is a Japanese screenwriter and film director.

Career

Born in

Namegata District, Ibaraki was a district located in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. As of 2003, the district has an estimated population of 40,930 and a density of 246.08 persons per km2. The total area is 166.33 km2. District timeline * April 1, 2001 - The town of Itak ...

, Yanagimachi attended the Faculty of Law at

Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...

but began studying filmmaking. Working as a freelance assistant director after graduating, he started his own production company in 1974 and produced the documentary film ''

God Speed You! Black Emperor is a 1976 Japanese black-and-white 16 mm film, 16 mm documentary film by director Mitsuo Yanagimachi that follows the exploits of young Japanese motorcyclists known as the "Black Emperors". The 1970s in Japan saw the rise of a motorcycling ...

'' (1976) about

bōsōzoku is a Japanese youth subculture associated with customized motorcycles. The first appearance of these types of biker gangs was in the 1950s. Popularity climbed throughout the 1980s and 1990s, peaking at an estimated 42,510 members in 1982. Thei ...

. He made his fiction film debut in 1979 with '' Jūkyūsai no Chizu''. That and the later '' Himatsuri'' were based on novels by

Kenji Nakagami was a Japanese novelist and essayist. He is well known as the first, and so far the only, post-war Japanese writer to identify himself publicly as a Burakumin is a name for a low-status social group in Japan. It is a term for ethnic Japanese pe ...

. His 1982 work '' Saraba Itoshiki Daichi'' showed in the Competition at the

Berlin Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festi ...

. His films have often focused on youth ('' Who's Camus Anyway?''), on ethnic minorities in Japan (''

Ai ni Tsuite, Tokyo AI is artificial intelligence, intellectual ability in machines and robots. Ai, AI or A.I. may also refer to: Animals * Ai (chimpanzee), an individual experimental subject in Japan * Ai (sloth) or the pale-throated sloth, northern Amazonian mamm ...

''), as well as on Asia (''

Shadow of China ''Shadow of China'' is a 1989 drama film directed and co-written by Mitsuo Yanagimachi and starring John Lone, Sammi Davis and Vivian Wu. It is based on the novel ''Snake Head'' by Masaaki Nishiki. It was the first Japanese-American co-productio ...

'' and the documentary '' Tabisuru Pao-jiang-hu''). Yanagimachi was awarded the Geijutsu Senshō Prize in 1985 by the Agency for Cultural Affairs.

Filmography as director

# ''

'' (1976; documentary) # '' Jūkyūsai no Chizu'' (A 19-Year-Old's Map) (1979) # '' Saraba Itoshiki Daichi'' (Farewell to the Land) (1982) # '' Himatsuri'' (Fire Festival) (1985) # ''

'' (1990) # ''

'' (About Love, Tokyo) (1992) # '' Tabisuru Pao-jiang-hu'' (Travelling Medicine Peddlers) (1995; documentary) # '' Who's Camus Anyway?'' (2005)

Awards

References

External links

*
JMDB entry
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yanagimachi, Mitsuo 1945 births Japanese film directors Living people People from Ibaraki Prefecture Japanese documentary filmmakers Japanese screenwriters Writers from Ibaraki Prefecture