Early life (1916–1946) Childhood and schooling (1916–1942) Kobayashi was born on February 14, 1916, in
Otaru, a port city on the island of
Hokkaido. Kobayashi's family was a part of the upper-middle class, as his father, Yuichi, worked for
Mitsui & Co., and his mother, Hisako, was part of a merchant family. He had two older brothers and a younger sister. The Kobayashi family descends from a samurai from
Shimonoseki. At the university, Kobayashi was taught by
Aizu Yaichi, a poet and historian who became a mentor of Kobayashi and influenced Kobayashi's perspectives on life and art. After the war ended, Kobayashi spent nearly a year in a
prisoner of war labor camp in
Kadena, Okinawa. At the camp, Kobayashi ran a theater company with other inmates, and produced several shows. Upon returning home, he learned that his father had died in 1945 and that his older brother, Yasuhiko, died in battle in China in 1944. This film was part of an initiative by
Shochiku to release short films, called "sister films", that were intended as introductions to new directors. Kobayashi refused to cut any content, so the film was not released until 1956. In 1957,
Black River was released, about the crime and prostitution that arose around US bases in Japan during and after the American occupation. In 1964, Kobayashi made
Kwaidan (1964), his first color film, a collection of four ghost stories drawn from books by
Lafcadio Hearn. Kwaidan won the
Special Jury Prize at the
1965 Cannes Film Festival, and received an
Academy Award nomination for
Best Foreign Language Film.
Later films (1967-1996) In 1968,
Akira Kurosawa,
Keisuke Kinoshita,
Kon Ichikawa and Kobayashi founded the directors group,
Shiki no kai-
The Four Horsemen Club, in an attempt to create movies for younger generations. In 1969, he was a member of the jury at the
19th Berlin International Film Festival. He was also a candidate for directing the Japanese sequences for
Tora! Tora! Tora! after Akira Kurosawa left the film. But instead
Kinji Fukasaku and
Toshio Masuda were chosen. In 1990, Kobayashi was awarded the
Order of the Rising Sun by the
Japanese government and the
Order of Arts and Letters by the
French government. One of his grand projects was a film on
Yasushi Inoue's novel about Buddhist China,
Tun Huang, which never came to fruition. ==Selected filmography==