was a Japanese film production company. Founded in 1950 by people associated with the

Iwanami Shoten is a Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo.Louis Frédéric, ''Japan Encyclopedia'', Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 409. Iwanami Shoten was founded in 1913 by Iwanami Shigeo. Its first major publication was Natsume Sōseki's novel '' ...

publisher, it mainly focused on producing educational films and public relations documentaries. Iwanami, however, "allowed its filmmakers the (relative) freedom to stretch the limits of the public relations (PR) film". In the mid-1950s, Susumu Hani made two films, ''Children of the Classroom'' and ''Children Who Draw Pictures'', that, according to the film scholar Markus Nornes, "with their radical spontaneity ... mark an important stylistic and theoretical break in the history of Japanese documentary". Younger filmmakers later formed the Blue Group (Ao no Kai) to discuss and debate documentary and cinema, and from their members emerged several of Japan's prominent postwar fiction and documentary film directors and cinematographers, including

Shinsuke Ogawa (25 June 1935 - 7 February 1992) was a Japanese documentary film, documentary film director. Ogawa and Noriaki Tsuchimoto have been called the "two figures

hat A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...

tower over the landscape of Japanese documentary." Career Ogawa began his career at ...

, Noriaki Tsuchimoto, Kazuo Kuroki,

Yōichi Higashi is a Japanese film director. He began his career working on documentary, documentaries at Iwanami Productions but, after going independent, turned to fiction film. He won the Directors Guild of Japan New Directors Award for ''Yasashii Nipponjin' ...

, Masaki Tamura, and Tatsuo Suzuki. Iwanami Productions filed for bankruptcy in 1998.

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Japanese film studios Mass media companies established in 1950 Mass media companies disestablished in 1998 Japanese companies disestablished in 1998 Japanese companies established in 1950 {{film-company-stub