Mikio Naruse

Early years Mikio Naruse was born in Tokyo in 1905 and raised by his brother and sister after his parents' early death. He entered Shirō Kido's Shōchiku film studio in the 1920s as a light crew assistant and was soon assigned to comedy director Yoshinobu Ikeda. It was not until 1930 that he was allowed to direct a film on his own. His debut film, the short slapstick comedy Mr. and Mrs. Swordplay (Chanbara fūfū), was edited by Heinosuke Gosho who tried to support the young filmmaker. The film was considered a success, and Naruse was allowed to direct the romance film Pure Love (Junjo). Both films, like the majority of his early works at Shōchiku, are regarded as lost. ==Reputation==

Naruse was described as serious and reticent, and even his closest and long-lasting collaborators like cinematographer Tamai Masao claimed to know nothing about him personally. He gave very few interviews Hideko Takamine remembered, "Even during the shooting of a picture, he would never say if anything was good, or bad, interesting or trite. He was a completely unresponsive director. I appeared in about 20 of his films, and yet there was never an instance in which he gave me any acting instructions." Tatsuya Nakadai recalled one instant during the filming of When a Woman Ascends the Stairs where Naruse yelled at an assistant director for drawing a cardboard eye to indicate the point of reference of Hideko Takamine's eyeline. On one occasion, Naruse gave advice to Kihachi Okamoto on being a director, telling him: "You should stick to your own ideas. If you run from left to right and back again to suit the changing times, the results will be hollow." ==Filmography==

Naruse is known as particularly exemplifying the Japanese concept of "mono no aware", the awareness of the transience of things, and a gentle sadness at their passing. "From the youngest age, I have thought that the world we live in betrays us", the director explained. relying on editing, lighting, acting and sets. ==Legacy==

A 1973 retrospective on Mikio Naruse was presented at Japan Society, then noted as the “first film series ever devoted exclusively to the work of Naruse.” Film scholar Audie Bock curated two extensive retrospectives on Naruse in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center (then The Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago) and New York at Japan Society and the Museum of Modern Art in 1984–1985. Retrospectives have also been held at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 1981 and 2006, at the Locarno Film Festival (1984), and at the Harvard Film Archive in 2005. ==Awards==

Floating Clouds and Flowing have been voted into the 2009 All Time Best Japanese Movies lists by readers and critics of Kinema Junpo. ==References==