TSPDT

Key Production Country: Japan
Key Genres: Drama, Psychological Drama, War Drama, Period Film, Family Drama, War, Anti-War Film
Key Collaborators: Natto Wada (Screenwriter), Jun Hamamura (Character Actor), Chizuko Osada (Editor), Yasushi Akutagawa (Composer), Kôji Ishizaka (Leading Actor), Masaichi Nagata (Producer), Yoshinobu Nishioka (Production Designer), Keiko Kishi (Leading Actress), Masayuki Mori (Leading Actor), Shin'ya Hidaka (Screenwriter), Setsuo Kobayashi (Cinematographer), Kiyoshi Hasegawa (Cinematographer)

"He studied animation, and worked in the animation department of J.O. Studios, eventually making his directorial debut with the puppet film A Girl of Dojo Temple (1946). Once dubbed the 'Japanese Frank Capra', he made a number of comedies satirizing Japanese social mores, but later concentrated on bleak antiwar dramas and tales of dark obsession." - Chambers Film Factfinder, 2006

"Ichikawa is often seen as a key modernist figure, bridging the gap from the classical golden age of the 1950s to the more formally experimental 60s… The lack of distinctive visual tropes or recurrent themes in his work has led to him being considered a solid helmsman rather than an auteur. There’s no overt political comment or agenda that compares to contemporaries like Shohei Imamura or Nagisa Oshima. And yet, looking more closely, you’ll be sure to notice his painterly eye for a strong image (he’d started his career as an illustrator). There’s also the frequent dramatic focus on the psychology of the solitary individual who, by choice or by accident, is set apart from Japanese society." - Jasper Sharp (BFI, 2018)

"Since the war [WW2], he has undertaken an astonishing variety of subjects (about 50 films), ranging from black comedy to stark tragedy, which has gained him a reputation as an eclectic artist with a formidable technical control, but no personal style. This is incorrect in that Ichikawa has stated that his main concern is with 'the pain of our age', which he expresses in varying forms including bitter laughter and satire." - John Gillett (The International Encyclopedia of Film, 1972)

"Ichikawa is an artist with an astounding command of many genres, forms, and tones, from ferociously humanist war films to sophisticated social satires, formalist documentaries to extravagant period pieces. His many celebrated adaptations of famous Japanese novels have earned him a reputation as a "deadpan sophisticate" (Pauline Kael) with an elegant compositional style, venomous wit, and narrative daring, but he is also a crafty master of populist entertainments." - BAMPFA (2001)

"Ichikawa is a director of contradictions, a haphazard obsessive, disconcertingly versatile for the Western spectator who expects concentration and integrity in Oriental cinema. With Mizoguchi, such anticipation seems justified. The greatest characteristic of his films is the elegiac, narrative camera style and the vindication of traditional material—although that appreciation may owe something to our being familiar with only his late work. Ichikawa, in contrast, is restless, speculative, and unresolved; it is easy to call him flashy, unstable, and modish." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2010)

"Of the generation of Japanese film directors who began to make films during or just after the Pacific War, Kon Ichikawa ranked second only to Akira Kurosawa in terms of international recognition. His flair and versatility enabled him to work adeptly in genres spanning comedy, drama, war film and documentary." - The Times, 2008

"I've made various types of films: period dramas, modern dramas, films set in the Meiji period. But I don't make any distinctions between them - they're all films. True, with a period drama, there are certain conventions. With a modern drama, there is a different style of shooting. So you have to make changes according to the genre, but I never think, "This is a period drama, so I have to shoot it in such and such a way." Films are films. If you don't understand that, then you start filming lies." - Kon Ichikawa