Masahiro Shinoda - Career

Career

Shinoda attended Waseda University, where he studied theater and also participated in the Hakone Ekiden long distance race. He joined the Shōchiku Studio in 1953 as an assistant director, where he worked on films by such directors as Yasujirō Ozu. He debuted as a director in 1960 with One-Way Ticket for Love, which he also scripted. His focus on youth and the cultural and political turmoil of 1960s Japan made him a central figure in the Shōchiku New Wave alongside Nagisa Ōshima and Yoshishige Yoshida. He worked in a variety of genres, from the yakuza film (Pale Flower) to the samurai film (Assassination), but he particularly became known for his focus on socially marginal characters and for an interest in traditional Japanese theater, which found its greatest expression in Double Suicide, in which actors are manipulated like Bunraku puppets. He also was interested in sports, directing a documentary on the 1972 Winter Olympics. Also known for his collaborations with such artists as Shūji Terayama and Tōru Takemitsu, Shinoda left Shōchiku in 1965 to form his own production company, Hyōgensha.

His 1986 film Gonza the Spearman was entered into the 36th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear for an outstanding artistic contribution. He won the 1991 Japan Academy Prize for Director of the Year for Childhood Days. In 1997, his film Moonlight Serenade was entered into the 47th Berlin International Film Festival. He also won the Izumi Kyōka Prize in 2010 for a novel (Shinoda himself had earlier adapted a Kyōka novel to the screen in the 1979 Demon Pond).

He married the actress Shima Iwashita, who appears in several of his films, in 1967. He retired from directing after the release of Spy Sorge in 2003, a biopic on the life of Richard Sorge.