Yuzo Kawashima - Career

Career

Kawashima was born in Mutsu, Aomori in the Shimokita Peninsula. From his youth, he suffered from a paralysis that affected his right leg and arm. He was educated at Meiji University, where he was a member of the film study circle. He entered the Shōchiku studios in 1938 and served as an assistant director under Minoru Shibuya and Keisuke Kinoshita before directing his first film, Kaette kita otoko, in 1944. At Shōchiku after the war, he made many comedies before switching to Nikkatsu in 1955, when the studio resumed film production. There he made such notable works as Ai no onimotsu (1955), Suzaki paradise: Akashingō (1956), Gurama-tō no yūwaku (1959), Kashima ari (1959), and Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate (1957), which was later voted the fifth best Japanese film of all time in Kinema Junpō's poll of 140 film critics and filmmakers in 1999. In his remaining years, Kawashima worked at multiple studios—Daiei, Tokyo Eiga, and Toho—and especially focused on literary adaptations such as Gan no tera (1962), while still making the satirical works like Shitoyakana kedamono (1962) for which he was known.

Like many Japanese directors of the period, Kawashima was very prolific, completing 51 films during a career that only lasted 19 years. He died suddenly in 1963 of cor pulmonale. His grave in Mutsu bears one of the lines from Kashima ari: "Saying goodbye is all life is" (Sayonara dake ga jinsei da).