Starting with The Eel, Imamura's eldest son Daisuke Tengan worked on the screenplays of his films, including Imamura's contribution to the anthology film 11'09"01 September 11 (2002), his last directorial effort. In 2002, Imamura played the role of a historian in the South Korean film 2009: Lost Memories.

Imamura died on 30 May 2006, aged 79.

Legacy

Imamura founded the Japan Institute of the Moving Image (日本映画大学) as the Yokohama Vocational School of Broadcast and Film (Yokohama Hōsō Eiga Senmon Gakkō) in 1975. While a student at this school, director Takashi Miike was given his first film credit as assistant director on Imamura's 1987 film Zegen.

Filmography (selected)

All films are as director except where otherwise noted.