Sadao Yamanaka
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was a
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
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 ...
and
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. ...
who directed 26 films between 1932 and 1938. He was a contemporary of
Yasujirō Ozu was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in t ...
,
Mikio Naruse was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 89 films spanning the period 1930 to 1967. Naruse is known for imbuing his films with a bleak and pessimistic outlook. He made primarily shomin-geki ("common people drama") films with female protagonists, ...
and
Kenji Mizoguchi was a Japanese film director and screenwriter, who directed about one hundred films during his career between 1923 and 1956. His most acclaimed works include ''The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums'' (1939), ''The Life of Oharu'' (1952), ''Uget ...
and one of the primary figures in the development of the ''
jidaigeki is a genre of film, television, video game, and theatre in Japan. Literally meaning "period dramas", they are most often set during the Edo period of Japanese history, from 1603 to 1868. Some, however, are set much earlier—''Portrait of Hel ...
'', or historical film. Yamanaka died of
dysentery Dysentery (UK pronunciation: , US: ), historically known as the bloody flux, is a type of gastroenteritis that results in bloody diarrhea. Other symptoms may include fever, abdominal pain, and a feeling of incomplete defecation. Complications ...
in
Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer Manc ...
after being drafted into the
Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...
. He is the uncle of the Japanese film director
Tai Kato was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. He was best known for making yakuza films at the Toei Company in 1960s. Biography Born in Hyōgo Prefecture, Kato was the nephew of the film director Sadao Yamanaka. He entered the Toho studio i ...
, who wrote a book about Yamanaka, ''Eiga kantoku Yamanaka Sadao''. Only three of his films survive in nearly complete form. While long considered a master filmmaker in his native Japan, interest in Yamanaka's work redeveloped after the restoration and Japanese
DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
release of the three surviving films. His most internationally discussed film, '' Humanity and Paper Balloons'' (1937), was given its first non-Japanese DVD release in the UK as a
Masters of Cinema Masters of Cinema is a line of DVD and Blu-ray releases published through Eureka Entertainment. Because of the uniformly branded and spine-numbered packaging and the standard inclusion of booklets and analysis by recurring film historians, the ...
release.


Career

Yamanaka began his career in the Japanese film industry at the age of 20 as a writer and
assistant director The role of an assistant director on a film includes tracking daily progress against the filming production schedule, arranging logistics, preparing daily call sheets, checking cast and crew, and maintaining order on the set. They also have to tak ...
for the Makino company. In 1932, he began working for Kanjuro Productions, a small, independent film company similar to many others founded during the same period as it was centered around a popular ''jidaigeki'' film star, this time Kanjuro Arashi. Here, he began directing his first films, all of which were ''jidaigeki''. During his first year at Kanjuro, he made six films. He was "discovered" by the critic
Matsuo Kishi (18 September 1906 – 17 August 1985) was a Japanese film critic, director, screenwriter, producer, and biographer. His real name was Aji Shūichirō. Born in Tokyo, he became interested in film from his days in high school and, continuing on to ...
and gained a reputation for creating films that escaped clichés and focused on social injustices. He formed the Narutaki-gumi with his friends, and they wrote under the pseudonym Kimpachi Kajiwara. During the 1930s he moved between several film companies, eventually settling in
Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...
and working for the
Nikkatsu is a Japanese entertainment company known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio, founded in 1912 during the silent film era. The name ''Nikkatsu'' amalgamates the words Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally ...
Company. Most of his films were
silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...
s as sound did not gain a prominence in Japan until 1935-36. He worked twice with the Japanese theatre troupe Zenshin-za: first on ''The Village Tattooed Man'' (''Machi no Irezumi-mono'', 1935) and on his final film, '' Humanity and Paper Balloons''. ''Humanity and Paper Balloons'' premiered the same day that Yamanaka was drafted into the Japanese army. He later died in a field hospital in the Japanese ruled
Manchukuo Manchukuo, officially the State of Manchuria prior to 1934 and the Empire of (Great) Manchuria after 1934, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Northeast China, Manchuria from 1932 until 1945. It was founded as a republic in 1932 afte ...
, known today as
Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer Manc ...
. The cause of death was inflammation of the intestines.


Style and influences

Early on, Yamanaka had stated an interest in blurring the lines between several genres: comedy, historical epics, and comedy-dramas focusing on average people. Viewers and critics (notably,
Donald Richie Donald Richie (17 April 1924 – 19 February 2013) was an American-born author who wrote about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also dir ...
and
Tadao Sato was a Japanese film critic, theorist and historian. His real name was . Overviews Born in Niigata, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, He published more than a hundred books on film, and was one of Japan's foremost scholars and historians addressin ...
in pioneering studies of
Japanese cinema The has a history that spans more than 100 years. Japan has one of the oldest and largest film industries in the world; as of 2021, it was the fourth largest by number of feature films produced. In 2011 Japan produced 411 feature films that ea ...
) note in his surviving films the genesis of ideas later explored by the internationally successful
Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...
,
Kenji Mizoguchi was a Japanese film director and screenwriter, who directed about one hundred films during his career between 1923 and 1956. His most acclaimed works include ''The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums'' (1939), ''The Life of Oharu'' (1952), ''Uget ...
,
Yasujirō Ozu was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in t ...
and
Seijun Suzuki , born (24 May 1923 – 13 February 2017), was a Japanese filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter. His films are known for their jarring visual style, irreverent humour, nihilistic cool and entertainment-over-logic sensibility. He made 40 predo ...
.Sato (1982). Yamanaka has been characterized as a minimalist, one whose style favoured elegance and rhythm. In fact, he was a close friend of Ozu, who is often noted as a minimalist too. Yamanaka is said to have been inspired by Hollywood films such as
Rouben Mamoulian Rouben Zachary Mamoulian ( ; hy, Ռուբէն Մամուլեան; October 8, 1897 – December 4, 1987) was an American film and theatre director. Early life Mamoulian was born in Tiflis, Russian Empire, to a family of Armenian descent. H ...
's '' City Streets'',
Edmund Goulding Edmund Goulding (20 March 1891 – 24 December 1959) was a British screenwriter and film director. As an actor early in his career he was one of the 'Ghosts' in the 1922 silent film ''Three Live Ghosts'' alongside Norman Kerry and Cyril Chadwick. ...
's ''
Grand Hotel A grand hotel is a large and luxurious hotel, especially one housed in a building with traditional architectural style. It began to flourish in the 1800s in Europe and North America. Grand Hotel may refer to: Hotels Africa * Grande Hotel Beir ...
'' and
Frank Capra Frank Russell Capra (born Francesco Rosario Capra; May 18, 1897 – September 3, 1991) was an Italian-born American film director, producer and writer who became the creative force behind some of the major award-winning films of the 1930s ...
's ''
It Happened One Night ''It Happened One Night'' is a 1934 pre-Code American romantic comedy film with elements of screwball comedy directed and co-produced by Frank Capra, in collaboration with Harry Cohn, in which a pampered socialite ( Claudette Colbert) tr ...
''. Director Kazuo Kuroki once said of Yamanaka, "Every film he made wonderfully depicted human purity and chastity with a tender, delicate gaze. I was astonished that a young man in his twenties accomplished such perfection."


Partial filmography (surviving films)

* ''
The Million Ryo Pot is a 1935 black and white Japanese comedy film directed by Sadao Yamanaka and starring Denjirō Ōkōchi. Cast * Denjirō Ōkōchi: Tange Sazen * Kiyozo: Ofuji * Kunitaro Sawamura: Genzaburo Yagyu * Reisaburo Yamamoto: Yokichi * Minoru Ta ...
'' (1935) - also known as ''Tange Sazen Yowa: Hyakuman Ryo no Tsubo'' (丹下左膳余話 百万両の壺) * ''
Kōchiyama Sōshun was a historical Japanese person. A servant at Edo Castle in Japan, he became a model for characters in ''kōdan'', ''kabuki'', film and television. Works of fiction sometimes write the name with a different final character as 河内山宗俊 or ...
'' (1936) (河内山宗俊) * '' Humanity and Paper Balloons'' (1937) - also known as ''Ninjo Kamifusen'' (人情紙風船)


References

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External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Yamanaka, Sadao Japanese film directors Samurai film directors 1909 births 1938 deaths 20th-century Japanese people 20th-century Japanese screenwriters Imperial Japanese Army personnel Military personnel of the Second Sino-Japanese War Deaths from dysentery