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Satsuo Yamamoto
Satsuo Yamamoto in 1950.
Born	(1910-07-15)15 July 1910 Kagoshima City, Japan
Died	11 August 1983(1983-08-11) (aged 73) Tokyo
Occupation	Film director
Relatives	Kei Yamamoto (nephew)

Satsuo Yamamoto (山本 薩夫, Yamamoto Satsuo, 10 July 1910 – 11 August 1983) was a Japanese film director.

Yamamoto was born in Kagoshima City. After leaving Waseda University, where he had become affiliated with left-wing groups, he joined the Shochiku film studios in 1933, where he worked as an assistant director to Mikio Naruse. He followed Naruse when the latter moved to P.C.L. film studios (later Toho) and debuted as a director in 1937 with Ojōsan. During World War II he directed the propaganda films Winged Victory and Hot Winds before being drafted and sent to China.

After returning to Japan, Yamamoto's first film was War and Peace, co-directed with Fumio Kamei. Being a communist and an active supporter of the union during the Toho strikes, he left the studio in 1948 after the strikes' forced ending and turned to independent filmmaking. The commercially successful Street of Violence (1950) was produced by a committee named after the film's original title Bōryoku no machi, while the left-wing production company Shinsei Eiga-sha ("New star films"), formed by former Toho unionists, produced the anti-war film Vacuum Zone (1953), which film historian Donald Richie called "the strongest anti-military film ever made in Japan" in 1959. The 1959 Ballad of the Cart was produced by the National Rural Film Association and won him the Mainichi Film Award for Best Director.

In the 1960s, Yamamoto again worked for major companies like Daiei and Nikkatsu, directing films like Band of Assassins (1962), The Ivory Tower (1966) and Zatoichi the Outlaw (1967). He died in Tokyo on 11 August 1983, at the age of 73.

Selected filmography

Films

Awards

Kinema Junpo Awards

Yamamoto received the Kinema Junpo Award for Best Director for Ivory Tower, which was also awarded Best Film.

Blue Ribbon Awards

Yamamoto won the Blue Ribbon Award for Best Director for Shōnin no isu and Nippon dorobō monogatari (both 1965). Ivory Tower was awarded Best Film the following year.

Mainichi Fim Awards

Yamamoto was awarded Best Director at the Mainichi Film Awards for Ballad of the Cart and Ningen no kane (both 1959), Ivory Tower, Men and War and Barren Land. Ivory Tower, Barren Land and Nomugi Pass were winners in the Best Film category.

Festival prizes

Ivory Tower was entered into the 5th Moscow International Film Festival where it was awarded the Silver Prize.

Books

• Yamamoto Satsuo: My Life as a Filmmaker (私の映画人生, Watakushi no eiga jinsei), published in English in 2017 by University of Michigan Press, translated by Chia-ning Chang. - It is an autobiography that was first published after Yamamoto died.

References

1. ^ Jacoby, Alexander (2008). Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. ISBN 978-1-933330-53-2.
2. ^ "山本 薩夫 (Satsuo Yamamoto)". Kotobank (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 July 2021.
3. ^ "山本 薩夫 (Satsuo Yamamoto)". Kinenote (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 July 2021.
4. ^ Anderson, Joseph L.; Richie, Donald (1959). The Japanese Film – Art & Industry. Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company.
5. "戦争と平和 (War and Peace)". Kinenote (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 July 2021.
6. Hirano, Kyoko (1992). Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema Under the American Occupation, 1945–1952. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press. ISBN 978-1-56098157-2.
7. "暴力の街 (Street of Violence)". Kinenote (in Japanese). Retrieved 11 October 2021.
8. ^ "14th Mainichi Film Awards 1959" (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 July 2021.
9. "山本 薩夫 (Satsuo Yamamoto)". Japanese Movie Database (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 July 2021.
10. Filmography from "satsuo Yamamoto" (in Japanese). kinenote. Retrieved 12 November 2021.
11. "ブルーリボン賞ヒストリー (Blue Ribbon Award)" (in Japanese). Cinema Hochi. Archived from the original on 23 October 2008. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
12. "21st Mainichi Film Awards 1966" (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 July 2021.
13. "25th Mainichi Film Awards 1970" (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 July 2021.
14. "31st Mainichi Film Awards 1976" (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 July 2021.
15. "34th Mainichi Film Awards 1979" (in Japanese). Retrieved 17 July 2021.
16. "5th Moscow International Film Festival (1967)". MIFF. Archived from the original on 16 January 2013. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
17. Kitamura, Hiroshi (2018). "Review: My Life as a Filmmaker, by Yamamoto Satsuo; translated by Chia-ning Chang". The Journal of Japanese Studies. 44 (2): 457–460. doi:10.1525/jjs.2018.44.2.457 (inactive 1 November 2024).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link) - Also at Project MUSE.
18. My Life as a Filmmaker. University of Michigan Press. Retrieved 17 September 2024.

External links

• Satsuo Yamamoto at IMDb
• "Satsuo Yamamoto Special Program". Tokyo Filmex. Retrieved 23 August 2011.
• Kato, Mariko (31 January 2008). "SATSUO YAMAMOTO: Classic director remembered". The Japan Times. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
• "Satsuo Yamamoto, Director; Made Antiwar Films in Japan". The New York Times. 12 August 1983. Retrieved 17 July 2021.

Bibliography

• Yamamoto, Satsuo (2017). My life as a filmmaker. Chang, Chia-ning. Baltimore, Maryland: Project Muse. ISBN 9780472122493. OCLC 990075123.

• 1910 births
• 1983 deaths
• Japanese film directors
• People from Kagoshima