KON ICHIKAWA (1915-2008)

Kon Ichikawa, one of the greatest living Japanese filmmakers, died of pneumonia today at the age of 92.

Ichikawa was one of the key figures to emerge from the postwar Japanese “humanist” era along with celebrated filmmakers such as Akira Kurosawa, Masaki Kobayashi, and Kinosuke Kinoshita. He has directed some of the most significant films in Japanese cinema history, including An Actor’s Revenge (1963), Fires on the Plain (1959), Tokyo Olympiad (1965), and his masterpiece The Burmese Harp (1956), a film that I would consider among the very greatest ever made.

You can view a clip from Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp that I uploaded on YouTube back in June, here: