Toshio Masuda - Filmmaking

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 drawn in audiences. Masuda was more inclined towards drama than his mentor and created the setpieces but then incorporated character-based drama into his work.

Masude quickly climbed the Nikkatsu ranks to become a top director. The financial success of his star-studded action films, beginning with Yujiro Ishihara in Rusty Knife, ensured that studio heads would continue to assign him top stars and action films. He continued to write for his own films but mostly due to time constraints as he would have preferred to hire other writers, which did after he left the studio. The films were made quickly and largely without studio supervision. In one example, Ishihara began drawing huge audiences with The Guy Who Started a Storm which was released during the 1957 New Years season. Theatre owners were displeased that there were no further Ishihara films scheduled before Golden Week of the following year. The studio then order Masuda to make a film with Ishihara in 10 days. Producer Takiko Mizunoe brought him a script by Shintarō Ishihara. Masuda found it much too long to be completed in the given time, rewrote it and then completed the film within 12 or 13 days.

Many of the settings and style he used in his films came from European and Hollywood cinema but he framed it all in a Japanese context, in the spirit of "borderless" action cinema. He did not want to make typical films and the more European flavour of his work set him apart from many of his contemporaries. He made many yakuza films but considered them "youth films" put in a yakuza setting, favouring human drama over verisimilitude. The actors were also favoured over a distinctive visual style which, as writer Jasper Sharp suggested, may have accounted for his popular success in the star-based studio system. 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.