Edison said: Love does not become indifferent because of reason, nor does it lose because of ambition. It is the second life, it penetrates into the soul, warms every blood vessel, beats in every pulse.
This phrase is aptly used to evaluate Japanese film director Ichikawa Kun, whose films are mostly written by his wife, Natsushi Wada. Because of the help of Natsushi Wada, he achieved the status of a master in the film industry of Ichikawa Kun.
Kun Ichikawa, formerly known as Ichikawa, is a famous Japanese film director and screenwriter. Born on November 20, 1915 in Ise, Mie Prefecture, Japan, he lost his father shortly after birth and moved to Osaka with his mother at the age of four.
He had poor arithmetic in elementary school, but excelled in drawings. He intended to become a painter, and one day, he watched Itami Wan's "The Peerless Nation" in the cinema, so he changed his ambitions and turned to film. If it weren't for "Guoshi Peerless", he might have become a good director who was delayed by painting.
Ichikawa Kun is very exploratory of film, his films are not a single theme, and his film themes are constantly changing at different times. Some people commented that in Japan, in terms of the breadth of the subject matter and the variety of film styles, there are many adaptations, and Ichikawa Kun deservedly ranked first.
In the early stage, his films had thinking about war, and in the later films, they were partial to reasoning and literary and artistic routes, and their creative level became more and more skilled. He used his life's film journey to show the ultimate perfection and humanitarian feelings pursued by Japanese films under the cloak of "simplicity".
Among the many directors in Japan, the most admired person is Ichikawa Kun.
First of all, he is very long-lived, and long-lived people can do a lot of things they like, such as making movies; secondly, I have to lament that he married a good woman- Natsushi Wada, one of the best screenwriters in the history of Japanese cinema. This woman was the screenwriter of many of his works, and the periods from 1950 to 1965 are commonly referred to to him as his "Wada Natsushi Era", and some of his most famous works were created during this period.
As Ba Jin said: "Death" is the time that can be handled by approaching people's more precious "life", more precious living. Man knows that he will die at any moment, and he is even more unwilling to waste time, and he wants to do something good in this limited rest of his life.
Wada Xiashi also once said: What is done must be done well, otherwise what to do?
And the best thing Ichikawa Kun did was make movies, to make good movies.
I have to admit that he is a charismatic person, otherwise so many famous Japanese writers are willing to remake their own works for him. And he lived up to expectations and became a Japanese giant with international fame second only to Akira Kurosawa.
His first film was Harp in Burma. When I heard the name of the movie, I thought it was a very beautiful literary film, but after watching it, I realized that it was a movie related to war. Set against the backdrop of World War II, from the perspective of a Japanese soldier, the war was reflected. This kind of reflection is different from the tunnel soldier shown by Akira Kurosawa in "Dream", as the shadow people commented: bringing religion to the humanitarian connotation, completing personal redemption, repentance, salvation, and responsibility from the level of the Buddha, and appeasing the war dead, with a strong artistic appeal.
This 1956 film made Kunichi Ichikawa a famous Japanese director.
After the release of "Burma's Harp", it was rated as the fifth of the top ten Japanese films of the year, and was selected as one of the 200 Japanese films, and in the eyes of everyone, this film was defined as a masterpiece of "anti-war" themes. The film transcends the meaning of ordinary films and becomes an event of social significance.
The 41-year-old man, who has loved painting since childhood and initially mainly shoots children's films and social satirical comedies for minors, has found his place in the film world and film style because this "Harp of Myanmar" has found his place in the film world. In the same year, he also made his first satisfactory work, "The Execution Room".
In 1958, he adapted Yukio Mishima's novel Kinkaku-ji Temple, which was full of excitement for beauty, and remade it as "Yanshang", which was released to great acclaim.
The 1959 anti-war film Wildfire, adapted from Ooka's novel of the same name, successfully embodied Ooka's ideas, which made Ichikawa Kun win a chorus of applause again, making him one of the masters of film directing.
Unlike general anti-war films, Ichikawa uses black humor to deconstruct the distorted humanity of war, and under the war, humanity is completely lost. The director's personal reflections on war and the fear of human killing nature are clearly visible.
These leading figures from the Japanese literary scene in the 1950s solidly established Ichikawa Kun's status as a master.
At this time, Ichikawa Kun is no longer the children's film director Ichikawa in the past. His directing skills became more and more skilled. The beauty of beautiful Japanese literature and the beauty of rich oriental art are deeply immersed in the details of Ichikawa's works. It also presented the audience with a gorgeous and sad visual feast, gorgeous to the extreme is wuhua.
1965 was a special watershed, when Ichikawa and most of his colleagues faced a similar grim situation: the decline of a decaying industry and the impact of emerging television. But Ichikawa Kun was still making films, and in 1976, he quickly found a call for popularity with "Inuyasha Family", creating a world of contemplation with humor in the tense movie picture.
The book "The Spirit of Japan" says that the strength of Japanese art lies in the simplicity that makes people impress. Running through Japanese art is the spirit of simplicity, which has the characteristics of Japanese art.
Only by understanding Japanese history and social reality, understanding japanese cultural elements such as literature, painting, and drama, and understanding the mental journey of those who created Japanese films and those who watched them, can we understand Japanese movies.
The characteristic of Japanese culture is "simple", and the spirit of simplicity is to advocate the simple expression of ideological content, and the more simple the expression, the higher the spirit.
Ichikawa Kun's "Ancient Capital" and "Fine Snow" are the manifestations of the extreme of "Jane".
In 1980 and 1983, he remade "Ancient Capital" by Japanese literary hero Yasunari Kawabata and Junichiro Tanizaki's "Fine Snow", respectively. The beautiful and interesting words shine in his world of light and shadow. A vivid Japan, a real Japanese culture, unfolded in front of the audience.
Whether it is a shallow smile or a tear in his eyes, he seems to be weak but has his own powerful core and attitude, and under the background of cherry blossoms and kimono, he feels that things are better. Among them, "Ancient Capital" is the last film of Yamaguchi's farewell to the film world, and its significance is special.
Ichikawa Kun is a painter born, the shape and color are impeccable. The delicate beauty of the picture, the poignant and gentle characters, and the classical elegance are all in one, not only because of the cherry blossoms and kimono. Aestheticization is maximized in his masterpieces.
As Tadao Sato says, Ichikawa Kun is a superb "performer": he does not focus on the construction of his own author's temperament, but on the original soul of the imaged text. Although the film strives to dilute the "metaphysical" part of Tanizaki's literary style, it is still a masterpiece that visualizes Tanizaki's aesthetic. Watching the words of tens of thousands of movie critics, it is really inspiring.
In 2006, Iwai Shunji, a Japanese director who loves to shoot pure love stories and youthful infatuations, filmed "The Tale of Ichikawa Kun", asking Ichikawa Kun and those closest to him to tell the story of Ichikawa Kun and pay tribute to a generation of film masters.
Shunji Iwai claimed that "Inuyasha Family" was "a textbook for making his own films" and was proud to be able to shoot "The Tale of Ichikawa Kun", saying: "The age gap is not a problem. I felt like I had finally met the most speculative person in the world and me. "As a result of his deep contact with director Ichikawa's life, he gained more empathy.
Ichikawa Kun, along with Akira Kurosawa, Keisuke Kinoshita, and Masaki Kobayashi, is known as the "Four Horsemen of Japanese Cinema". But Ichikawa Kun's international reputation is far less than Akira Kurosawa's, but it is undeniable that his artistic achievements and his unique visual performance have had a great influence on later film directors.
Ichikawa Kun's most important partner and friend in his life, Natsushi Wada, struggled with breast cancer for 18 years and died at the age of 62. A lifelong lover of tobacco and alcohol, he died of pneumonia in a hospital in Tokyo on February 13, 2008, at the age of 92.
A person who perfectly combines novels and movies tells the tragedies and joys of the world in his own world of light and shadow. Japanese literary hero Yukio Mishima said of him: As a movie fan, if someone asks me, "Whose film I see the most", I will answer in the affirmative: Ichikawa Kun.