Masaki Kobayashi
Masaki Kobayashi was a Japanese filmmaker. He is best remembered for directing the epic war trilogy The Human Condition (1959–1961), the samurai films Harakiri (1962) and Samurai Rebellion (1967), and the horror anthology epic Kwaidan (1964). Senses of Cinema described him as "one of the finest depicters of Japanese society in the 1950s and 1960s." Although overshadowed by other Japanese filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu in his lifetime, his work has gained wider traction in the 21st century with several of his films being ranked as some of the greatest films ever made.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
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Photo: 新潮社 撮影者不明, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Defining films
Critical context
Masaki Kobayashi’s career coincides with the so-called Golden Age of Japanese cinema in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the fact that some of his films such as the war trilogy Ningen no jōken ( The Human Condition , 1959-1961) and Seppuku ( Harakiri , 1962) had won international critical acclaim, 1 the centenary of his birth in February 2016 passed almost unnoticed in the Western media. 2 Kobayashi has been largely forgotten by the average Japanese filmgoer, and outside Japan interest in his work…
