Mikio Naruse
Encyclopedia
was a Japanese filmmaker, screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

, and producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...

 who directed some 89 films spanning the period 1930 (towards the end of the silent period in Japan) to 1967.

Naruse is known for imbuing his films with a bleak and pessimistic outlook. He made primarily shomin-geki (working-class drama) films with female protagonists, portrayed by actresses such as Hideko Takamine
Hideko Takamine
was a Japanese actress who began as a child actor and maintained her fame in a career that spanned nine decades.-Life and career:Born in Hakodate, Hokkaidō, Japan, Takamine's first role was in the Shochiku studio's 1929 film Mother , which brought her tremendous popularity as a child actor. Soon...

, 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...

, and Setsuko Hara
Setsuko Hara
is a Japanese actress who appeared in six of Yasujirō Ozu's films, most notably as Noriko in the 'Noriko Trilogy': Late Spring , Early Summer and Tokyo Story . Her other films for Ozu were Tokyo Twilight , Late Autumn and finally The End of Summer in 1961.She was born 会田 昌江 Masae Aida in...

. Because of his focus on family drama and the intersection of traditional and modern Japanese culture, his films are frequently compared with the works of Yasujirō Ozu
Yasujiro Ozu
was a prominent Japanese film director and script writer. He is known for his distinctive technical style, developed during the silent era. Marriage and family, especially the relationships between the generations, are among the most persistent themes in his body of work...

. His reputation is just behind Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...

, Kenji Mizoguchi
Kenji Mizoguchi
Kenji Mizoguchi was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. His film Ugetsu won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and appeared in the Sight & Sound Critics' Top Ten Poll in 1962 and 1972. Mizoguchi is renowned for his mastery of the long take and mise-en-scène...

, and Ozu in Japan and internationally; his work remains less well known outside Japan than theirs.

Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...

 called Naruse's style of melodrama, "like a great river with a calm surface and a raging current in its depths".

Life

Mikio Naruse was born in Tokyo in 1905. For a number of years he worked at 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...

 film company under Shiro Kido as a property manager and later as an assistant director. He was not permitted to direct a film at Shochiku until 1930, when he made his debut film, Mr. and Mrs. Swordplay (Chanbara fūfū).

Naruse's earliest extant work is Flunky, Work Hard (Koshiben gambare, also known as Little Man Do Your Best) from 1931, where he combined melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...

 with slapstick
Slapstick
Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...

, trying to meet the demands set by Shochiku's Kamata studio, who wanted a mix of laughter and tears. In 1933, he quit Shochiku, and began working for Photo-Chemical Laboratories (later known as Toho
Toho
is a Japanese film, theater production, and distribution company. It is headquartered in Yūrakuchō, Chiyoda, Tokyo, and is one of the core companies of the Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group...

).

His first major film was Wife! Be Like a Rose! (1935) (Tsuma yo Bara no Yo ni). It won the Kinema Junpo
Kinema Junpo
, commonly called , is a Japanese film magazine which began publication in July 1919. The magazine was founded by a group of four students, including Saburō Tanaka, at the Tokyo Institute of Technology . In that first month, it was published three times on days with a "1" in them. These first three...

, and was the first Japanese film to receive theatrical release in the United States (where it was not well received). The film concerns a young woman whose father deserted his family many years before for a geisha
Geisha
, Geiko or Geigi are traditional, female Japanese entertainers whose skills include performing various Japanese arts such as classical music and dance.-Terms:...

. As so often in Naruse's films, the portrait of the "other woman" is nuanced and sympathetic: It turns out, when the daughter visits her father in a remote mountain village, that the second wife is far more suitable for him than the first. The daughter brings her father back with her in order to smooth the way for her own marriage, but the reunion with the first wife – a melancholy poetess – is disastrous: They have nothing in common, and the father returns to wife number two.

In the war years, Naruse went through a slow breakup with his wife Sachiko Chiba (who had starred in Wife! Be Like a Rose!). Naruse himself claimed to have entered a period of severe depression as a result of this. In the postwar period he collaborated with others more often, less frequently writing his own scripts. Notable successes included Mother (1952) (Okasan), a realistic look at family life in the postwar period, which received theatrical distribution in France, and 1955's Floating Clouds (Ukigumo), a doomed love story based (like many of Naruse's films) on a novel by Fumiko Hayashi
Fumiko Hayashi (author)
was a Japanese novelist and poet.When Hayashi was seven, her mother ran away with a manager of her common-law husband's store, and afterwards the three worked in Kyūshū as itinerant merchants...

.

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
is a 1960 Japanese drama film directed by Mikio Naruse.Keiko, a young widow, becomes a bar hostess in Ginza to make ends meet. The story recounts the struggles to maintain her independence in a male-dominated society...

(1960) (Onna ga kaidan o agaru) tells the story of an aging bar hostess trying to adapt to modern times. Scattered Clouds (1967) (Miidaregumo) (a.k.a. Two in the Shadow) was his last film, and is regarded as one of his greatest works. A tale of impossible love between a widow and the driver who accidentally killed her husband, it was made two years before his death.

Film style

Naruse is known as particularly exemplifying the Japanese concept of mono no aware
Mono no aware
, literally "the pathos of things", also translated as "an empathy toward things", or "a sensitivity to ephemera", is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of , or the transience of things, and a gentle sadness at their passing.-Origins:...

, the awareness of the transience
Impermanence
Impermanence is one of the essential doctrines or three marks of existence in Buddhism...

 of things, and a gentle sadness at their passing.

Naruse's films contain simple screenplays, with minimal dialogue, unobtrusive camera work, and low-key production design. Earlier films employ a more experimental, expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

 style, but he is best known for the style of his later work: deliberately slow and leisurely, designed to magnify the everyday drama of ordinary Japanese people’s trials and tribulations, and leaving maximum scope for his actors to portray psychological nuances in every glance, gesture, and movement.

Naruse filmed economically, using money- and time-saving techniques that other directors shunned, such as shooting each actor delivering his or her lines of dialogue separately, and then splicing them together into chronological order in post-production
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...

 (this reduced the amount of film wasted with each retake, and allowed a dialogue scene to be filmed with a single camera). Perhaps unsurprisingly, money is itself a major theme in these films, possibly reflecting Naruse's own childhood experience of poverty: Naruse is an especially mordant observer of the financial struggles within the family (as in Ginza Cosmetics
Ginza Cosmetics
is a 1951 black-and-white Japanese film directed by Mikio Naruse. It follows the life of a quite geisha,single mother of a young boy, in the lively Tokyo quarter of Ginza...

, 1951, where the female protagonist ends up supporting all her relatives by working in a bar, or A Wife's Heart
A Wife's Heart
is a 1956 black and white Japanese film directed by Mikio Naruse.-External links: http://www.jmdb.ne.jp/1956/cf002010.htm...

, 1956, where a couple is swindled out of a bank loan by the in-laws).

Filmography


DVD releases (English subtitled)

  • Flunky, Work Hard (Koshiben ganbare, 1931) (The Criterion Collection, region 1 NTSC)
  • No Blood Relation (Nasanu naka, 1932) (The Criterion Collection, region 1 NTSC)
  • Apart from You (Kimi to Wakarete, 1933) (The Criterion Collection, region 1 NTSC)
  • Every-Night Dreams (Yogoto no yume, 1933) (The Criterion Collection, region 1 NTSC)
  • Street Without End (Kagirinaki hodo, 1934) (The Criterion Collection, region 1 NTSC)
  • Repast (Meshi, 1951) (Eureka! Masters of Cinema
    Masters of Cinema
    The Masters of Cinema organization began as a website dedicated to the most well-regarded film directors in the world. Founded by a diverse international group of like-minded film enthusiasts: Jan Bielawski, a mathematician; Doug Cummings, a graphic artist and freelance critic; Trond Trondsen, a Ph.D...

    , region 2 NTSC)
  • Sound of the Mountain (Yama no oto, 1954) (Eureka! Masters of Cinema, region 2 NTSC)
  • Late Chrysanthemums (Bangiku, 1954) (BFI
    British Film Institute
    The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...

    , region 2 PAL)
  • Floating Clouds (Ukigumo, 1955) (BFI, region 2 PAL)
  • Flowing (Nagareru, 1956) (Eureka! Masters of Cinema, region 2 NTSC)
  • When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Onna ga kaidan o agaru toki, 1960) (BFI, region 2 PAL; The Criterion Collection
    The Criterion Collection
    The Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...

    , region 1 NTSC)

External links

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