Eizō Tanaka
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was an early
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
ese
film director A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, p ...
,
screenwriter A screenplay writer (also called screenwriter, scriptwriter, scribe or scenarist) is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs and video games, are based. ...
, and
actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...
.


Life and career

Tanaka initially trained as a stage actor in the
shingeki was a leading form of theatre in Japan that was based on modern realism. Born in the early years of the 20th century, it sought to be similar to modern Western theatre, putting on the works of the ancient Greek classics, William Shakespeare, Moli ...
movement under
Kaoru Osanai was a Japanese theater director, playwright, and actor central in the development of modern Japanese theater. Biography Kaoru Osanai was born on July 26, 1881, in Hiroshima, the second son of Director of Hiroshima Army Garrison Hospital, Takeshi ...
, but eventually joined the Nikkatsu film studio in 1917. He debuted as a director in 1918 but mostly had to work with
shinpa (also rendered ''shimpa'') is a form of theater in Japan, usually featuring melodramatic stories, contrasted with the more traditional ''kabuki'' style. It later spread to cinema. Art form The roots of ''Shinpa'' can be traced to a form of agi ...
stories, not the ''shingeki'' techniques he was used to although two early films, ''The Living Corpse'' (''Ikeru shikabane'') and ''The Cherry Orchard'' (''Sakura no sono'') were based on Tolstoy and Chekhov respectively. Working in parallel with the
Pure Film Movement The was a trend in film criticism and filmmaking in 1910s and early 1920s Japan that advocated what were considered more modern and cinematic modes of filmmaking. Critics in such magazines as '' Kinema Record'' and '' Kinema Junpo'' complained th ...
, Tanaka made two films, '' Kyōya eirimise'' (1922) and '' Dokuro no mai'' (1923), based on his own screenplays, that were highly praised for their cinematic technique. He remained a rather conservative filmmaker and still used '' oyama'' (male actors) in female roles, including in his masterpiece ''Kyōya eirimise'', a melodrama about a merchant's destructive love for a geisha. He used actresses for the first time in ''Dokuro no mai'', a story of a monk reminiscing about his youth and early loves. His career as a director came to an end in 1923 aside from two minor sound films in the 1930s but he also penned screenplays for such directors as Kenji Mizoguchi and
Yutaka Abe was a Japanese film director and actor. He went to America along with a younger brother to visit an uncle living in Los Angeles. There he enrolled in an acting school, and upon hearing that Thomas H. Ince was looking for Japanese extras to work i ...
and concentrated on acting, appearing in films by Tadashi Imai and Shirō Toyoda. In later life, Tanaka was also active as an educator, teaching at the
Nihon Eiga Haiyū Gakkō Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
and at
Nihon University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Japan. Its predecessor, Nihon Law School (currently the Department of Law), was founded by Yamada Akiyoshi, the Minister of Justice (Japan), Minister of Justice, in 1889. ...
helping the careers of such actors as
Kōji Shima was a Japanese film director, actor, and screenwriter. Career Born as Takehiko Kagoshima in Nagasaki, Shima left for Tokyo after graduating from high school. He was in the first class of the Nihon Eiga Haiyū Gakkō and joined the Nikkatsu stu ...
, Isamu Kosugi, and
Shin Saburi was a Japanese film actor noted for his leading roles in a number of films by the director Yasujirō Ozu including ''Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family'' (1941), '' Tea Over Rice'' (1952), ''Equinox Flower'' (1958) and '' Late Autumn'' (196 ...
. He also wrote several books, including a history of
shingeki was a leading form of theatre in Japan that was based on modern realism. Born in the early years of the 20th century, it sought to be similar to modern Western theatre, putting on the works of the ancient Greek classics, William Shakespeare, Moli ...
.


Partial filmography

All produced by Nikkatsu unless otherwise noted.Filmography based on and * (March 1918) * (April 1918) * (May 1918) * (Oct. 1918) * (June 1919) * (June 1919) * (Jan. 1922) - new version of 1918 film * (Dec. 1922) * (March 1923) * (May 1932) (produced by Oriental Film ()) * (Feb.1933) (produced by Kyōdai Productions ())


References


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tanaka, Eizo Japanese film directors 1886 births 1968 deaths Japanese male actors Nihon University faculty Silent film directors 20th-century Japanese screenwriters