was a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese film director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 most famous for his gendaigeki

Gendaigeki

Gendai-geki is a genre of film and television or theater play in Japan. Unlike the jidai-geki genre of period dramas, whose stories are set in the Edo period, gendaigeki stories are contemporary dramas set in the modern world.-See also:...

 of the silent

Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

 era.

Career

Born in Kumamoto Prefecture

Kumamoto Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located on Kyushu Island. The capital is the city of Kumamoto.- History :Historically the area was called Higo Province; and the province was renamed Kumamoto during the Meiji Restoration. The creation of prefectures was part of the abolition of the feudal system...

 and graduating from Tokyo University, Ushihara joined the Shochiku

Shochiku

is a Japanese movie studio and production company for kabuki. It also produces and distributes anime films. Its best remembered directors include Yasujirō Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse, Keisuke Kinoshita and Yōji Yamada...

 studio in 1920 on the invitation of Kaoru Osanai

Kaoru Osanai

was a Japanese theater director, playwright, and actor central in the development of modern Japanese theater.-Biography:Graduating from Tokyo University, Osanai founded the Free Theater with Ichikawa Sadanji II in 1909 and staged translations of Ibsen, Chekov, and Gorky, but there he experienced...

. Starting out by helping on the script to Minoru Murata

Minoru Murata

was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, and actor who was one of the major directors of the silent era in Japan.-Career:Born in Tokyo, Murata started out as a shingeki actor on the stage. Murata's troupe appeared in the first "pure films" directed by Norimasa Kaeriyama at Tenkatsu in 1918...

's Gorky

Maxim Gorky

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...

-influenced Souls on the Road, he made his directorial debut in 1921 and later directed adaptations of such works as Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo

Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....

's Les Misérables

Les Misérables

Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century...

under the title Aa mujō. In the mid-1920s he went to America to study Hollywood filmmaking, working under Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin

Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...

. He returned to film romantic comedies and action films starring Denmei Suzuki

Denmei Suzuki

was a Japanese film actor most famous for starring roles in gendaigeki of the silent era.- Career :Suzuki was born in Tokyo and was a championship swimmer at Meiji University when he first appeared in Souls on the Road in 1921 under the name Zeya Tōgō . After graduating in 1924, he joined the...

 and Kinuyo Tanaka

Kinuyo Tanaka

was a Japanese actress and director.Tanaka was born in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. She became a leading actress at an early age, appearing in Yasujirō Ozu's I Graduated, But... in 1929...

 such as Shingun. Between 1928 and 1932 he co-edited the journal Eiga kagaku kenkyū (Scientific Studies of Cinema) with Murata. He left Shōchiku in the early 1930s and worked at studios such as Nikkatsu

Nikkatsu

is a Japanese entertainment company well known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio. The name Nikkatsu is an abbreviation of Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally "Japan Cinematograph Company".-History:...

, Shinkō Kinema

Shinkō Kinema

-Background:Shinkō was established in September 1931 out of the remnants of the Teikoku Kinema studio with the help of Shōchiku capital. The historian Jun'ichirō Tanaka writes that the studio was part of Shōchiku's effort to monopolize the Japanese film industry, using Shinkō to control some of the...

 and Daiei

Daiei

, based in Kobe, is one of the largest supermarket chains in Japan. In 1957, Isao Nakauchi founded the chain in Osaka near Sembayashi Station on the Keihan train line. Daiei is now under a restructuring process supported by Marubeni Corporation and ÆON Co., Ltd., another Japanese supermarket chain....

. Quitting directing following the Second World War, he starting to teach filmmaking at institutions such as Nihon University

Nihon University

Nihon University is the largest university in Japan. Akiyoshi Yamada, the minister of justice, founded Nihon Law School in October 1889....

. His son, Yoichi Ushihara, is also a film director.

Selected filmography

• Yama kururu (山暮るる) (1921)
• Aa mujō (噫無情) (1923)
• Daichi wa hohoemu (大地は微笑む) (1925)
• Kare to Tokyo (彼と東京) (1928)
• Riku no ōja (陸の王者) (1928)
• Shingun (進軍) (1930)
• Wakamono yo naze naku ka (若者よなぜ泣くか) (1930)

External links