Early years (1912–1943) Keisuke Kinoshita was born
Masakichi Kinoshita on December 5, 1912, in
Hamamatsu,
Shizuoka Prefecture, as the fourth of eight children of merchant Shūkichi Kinoshita and his wife Tama. His family manufactured pickles and owned a grocery store. A film fan already in early years, he vowed to become a filmmaker, but faced opposition from his parents. So he attended high school and began studying for college. But Kinoshita was told that he could not become an assistant director without a university education, but that he may be able to become a photographer. Around the time, Kinoshita began scriptwriting. Adapting a popular play by Kazuo Kikuta, he made the comedy
Port of Flowers with a large cast and budget. Although it passed the censors, Kinoshita met with harsh criticism and was not allowed to direct another film until the end of the
Second World War. He later argued: "I can't lie to myself in my dramas. I couldn't direct something that was like shaking hands and saying, 'Come die.'" He returned to his hometown Hamamatsu, where he waited for the war to end. In the following years, he worked in a variety of genres, including comedy, period and contemporary drama, ghost story, and thriller. The same year saw the release of the musical comedy
Carmen Comes Home, Japan's first colour feature. Due to technical and financial reasons, a black-and-white version was also filmed and released.
Carmen Comes Home was the first collaboration of Kinoshita with actress
Hideko Takamine, who appeared in many of his later films. Early on, Kinoshita gathered a steady group of co-workers around him: Takamine,
Kinuyo Tanaka,
Yoshiko Kuga,
Keiji Sada and
Yūko Mochizuki had repeated starring or bigger supporting roles, while his brother Chuji (also credited Tadashi) scored, and cinematographer Hiroshi Kusuda photographed many of his films. In 1953, Kinoshita wrote the script for Masaki Kobayashi's first feature length film,
Sincerity. The mid-1950s marked the release of two of Kinoshita's most acclaimed films,
Twenty-Four Eyes (1954), a portrait of a school teacher who sees the dreams of her young pupils fall apart due to economical constraints and the war, and
You Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (1955), a
Meiji era period drama about the unfulfilled love between two teenagers. Also highly popular was the lighthouse keeper drama
Times of Joy and Sorrow (1957), which was repeatedly remade in later years, including one version by Kinoshita himself.
The Ballad of Narayama (1958), a highly stylised
period drama about the legendary
ubasute practice, was entered into the
19th Venice International Film Festival, but met with very mixed reactions. By the mid 1960s, Kinoshita had turned solely to television work. Film historian
Donald Richie saw the period war drama
The River Fuefuki (1960) and
The Scent of Incense (1964), which follows a troubled mother-daughter-relationship over a span of four decades, as the director's last notable works. Alexander Jacoby also found the 1960 satire
Spring Dreams noteworthy, which he called "quirkily enjoyable". while other directors of his generation as Yoshimura and
Kaneto Shindō, and even the older
Heinosuke Gosho, had started working independently for different studios by the early 1950s. Although few concrete details have emerged about Kinoshita's personal life, his homosexuality was widely known in the film world. Screenwriter and frequent collaborator Yoshio Shirasaka recalls the "brilliant scene" Kinoshita made with the handsome, well-dressed assistant directors he surrounded himself with. His 1959 film
Farewell to Spring has been called "Japan's first gay film" for the emotional intensity depicted between its male characters. Kinoshita died on December 30, 1998, of a stroke. His grave is in
Engaku-ji in
Kamakura, very near to that of his fellow Shochiku director, Yasujirō Ozu. ==Filmography==