Toshio Masuda (director)

Toshio Masuda was born in Kobe, Japan. His father was a seaman. He enrolled in a technical training school, however, his mindset did not mesh with the school's military indoctrination, and he was expelled in July 1945. He next attended the Osaka University of Foreign Studies (now Osaka University) where he specialized in Russian literature. There he became enamoured with French cinema, which led him away from Russian grammar and toward a career in the film industry. He thought he would have been bored as a salaryman and that filmmaking would better suit him but suggested he probably would not have followed through had his friends not sought similar careers. After graduating in 1949, he moved to Tokyo to study screenwriting at the Shintoho Studio's Scenario Academy. ==Career==

In 1950, the Shintoho Company hired Toshio Masuda. He worked as screenwriter and an assistant director under Umetsugu Inoue, Nobuo Nakagawa and Mikio Naruse. Masuda joined the studio as an assistant director and writer. He continued to write scripts for and with his mentor Inoue, who had also made the switch. He served as 1st assistant director to Kon Ichikawa on the sets of The Heart (1955) and The Burmese Harp (1956). Masuda was promoted to director in 1957 and debuted with A Journey of Body and Soul the following year. Rusty Knife (1958) marked Masuda's third film and first major hit. It starred Nikkatsu's top Diamond Line stars Yujiro Ishihara and Akira Kobayashi. They play two hoodlum brothers who attempt to go straight but witness a murder and find themselves pursued by the killers. The script was written by Ishihara's older brother, and future governor of Tokyo, Shintarō Ishihara. Masuda only directed the first film in the series but it provided another blueprint, this time to the studio's New Action subgenre, films which increased the sex and violence quotient while mirroring the tumultuous times of the late 1960s/early 1970s. The film depicts the attack on Pearl Harbor from the perspectives of both sides of the conflict. Masuda was responsible for the Japanese segments and asked director Kinji Fukasaku to join him, while American director Richard Fleischer filmed the American segments. Throughout the next 20 years Masuda helmed a string of major studio productions, including Catastrophe 1999: The Prophecies of Nostradamus (aka Last Days of Planet Earth, 1974) and three more big-budget war films for the Toei Company: The Battle of Port Arthur (1980), The Great Japanese Empire (1982) and The Battle of the Sea of Japan: Go to Sea (1983). He also made room for more intimate subject matter such as his High Teen Boogie (1982), in which a teenage biker falls in love with a straight-laced girl. The corporate drama Company Funeral (1989) was selected for the Kinema Junpo annual Best Ten list. Masuda's most recent feature film was the crime thriller Heavenly Sin (1992). It starred Sayuri Yoshinaga as a detective in near-future Tokyo and Omar Sharif as a Chinese Triad boss. Sharif replaced Yūsaku Matsuda who had died of cancer. The film was a critical and commercial failure. Masuda continues to direct and write for television. ==Filmmaking==

As an assistant director and screenwriter at both Shintoho and Nikkatsu Studios, Toshio Masuda apprenticed under a number of directors. He has said Mikio Naruse had the greatest impact on him. He credited Kon Ichikawa with teaching him how to use the camera. His primary mentor at Nikkatsu was Umetsugu Inoue from whom he learned the value of linking together large setpieces to draw in audiences. Masuda was more inclined toward drama than his mentor and created the setpieces but then incorporated character-based drama into his work. Despite production line genre work forming the bulk of his oeuvre, Masuda has always been able to express his views, even subversive ones, and reflect on societal issues through his films. ==Legacy==

Within the studio system, Toshio Masuda was a major figure in defining the Nikkatsu Action style. He has been called the studio's top action director and worked with the studio's biggest stars. He produced box office hits which are fondly remembered by Japanese fans into the 21st century, and are regarded as genre landmarks by Japanese critics. though Velvet Hustler was released on VHS cassette by Home Vision Entertainment on September 21, 2001 in North America. After the collapse of the studio system, Masuda's career continued unabated. Masuda's animated works, especially the Space Battleship Yamato series, are remembered by anime fans worldwide. The first Yamato film originally reached overseas audiences in 1978, including theatrical screenings in England and American television. A comprehensive, Japanese language book detailing Masuda's career was released in 2007, titled Masuda Toshio: The Complete Action Films of Giant Star Toshio Masuda ( Eiga kantoku Masuda Toshio: akushon eiga no kyosei Masuda Toshio no subete). It includes an extensive interview with Masuda, approximately 500 pictures, poster images of his 52 Nikkatsu films and notes on all 82 feature films. Widely neglected by Western critics, writer Mark Schilling dedicated a section of his 2007 book No Borders, No Limits: Nikkatsu Action Cinema to Masuda, predominately focusing on said cinema. No Borders, No Limits is an expanded edition of the version that accompanied the Nikkatsu Action Cinema retrospective Schilling programmed for the Far East Film Festival. The Criterion Collection has optioned a number of films from the retrospective to be made available for the first time in the North American home video market. ==Awards==

At the 1981 Japanese Academy Awards, Toshio Masuda was nominated for Best Director for his film The Battle of Port Arthur. He won the Kinema Junpo Readers' Choice Award for Best Film for the same film. In 1990, he was again nominated for Best Director at the Japanese Academy Awards for Company Funeral. He won in the same category at the Blue Ribbon Awards and the Mainichi Film Awards. ==Filmography==

Between 1958 and 1992, Toshio Masuda directed 82 feature films, 52 of those over the course of his decade with the Nikkatsu Company. He developed a reputation as a "hitmaker" and 16 of his films breached the top ten list for domestic Japanese box-office revenues. Only one other director has superseded that record. The following is a list of the 16 films. ==References==