Satsuo Yamamoto

Satsuo Yamamoto
Satsuo Yamamoto in 1950.
Born(1910-07-15)15 July 1910
Kagoshima City, Japan
Died11 August 1983(1983-08-11) (aged 73)
Tokyo
OccupationFilm director
RelativesKei Yamamoto (nephew)

Satsuo Yamamoto (山本 薩夫, Yamamoto Satsuo, 10 July 1910 – 11 August 1983) was a Japanese film director.[1]

Yamamoto was born in Kagoshima City. After leaving Waseda University, where he had become affiliated with left-wing groups, he joined the Shochiku film studios in 1933, where he worked as an assistant director to Mikio Naruse.[2][3] He followed Naruse when the latter moved to P.C.L. film studios (later Toho) and debuted as a director in 1937 with Ojōsan.[2][3] During World War II he directed the propaganda films Winged Victory and Hot Winds[1][4] before being drafted and sent to China.[3]

After returning to Japan, Yamamoto's first film was War and Peace,[5] co-directed with Fumio Kamei.[1][4] Being a communist and an active supporter of the union during the Toho strikes, he left the studio in 1948 after the strikes' forced ending and turned to independent filmmaking.[3][6] The commercially successful Street of Violence (1950) was produced by a committee named after the film's original title Bōryoku no machi,[7] while the left-wing production company Shinsei Eiga-sha ("New star films"), formed by former Toho unionists, produced the anti-war film Vacuum Zone (1953), which film historian Donald Richie called "the strongest anti-military film ever made in Japan" in 1959.[4] The 1959 Ballad of the Cart was produced by the National Rural Film Association and won him the Mainichi Film Award for Best Director.[8]

In the 1960s, Yamamoto again worked for major companies like Daiei and Nikkatsu, directing films like Band of Assassins (1962), The Ivory Tower (1966) and Zatoichi the Outlaw (1967).[9] He died in Tokyo on 11 August 1983, at the age of 73.[2]

  1. ^ a b c Jacoby, Alexander (2008). Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. ISBN 978-1-933330-53-2.
  2. ^ a b c "山本 薩夫 (Satsuo Yamamoto)". Kotobank (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d "山本 薩夫 (Satsuo Yamamoto)". Kinenote (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  4. ^ a b c Anderson, Joseph L.; Richie, Donald (1959). The Japanese Film – Art & Industry. Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company.
  5. ^ "戦争と平和 (War and Peace)". Kinenote (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  6. ^ Hirano, Kyoko (1992). Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema Under the American Occupation, 1945–1952. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press. ISBN 978-1-56098157-2.
  7. ^ "暴力の街 (Street of Violence)". Kinenote (in Japanese). Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  8. ^ "14th Mainichi Film Awards 1959" (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  9. ^ "山本 薩夫 (Satsuo Yamamoto)". Japanese Movie Database (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 July 2021.