(born April 17, 1935) is a Japanese

zoologist Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and d ...

, essayist, and filmmaker. A popular essayist under the pen name Mutsugorō, he was awarded the

Kikuchi Kan Prize The honors achievement in all aspects of Japanese literary culture. It was named in honor of Kikuchi Kan. The prize is presented annually by the literary magazine ''Bungei Shunjū'' and the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Literature. Histor ...

for his writing in 1977. He is perhaps best known in the West as the director and screenwriter of the 1986 film ''

The Adventures of Milo and Otis is a 1986 Japanese adventure comedy-drama film about two animals, Milo (an orange tabby cat) and Otis (a pug). The original Japanese version, narrated by Shigeru Tsuyuki and with poetry recitation by Kyōko Koizumi, was released on July 12, ...

''. Hata was born in

Fukuoka Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyūshū. Fukuoka Prefecture has a population of 5,109,323 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 4,986 Square kilometre, km2 (1,925 sq mi). Fukuoka Prefecture borders S ...

and graduated from the Faculty of Biology at

Tokyo University , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

in 1958, and went on to complete a master's degree in 1959. Trained as a zoologist, he worked as a documentary filmmaker producing nature films. He moved to the eastern coast of Hokkaidō to establish the Mutsugorō Animal Kingdom nature preserve, where he and his family live with over 300 wild and domestic animals. He is the author of over 100 books, including collections of his Mutsugorō essays on nature such as ''Warera dōbutsu mina kyōdai'' (All of Us Animals Are Brothers and Sisters, 1967) and ''Mutsogorō no hakubutsushi'' (Mutsugoro's Natural History, 1975). Over four years, Hata and associate director

Kon Ichikawa was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. His work displays a vast range in genre and style, from the anti-war films '' The Burmese Harp'' (1956) and '' Fires on the Plain'' (1959), to the documentary '' Tokyo Olympiad'' (1965), which won ...

shot 400,000 feet of film at the Mutsugorō Animal Kingdom. The resulting film, about the adventures of an orange tabby cat and a fawn pug, was released by

Toho is a Japanese film, theatre production and distribution company. It has its headquarters in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and is one of the core companies of the Osaka-based Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group. Outside of Japan, it is best known as the producer ...

in 1986 as ''Koneko Monogatari'' (子猫物語, A Kitten's Story) and was the highest-grossing film of the year in Japan, taking in about $36 million. It was shown that year at the

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...

as ''The Adventures of Chatran''. For US distribution by

Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...

, it was cut down from 90 to 76 minutes and narration in English by

Dudley Moore Dudley Stuart John Moore CBE (19 April 193527 March 2002) was an English actor, comedian, musician and composer. Moore first came to prominence in the UK as a leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s. He was one of the four writ ...

was added. It was released in 1989 as ''The Adventures of Milo and Otis''.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hata, Masanori 1935 births Japanese zoologists Japanese mammalogists Japanese essayists Japanese filmmakers Japanese screenwriters Living people