Vitro Nasu

The Professor and His Beloved Equation

Japanese director Takashi Koizumi

Director Koizumi was the assistant director to the late Japanese maestro Akira Kurosawa on five of his final major films: Ran, Kagemusha, Dreams, Madadayo, and Rhapsody in August and was an uncredited assistant to the director on a sixth one Dersu Uzala. The Kurosawa connection to the Koizumi film continues. The cinematographer Shoji Ueda too was the cinematographer of five of those films, the actor Akira Terao (who plays the professor) was a lead actor in Ran and Madadayo, so too, actor Hisashi Ogawa (who plays the brief role of the housekeeper agent) is a stock Kurosawa actor. Even though Kurosawa had nothing to do with this film, his trusted collaborators were the principal contributors to The Professor and His Beloved Equation. Kurosawa would have been proud because the film apart from mathematics briefly introduces Japanese culture and the essentially Japanese Noh theatre to any uninitiated viewer as well.

Author of “The Housekeeper and the Professor”
Yoko Ogawa (Previous Post)

(Robert Mitchum and Keiko Kishi in Yakuza directed by Sydney Pollack)
Keiko Kishi wiki (born August 11, 1932 in Yokohama, Japan)

Keiko Kishi Live Talk Show will be on October 11, 2020

Kishi Keiko is an actress, writer, UNESCO Ambassader and a recipient of legion d’honneur from the French gov’t. She was in “Early Spring” directed by Ozu with Ryo Ikebe. Masaki Kobayashi directed Kishi in 3 films, Inheritance,I will Buy You, Kwaidan, she co-starred again with Ryo Ikebe in “Snow Country.”
She made more than four films with Ichikawa Kon, including “Sasame Yuki – Makioka Sisters” “Younger Brother” … Sydney Pollack directed her in Yakuza with Robert Mitchum and Takakura Ken.

Ryo Ikebe and Keiko Kishi in “Snow Country”

Author of Snow Countray Kawabata Yasunari was at her wedding when she married Yves Ciampi in Paris.

Makioka Sisters

Sasame Yuki -(Makioka Sisters – adapted from a novel by Junichiro Tanizaki)

Kon Ichikawa

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(Kishi Keiko with Mishima and Jean Cocteau)

(Early Spring – Kishi Keiko and Ryo Ikebe – directed by Ozu Yasujiro)

Inheritance MUBI – Masaki Kobayashi

(Keiko Kishi with Jean Cocteau – 1960)
From Kishi’s autobiography “Ma Vie A La Carte”, Kishi wrote that as a teenager she saw Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast” 5 times, never imagined that she would in 10 0r 12 years later be directed by Cocteau for his last play at the theater. (Shadow Picture – the Wife of Wet Coat).
(Unable to find any information about this production).

Happy birthday Kiyoshi Kurosawa!

Kiyoshi Kurosawa Letterboxed

Kiyoshi Kurosawa (born July 19, 1955) is a Japanese filmmaker. He is best known for his many contributions to the Japanese horror genre.

“Cure” is in this list, Best Japanese film every year – BFI

Tokyo Sonata

Interview Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Tahar Rahim (Film Comment)

More photos (Pinterest)

(Self Portrait)

Japan Times -Arts, Mistress of the dark

Some of Kon’s recent work has been created in Mexico and it’s not difficult to see a correspondence between their macabre festivity and the visual traditions of the Day of the Dead festivities. In a pointed departure from her usual depiction of imaginary and/or inanimate, objects, Kon appears in a self-portrait with her face made up as a skull. She cradles a doll in her lap with one hand, while holding on to the brim of her sombrero with the other, as though it might blow away in the wind. It’s an odd mix of poised calculation and kitschy tourist snapshot that doesn’t fit comfortably with the main body of her work.

Red Beard, Mifune played a good doctor.
The last time Toshiro Mifune and Kurosawa worked together. The film took one year to make.

(Throne of Blood)

(Idiot – based on Dostoevsky – 1951, Masayuki Mori, Setsuko Hara and Toshiro Mifune)

Yoshiko Yamaguchi and Mifune Toshiro from Scandal directed by Akira Kurosawa.
(A very funny photo – the dude on the right looks like Henry Miller )

Shinobu Hashimoto and Akira Kurosawa (made history with Rashomon, Seven Samurai and Ikiru)

RIP Ikko Narahara (Mainichi JP)

TOKYO (Kyodo) — Ikko Narahara, an internationally renowned photographer widely viewed as a precursor of photographic expression in postwar Japan, has died of heart failure at a nursing facility in Tokyo, his family said Monday. He was 88.

Ikko Narahara 31 Best

(Roller-Skating Rink, Colorado 1972)
via MoMa

See more Ikko Narahara – Photos from a Master of Photography blog here.

(Two Garbage Cans)

Oharu
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi , Tanaka Kinuyo as Oharu.. she was his muse.

(Toshiro Mifune and Kinuyo Tanaka in Wedding Ring)

Dragnet Girl
Ozu’s silent film.

More Photos of Kinuyo Tanaka

Kinuyo Tanaka, Women film Pioneer Project, Columbia Edu

The Life of Oharu, Mifune Toshiro and Kinuyo Tanaka directed by Mizoguchi

Via

Isamu Noguchi and Saburo Hasegawa: A Friendship Nearly Lost to Art History

Even decades after Saburo Hasegawa’s death, the artist and designer Isamu Noguchi would describe his friendship with Hasegawa as an “everlasting conversation.”

<> <>How Noguchi SF Story Transformed Asian art & culture

Saburo Hasegawa, Isamu Noguchi and YoshikoYamaguchi at Uransenke Konnichi-an estate,Kyoto, c. 1952

Tea Ceremony At Eames house

Drinking Tea Tom Sachs (see many photos, including Isamu Noguchi, Charlie Chaplin tea ceremony photo).

Noguchi went to the Camp to help (New Yorker)

Noguchi Garden
Isamu Noguchi previous post (See his Rose Garden in Jerusalem)

Yoshiko Yamaguchi
and Isamu Noguchi

Kaoru Yachigusa passed away

Kaoru Yachigusa, actress in “Samurai, The Legend of Musashi,” dies

(Yachigusa Kaoru and Toshiro Mifune in Samurai, The Legend of Musashi”)

She was a member of Takarazuka Revue

Yachigusa, who started her career in the all-women Takarazuka Revue, gained popularity through her role as Otsu in the 1954 film, known as “Miyamoto Musashi” in Japan, which featured Toshiro Mifune as the swordsman Musashi. The film won the Honorary Foreign Language Film Award at the Oscars in 1956.
She appeared in a number of other films, including Japanese-Italian musical “Madame Butterfly” and “Yukiguni.”

(Mariko Kaga and Kaoru Yachigusa in With Beauty and Sorrow based on Kawabata Yasunari. )

Kaoru Yachigusa was in “Yukiguni” with Kishi Keiko see previous post on Kawabata Yasunari

Nobuo Sekine
Artsy Obit

Nobuo Sekine (1942–2019)
Conceptual artist Nobuo Sekine—whose ephemeral, site-specific sculptural and installation works were associated with Mono-ha (the School of Things), the postwar Japanese art movement active in the late 1960s to the mid ’70s—died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was seventy-six years old.(Artforum Obit)

(Historical Photographs)

(Phase of Nothingness – Cloth and Stones)

Nobuo Sekine and his Phase of Nothingness (1969) installed at the Japanese Pavilion, 35th Venice Biennale, 1970. Photo by Yoriko Kushigemachi. © Nobuo Sekine.

(Kyo Machiko in Floating Weeds directed by Ozu Yasujiro)

Kyodo news obit

Machiko Kyo, internationally acclaimed Japanese actress, dies at 95

Kyo Machiko (wiki)

Kyō continued to act through her 80’s. Her final role was as “Matsuura Shino” in the NHK television drama series Haregi Koko Ichiban in 2000. In 2017 she was presented with an award of merit at the 40th Japanese Academy Awards.[1] After retiring from film, she moved back to Osaka, where she resided until her death.
Kyō never married, although her romantic relationship with Daiei’s president Masaichi Nagata was well-publicized in her native country.
Kyō died from heart failure on May 12, 2019. She was 95

(Kyo Machiko with Marlon and Glenn Ford from the Tea House of the August Moon)

Her sole role in a non-Japanese film was as the young geisha Lotus Blossom from The Teahouse of the August Moon opposite Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination.

Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa)

(Rashomon – Kurosawa, cinematography by Miyagawa)

(The Face of Another, Kyo Machiko directed by Teshigahara)

Street of Shame
Kenji Mizoguchi and actresses on the set of his film “Street of Shame (Akasen Chitai)

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Photo by Fung Lin Hall (Scottsdale, Arizona)

The Dolls – (Directed by Takeshi Kitano, Poland gave this the best film award – costume design by Yoji Yamamoto)

Name these girls – Happy Hinamatsuri album

Google Hinamatsuri

The custom of displaying dolls began during the Heian period. Formerly, people believed the dolls possessed the power to contain bad spirits. Hinamatsuri traces its origins to an ancient Japanese custom called hina-nagashi (雛流し, lit. “doll floating”), in which straw hina dolls are set afloat on a boat and sent down a river to the sea, supposedly taking troubles or bad spirits with them.(via wiki)