was a Japanese film director. He directed more than 260 films, primarily in the

chanbara , also commonly spelled "''chambara''", meaning "sword fighting" films,Hill (2002). denotes the Japanese film genre called samurai cinema in English and is roughly equivalent to Western and swashbuckler films. ''Chanbara'' is a sub-category of '' ...

and

yakuza , also known as , are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media (by request of the police) call them , while the yakuza call themselves . The English equivalent for the term ''yak ...

genres. His real name was , but he took the stage name Masahiro, the

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...

for which he changed multiple times (including , , and ).

Career

Masahiro Makino was born in

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

, the eldest son of the film director and producer Shōzō Makino, who is often called the father of Japanese cinema. As a youth he acted in over 100 films before debuting as a film director in 1926 at age 18. His critically acclaimed nihilistic

jidaigeki is a genre of film, television, and theatre in Japan. Literally meaning "historical drama, period dramas", it refers to stories that take place before the Meiji Restoration of 1868. ''Jidaigeki'' show the lives of the samurai, farmers, crafts ...

such as '' Roningai'' (1928) made him one of the top Japanese film directors, but his way of shooting films quickly also earned him detractors. For instance, the total time it took to shoot the 1936 film ''Edo no Ka Oshō'' was only 28 hours. The critic Sadao Yamane, however, has argued that this fast filming practice also contributed to Makino's speedy, rhythmic film style. Rhythm and tempo are important to his films, and so in his ''jidaigeki'', fight scenes like in ''Kettō Takadanobaba'' (1937) could seem like dances, or entire sequences, like in ''Awa no Odoriko'' (1941), could be filled with dance. He made musicals like ''

Singing Lovebirds is a 1939 Japanese musical comedy film directed by Masahiro Makino. Makino made the film in only two weeks while the production of another film, ''Yaji Kita Dōchūki'', was put on hold after its star, Chiezō Kataoka, came down with appendicitis ...

'' (1939) and even his wartime propaganda films like ''Hanako-san'' and '' Ahen senso'' (both 1943) could have

Busby Berkeley Berkeley William Enos, (November 29, 1895 – March 14, 1976) known professionally as Busby Berkeley, was an American film director and musical choreographer. Berkeley devised elaborate musical production numbers that often involved complex geo ...

-like musical numbers. After the war, he helmed such popular ''jidaigeki'' series as ''Jirōchō Sangokushi'' and such

ninkyō eiga is a popular film genre in Japanese cinema which focuses on the lives and dealings of ''yakuza'', Japanese organized crime syndicates. In the silent film era, depictions of ''bakuto'' (precursors to modern yakuza) as sympathetic Robin Hood-li ...

series as ''Nihon Kyōkaku-den''. He directed his last film in 1972, the retirement film for Junko Fuji, completing a filmography that totaled over 260 films and included films of many genres.

Personal life

Masahiro's half-brother,

Sadatsugu Matsuda (まつださだつぐ) (2 November 1906 – 20 January 2003, Tokyo, Japan) was a Japanese film director. He directed films from 1925 to 1969. His name is also incorrectly spelled as Sadaji Matsuda. He was the son of producer and directo ...

(1906–2003), was also a popular film director. Another brother, Mitsuo Makino, was an important film producer, and yet another, Shinzō Makino, also worked as a director (his wife was the actress Chikako Miyagi). Masahiro's sister, Tomoko Makino, married the actor Kunitarō Sawamura, and gave birth to the actors

Masahiko Tsugawa , born Masahiko Katō (加藤雅彦 ''Katō Masahiko''; January 2, 1940 – August 4, 2018) was a Japanese actor and director. Career Tsugawa was born January 2, 1940, in Kyoto, Japan. After acting as a child, he made his major debut at 16 in t ...

and

Hiroyuki Nagato , stage name of Akio Kato (加藤晃夫), was a Japanese actor. He starred in ''Season of the Sun'', '' Endless Desire'', '' My Second Brother'', '' Stolen Desire'', and ''Sukeban Deka'', and ''Yo-Yo Girl Cop''. Life and career Nagato was born ...

, each of whom married famous actresses (

Yukiji Asaoka was a Japanese singer and an actress from Chūō, Tokyo. She was the daughter of a famous Japanese painter of shin hanga style woodblock printing, prints, Shinsui Itō, and her second husband was actor Masahiko Tsugawa. Asaoka was in the Takara ...

and

Yōko Minamida was a Japanese actress. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in November 2008, and a television documentary was made about her condition and the efforts of her husband, actor Hiroyuki Nagato, to care for her. She died in Tokyo. Selec ...

respectively). Kunitarō's brother and sister (brother and sister-in-law to Masahiro) are the actors

Daisuke Katō was a Japanese actor. He appeared in over 200 films, including Akira Kurosawa's ''Seven Samurai'', ''Rashomon'', ''Yojimbo'', and ''Ikiru''. He also worked repeatedly for noted directors such as Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse and Kenji Mizoguchi. ...

and

Sadako Sawamura was a Japanese stage and film actress who appeared in more than 200 films between 1935 and 1976. Biography Sawamura was born Sadako Katō in the Asakusa district of Tokyo. After dropping out of Japan Women's University, she was active in left-w ...

. The pseudonym that Masahiko Tsugawa took when he became a director, Makino Masahiko, is a tribute to Masahiro. Masahiro married the actress

Yukiko Todoroki Yukiko Todoroki ( ''Todoroki Yukiko''; September 11, 1917 – May 11, 1967) was a Japanese people, Japanese actress. Her real name was Tsuruko Nishiyama. She participated in the Takarazuka Revue. At Takarazuka, she was known not by her real name ...

and their son, Masayuki Makino, is the head of the Okinawa Actor's School, famous for training a number of Japan's top female pop singers. His second wife was also an actress, and one of their two daughters became an actress.

Selected filmography

As director

* ''

Sozenji Baba is a 1928 black and white Japanese silent film directed by Masahiro Makino. It is an ambitious film in which Makino deals with the difficult issue of the agony of a person who killed for revenge Revenge is defined as committing a harmful ac ...

'' (1928) * '' Roningai'' (1928, 1929) * ''

'' (1939) * '' Ahen senso'' (1943) * ''

Rikon is a 1952 black-and-white Japanese film directed by Masahiro Makino. Cast * Ureo Egawa as Shōgo Yamamura * Yuriko Hanabusa as Natsuno Sōma * Chōko Iida as Kikuyo * Michiyo Kogure as Michiko Sōma * Noriko Munakata as Tsuruko Miyawakita ...

'' (1952) * ''

Adauchi sōzenji baba is a 1957 black-and-white jidaigeki Japanese film directed by Masahiro Makino. Cast * Ryūtarō Ōtomo (5 June 1912 – 27 September 1985) was a Japanese film and television actor most famous for his starring roles in jidaigeki. In 1936, h ...

'' (1957) * '' Mask of the Moon'' (1961)

As actor

* '' Raiden'' (1928) * '' The Man Who Came to Port'' (1952)

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Makino, Masahiro Japanese film directors Makino family Samurai film directors 1908 births 1993 deaths People from Kyoto Japanese male film actors 20th-century Japanese male actors