was a Japanese actor and film director.

Life

Thomas Kurihara, birth name Kisaburō Kurihara (栗原喜三郎), was born in Hadano, Kanagawa. Kurihara's father was a wood trader, but he failed in business. Kurihara went to United States and enrolled school for film actors in 1912. After graduation, working as an extra

Extra (actor)

A background actor or extra is a performer in a film, television show, stage, musical, opera or ballet production, who appears in a nonspeaking, nonsinging or nondancing capacity, usually in the background...

, he entered Oriental Production, which was founded by Thomas Harper Ince for Asian actors. There he worked with Sesshu Hayakawa, Tsuruko Aoki

Tsuru Aoki

was a popular Japanese-American stage and screen actress whose career was most prolific during the silent film era of the 1910s through the 1920s. Aoki may have been the first Asian actress to garner top-billing in American motion pictures.-Life and career:...

, Goro Kino and many Japanese actors. Performance of Takeo in The Wrath of the Gods (1914) made him famous.

Hoping to work film industry in his country, Kurihara went back to Japan in 1918, and entered Taishō Katsuei

Taishō Katsuei

was a Japanese film studio active in the early 1920s. Founded in April 1920 by Ryōzō Asano, the son of zaibatsu head Sōichirō Asano, it was mostly known as Taikatsu for short. Its origins can be traced back to Tōyō Film , a venture started in 1918 by Benjamin Brodsky and Thomas Kurihara, that...

 in April 1920, a film production which Yoshizō Asano (Kurihara's acquaintance) founded at Yamashita-cho, Yokohama

Yokohama

is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo and most populous municipality of Japan. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu...

. There he started his career as film director. His first work at Taisho was Amateur Club (1920), which Junichiro Tanizaki

Junichiro Tanizaki

was a Japanese author, one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, and perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki. Some of his works present a rather shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions; others, less sensational, subtly portray the dynamics...

 joined as a film writer.

Until Taisho Katsudo Eiga stopped to making films in 1922 Kurihara made more than 30 films. He also lectured to lots of film directors and actors: Tomu Uchida

Tomu Uchida

was a Japanese film director. Tomu Uchida, whose name translates to “spit out dreams” is considered one of the less well known masters of Japanese cinema in the West, whose films are rarely screened and not widely available on DVD...

, Kintaro Inoue and Buntaro Futagawa; Tokihiko Okada

Tokihiko Okada

was a Japanese silent film star in Japan during the 1920's and early 1930's. A Tokyo native, he first started at the Taikatsu studio and later he was a leading player for such legendary Japanese directors as Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi. Film critic Tadao Sato recounts that Okada was among the...

, Michiko Hayama, Ureo Egawa and Atsushi Watanabe.

Kurihara died in 8 September 1926 at the age of 41.

as an actor

• Gokurakutô no joô (The Queen of Paradice Island) (1925)
• Zoku Amateur Club (Amateur Club: part two) (1923)
• Shitakiri Suzume (Sparrow's Inn) (1923)
• Kurueru Akuma (A Crazy Devil) (1921)
• Jasei no in (A Serpent's Lust) (1921)
• The Miracle Man (1919) uncredited
• The Bravest Way (1918)
• The Honor of His House (1918)
• The Curse of Iku (1918)
• The Hopper (1918)
• Her American Husband (1918)
• Wolves of the Rail (1918)
• Hashimura Togo (1917)
• The Square Deal Man (1917)
• The Devil's Double (1916)
• The Soul of Kura San (1916)
• The Forbidden Adventure (1915)
• Over Secret Wires (1915)
• The Grudge (1915)
• The Bride of Guadaloupe (1915)
• In the Sage Brush Country (1914)
• The Fortunes of War (1914)
• The Vigil (1914)
• The Typhoon (1914)
• A Tale of the Northwest Mounted (1914)
• The Curse of Caste (1914)
• The Wrath of the Gods (1914)
• Shorty's Trip to Mexico (1914)
• The Ambassador's Envoy (1914)
• The Courtship of O San (1914)
• O Mimi San (1914)

as a film director

• Haru wa kaeru (Spring comes back) (1924)
• Zoku Amateur Club (1923)
• Yume no tabiji (The Dream of Orient) (1921)
• Narikin (Sanji Goto - The Story of Japanese Enoch Arden) (1921)
• Kashu Daigaku Yakyudan Raicho-sen Jokkyo (Report on the Friendly Match versus California State College Baseball Team) (1921)
• Kisen Houshi (Kisen the Monk) (1921)
• Shuppan mae kai shimon (1921)
• Beikoku Kyokugei Hikou (1921)
• Hinamatsuri no yoru (Night of Doll Festival) (1921)
• Kami no Setsuri (The Providence of God) (1921)
• Goman-en (Fifty thousand Yen) (1921)
• Doro no Sainan (1921)
• Ganjitsu no Satsuei (Shots on New Year Day) (1921)
• Jasei no in (A Serpent's Lust) (1921)
• Meiji Junguu Chinzasai (1920)
• Goto Sanji (1920)
• Katsushika Sunako (1920)
• Utsukushiki Nippon (Japan: the beautiful) (1920)
• Amateur Club (1920)

External links

• Kurihara Kisaburo's IMDb listing
• Kurihara Thomas's JMDb listing (Japanese)