Mansaku Itami (伊丹万作; real name Yoshitoyo Ikeuchi 池内義豊; 2 January 1900 – 21 September 1946) was a Japanese

film director A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfillment of that Goal, vision. The director has a key role ...

and

screenwriter A screenwriter (also called scriptwriter, scribe, or scenarist) is a person who practices the craft of writing for visual mass media, known as screenwriting. These can include short films, feature-length films, television programs, television ...

known for his critical, sometimes satirical portraits of Japan and its history. He is the father of the director

Juzo Itami , born , was a Japanese actor, screenwriter and film director. He directed eleven films (one short and ten features), all of which he wrote himself. He is the namesake of the Juzo Itami Award, founded in 2009 to honor his legacy. Early life ...

Career

Originally from

Matsuyama, Ehime 270px, Matsuyama City Hall 270px, Ehime Prefectural Capital Building is the capital city of Ehime Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku, in Japan and is also Shikoku's largest city. , the city had an estimated population of 505,948 in 243,541 h ...

, Itami joined the

Nikkatsu is a Japanese film studio located in Bunkyō. The name ''Nikkatsu'' amalgamates the words Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally "Japan Motion Pictures". Shareholders are Nippon Television Holdings (35%) and SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation (28.4%). ...

studio in 1927, but the very next year moved to the actor

Chiezō Kataoka Masayoshi Ueki (植木正義, ''Ueki Masayoshi''; March 30, 1903 – March 31, 1983), known professionally as , was a Japanese film and television actor most famous for his starring roles in jidaigeki. Career Born as Masayoshi Ueki in 1903, in G ...

's company, Chiezō Productions, where he made his directorial debut with ''Adauchi Ruten''. His samurai films diverged from the norm in that they were not heroic epics of the sort which had by that time become formulaic, but rather

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposin ...

s that used the established symbols and iconography of the samurai culture to comment on both historical and modern society. His work was championed by the film critic Fuyuhiko Kitagawa. His most famous work is '' Akanishi Kakita'', which is based on a story by

Naoya Shiga was a Japanese writer active during the Taishō and Shōwa periods of Japan, whose work was distinguished by its lucid, straightforward style and strong autobiographical overtones. Early life Shiga was born in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, ...

and still survives (unlike many of his other films). In 1937, he collaborated with director

Arnold Fanck Arnold Fanck (6 March 1889 – 28 September 1974) was a German film director and pioneer of the mountain film genre. He is best known for the extraordinary alpine footage he captured in such films as '' The Holy Mountain'' (1926), '' The White H ...

on a German-Japanese co-production, starring the young Setsuko Hara. This eventually became two slightly different films: ''Atarashiki Tsuchi'' (''The New Earth'') in Japan, while ''Die Tochter des Samurai'' (''Daughter of the Samurai'') was the German version. He died of

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...

in 1946. His screenplays' popularity endured, however, and he is credited as a writer as recently as 1986's ''Kokushi Muso'', a remake of his 1932 film of the same name.

Family

His son Yoshihiro Ikeuchi, who later changed his name to

, followed in his footsteps, becoming one of the pre-eminent Japanese filmmakers of the late 20th century. His daughter Yukari married

Kenzaburō Ōe was a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His novels, short stories and essays, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, social and philosophical issue ...

, the

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

-winning novelist. Ōe edited a collection of his father-in-law's essays.

Filmography

*''Adauchi Ruten'' (仇討流転) (1928) *''Zoku Banka Jigoku: Dai Ippen (Elegy of Hell)'' (1928) *'' The Peerless Patriot'' (国士無双 Kokushi musō) (1932) *''Chuji Uridasu'' (1935) *''Akanishi Kakita (Capricious Young Man)'' (1936) *''Furusato (Hometown)'' (1937) * '' The Daughter of the Samurai'', co-directed with

(1937) *'' Kyojin-den'' (1938)

Additional Screenwriting Credits

*''Tenka Taiheiki (Peace on Earth)'' (1928) *''Hōrō Zanmai'' (The Wandering Gambler) (1928) *''Muhomatsu no Issho'' (the 1958 version is also known as '' Rickshaw Man''; the others are also known as ''The Life of Matsu the Untamed'') (1943, 1958, 1965) *''Te o Tsunagu Kora'' (Children Hand in Hand) (1948, 1963) *''Ore wa Yojimbo (I'm the Bodyguard)'' (1950) *''Kokushi Muso'' (1986)

References

External links

Mansaku Itami's grave
* *

at

Aozora Bunko Aozora Bunko (, , also known as the "Open Air Library") is a Japanese digital library. This online collection encompasses several thousand works of Japanese-language fiction and non-fiction. These include out-of-copyright books or works that t ...

(in Japanese) {{DEFAULTSORT:Itami, Mansaku Japanese film directors Japanese comedy film directors Japanese satirical film directors Japanese satirists 20th-century deaths from tuberculosis 1900 births 1946 deaths People from Matsuyama, Ehime German-language film directors 20th-century Japanese screenwriters Tuberculosis deaths in Japan