Although more than half of Japan’s theatres were destroyed by U.S. bombing during World War II, most of its studio facilities were left intact. Japan, therefore, continued to produce films in quantity during the Allied occupation (1945–52). Many traditional Japanese subjects were forbidden by the Allied Command as promoting feudalism, however, including all films classified as jidai-geki (period dramas). Nevertheless, the film that first brought Japanese cinema to international attention belonged to that category: Kurosawa Akira’s Rashomon (1950), which won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice film festival. The film, a meditation on the nature of truth set in the medieval past, marked the beginning of the Japanese cinema’s unprecedented renaissance . During this period, new export markets opened in the West, and Japanese filmmakers produced some of their finest work, winning festival awards throughout the world. Kurosawa, who was already well known in his homeland for a number of wartime and postwar genre films, became the most famous Japanese director in the West on the strength of his masterful samurai epics—Shichinin no samurai (1954; Seven Samurai), Kumonosu-jo (1957; Throne of Blood), Kakushi toride no san akunin (1958; The Hidden Fortress), Yojimbo (1961), and Sanjuro (1962)—which raised the chambara, or “sword-fight,” film to the status of art. He made films in other genres, including literary adaptations, gendai-geki (modern dramas), gangster films, and period films that cannot be categorized at all (Akahige [Red Beard], 1965; Dersu Uzala, 1975); but Kurosawa always returned to the samurai form for his most profound statements about life and art (Kagemusha [The Shadow Warrior], 1980; Ran, 1985).
Two other established directors who produced their greatest films in the postwar period were Mizoguchi Kenji and Ozu Yasujirō. Both had begun their careers in the silent era and were more traditionally Japanese in style and content than Kurosawa. Mizoguchi’s films, whether period (Sansho dayu [Sansho the Bailiff], 1954) or contemporary (Yoru no onnatachi [Women of the Night], 1948), were frequently critiques of feudalism that focused on the condition of women within the social order. His greatest postwar films were Saikaku ichidai onna (1952; The Life of Oharu), the biography of a 17th-century courtesan, and Ugetsu (1953), the story of two men who abandon their wives for fame and glory during the 16th-century civil wars. Both were masterworks that clearly demonstrated Mizoguchi’s expressive use of luminous decor, extended long takes, and deep-focus composition. As one of the great mise-en-scène directors, Mizoguchi can be compared to Murnau, Ophüls, and Welles, but his transcendental visual style makes him unique in the history of cinema.
Ozu Yasujirō too was a stylist, but the majority of his 54 films were shomin-geki, a variety of gendai film dealing with the lives of lower-middle-class families (Tokyo monogatari [Tokyo Story], 1953; Higanbana [Equinox Flower], 1958; Ukigusa [Floating Weeds], 1959). They were all very much alike and, in a sense, were all part of a single large film whose subject was the ordinary lives of ordinary people and the sacred beauty therein. Ozu’s minimalist style—originating in both Zen Buddhist aesthetics and the fact that most of his films were shot within the confines of a typical Japanese house—was based on his use of low-angle long takes in which the camera is positioned about three feet (one metre) off the floor at the eye level of a person seated on a tatami mat. This practice led Ozu to an especially imaginative use of offscreen space and “empty scenes.”
Tōkyō monogatari (Tokyo Story)Scene from Tōkyō monogatari (1953; Tokyo Story), directed by Ozu Yasujirō.© Shochiku Films; photograph from a private collection
The second postwar generation of Japanese filmmakers was mainly composed of Kobayashi Masaki, Ichikawa Kon, and Shindo Kaneto. Kobayashi is best known for Ningen no joken (1959–61; The Human Condition), his three-part antiwar epic set during Japan’s brutal occupation of Manchuria, and the beautiful ghost film Kwaidan (1964). Ichikawa’s major works were the pacifist films Biruma no tategoto (1956; The Burmese Harp) and Nobi (1959; Fires on the Plain). Shindo is best known for his poetic semidocumentary Hadaka no shima (1960; The Island) and the bizarre, folkloristic Onibaba (1964).
The third generation of postwar directors was most active during the 1960s and ’70s. The group was deeply influenced by the French New Wave and included Teshigahara Hiroshi (Suna no onna [Woman in the Dunes], 1964), Masumura Yasuzo (Akai Tenshi [The Red Angel], 1965), Imamura Shohei (Jinruigako nyumon [The Pornographers], 1966), and Oshima Nagisa (Ai no corrida [In the Realm of the Senses], 1976). In the mid-1960s, however, competition from multiple-channel colour television and from American distributors forced the Japanese film industry into economic decline. A decade later, two major studios were bankrupt, and film production was increasingly dominated by two domestic exploitation genres: the yakuza-eiga, or contemporary urban gangster film, and the semipornographic eroducti on film, which mixed sex and sadism. During the 1980s and ’90s, Japan continued to produce the highest annual volume of films of any country in the world, but the studios remained in decline, and most serious productions, such as Kurosawa’s Kagemusha, were funded by foreign interests. At the turn of the 21st century, funding for films remained low, although the market for films was the greatest ever. This situation led to the mass production of low-budget films, as well as to the increased popularity of amateur and experimental films. China, Taiwan, and Korea