Recently, the Japanese film company "Hyōgensha" issued an obituary, saying that its founder, director Masahiro Shinoda, who was world-famous for works such as "Skynet Island in the Heart", "The Blind Girl Aling", "Naga Spear Gonzo", and "Boyhood", died of pneumonia at 4:55 a.m. local time on March 25 at the age of 94.
According to Shinoda Masahiro's wife, actress Shima Iwashita, "For the past four years, he has been struggling with Parkinson's disease, but he was still able to maintain a normal life. However, in January this year, he fell and broke his bones, and in March he contracted pneumonia and eventually died."
Masahiro Shinoda
Like Japanese actor Toshiyuki Nishida, who passed away in October last year, director Masahiro Shinoda also joined the Japan-China Cultural Exchange Association very early and served as a representative director for a long time. He has visited China many times to participate in exchange activities, and his last film, "Spy Sorge" (2003), was filmed in cooperation with Shanghai Film Studio. In 2021, the "Tribute to the Master" unit of the Shanghai International Film Festival specially planned a retrospective of Masahiro Shinoda's works and screened many of his masterpieces.
Poster of "Spy Sorge"
Masahiro Shinoda was born in 1931 in a well-off family in Gifu City. His father and brother ran an electric motor factory. He loved sports since he was young, especially running. When he was studying at the Faculty of Literature of Waseda University, he participated in the famous Hakone Ekiden as a member of the long-distance running team. After graduating from university, Masahiro Shinoda joined Shochiku Films, which was full of young talents, in 1953. He started as an assistant director and soon directed his first film, "One-Way Ticket to Love", on his own.
When he was at Shochiku, Shinoda Masahiro, Oshima Nagisa, and Yoshishige Yoshida were regarded as the leaders of the "Shochiku New Wave". All three of them were born in the early 1930s, and they all admired the new generation of European filmmakers, including the works of Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Alain Resnais, Antonioni, etc. They also followed the example of their French "New Wave" comrades of similar age and started a magazine to criticize old-school directors such as Ozu Yasujiro and Kinoshita Keisuke for sticking to the rules.
Stills from "Dry Lake"
In 1960, Shinoda Masahiro approached the then unknown poet Shuji Terayama, who made a living by writing radio dramas, and asked him to adapt Eiji Hazel's novel "The Dry Lake" into a film script. The film tells the story of a young man who rebelled against his family and joined the student movement. It received a good response after its release. This collaboration also thoroughly inspired Shuji Terayama's interest in film. Shinoda Masahiro also wrote the scripts for "Blushing Face in the Sunset" and "Epitaph of My Love" released in 1961. Later, Shuji Terayama also took up the director's baton. It is not an exaggeration to call Shinoda the mentor of Terayama on the road to film. In addition, the young composer Toru Takemitsu, who was only a few months older than Shinoda, also joined his regular team. The avant-garde soundtrack made his works more in tune with the pulse of the times.
Due to differences in ideas, young directors such as Oshima Nagisa and Yoshida Yoshishige broke with Shochiku and left. After filming "Strange Story of Sarutobi Sasuke" in 1965, Shinoda Masahiro became a freelance director because he was dissatisfied with the company's reform plan, and then established the independent film production company "Performance Company". Since then, his works have gradually broken away from the influence of the French "New Wave" and turned to pursue the aesthetic style of Japanese aestheticism. Most of his works are costume films, including "The Skynet Island in the Heart", "The Scoundrel", "Under the Full Bloom of the Cherry Forest", "Silence", "Himiko", "The Blind Girl Ling", "Nagako Gonzo", etc.
Stills from "The Lonely Blind Girl Aling"
Stills from "Sakura Forest in Full Bloom"
However, this does not mean that Masahiro Shinoda became complacent due to the setbacks in reality. On the contrary, he embarked on a bold experimental path of deconstructing the classical Japanese stage art form with gorgeous visual language. For example, in "Heart Net Island" adapted from the play of Chikamatsu Monzaemon, he introduced the performance system of the puppet Joruri, and through the appearance of the backstage set staff (Kuroko), projected the attitude of ordinary people towards the tragic fate of the protagonist. The film won the first place in the "Film Junpo" annual top ten films; and in "The Rascal", he explored how to depict the artistic conception of Kabuki on the screen.
The famous Japanese film critic Sato Tadao spoke highly of Shinoda Masahiro's works during this period: "As long as the subject of Japanese history passes through his hands, it is no longer like the old costume films that portray the heroic and majestic samurai and the humane and sad lower-class citizens as two extremes. It is no longer a monotonous world bound by feudalism, but a world full of vitality decorated by people's colorful emotions."
Sato Tadao also praised Shinoda for his progressiveness in breaking the past tradition of period films that often feature men as protagonists. He believed that his works "denied the idea of men as the center, gave equal roles to both men and women, and even had a large number of works centered on women." "In his period films, men learned how to be a real man from the charming and seductive women." (History of Japanese Cinema, Fudan University Press)
Stills from Boyhood
After entering the 1990s, Shinoda Masahiro's creative cycle gradually lengthened, but he still directed masterpieces such as "Boyhood", "Sharaku", and "Setouchi Moonlight Serenade". Among them, "Boyhood", adapted from Fujiko Fujio's A manga and featuring a Tokyo boy who went to the countryside to escape the war, won the 14th Japan Academy Awards for Best Film and Best Director. In 2003, Shinoda Masahiro completed "Spy Sorge", which took 10 years to conceive and cost 2 billion yen, and ended his more than 40 years of directing career.
In addition to his works, Shinoda Masahiro is most praised by people in and outside the circle for his deep love with Iwashita Shima, who starred in most of his works. He had a short marriage with his classmate at Waseda University, poet and translator Shiraishi Kazuko.
When filming his second work, "The Dry Lake," Shinoda met actor Shima Iwashita. Shima Iwashita, who is ten years younger than him, not only has a face as bright as ice porcelain, but also has stunning eyes when he raises his eyes, and his acting skills are also very good. They are a director and an actor, and they love each other and have similar interests. When Masahiro Shinoda decided to leave Shochiku and choose a creative path full of unknowns and fighting alone, Shima Iwashita also resolutely followed him, and the two got married in 1967. At first, this marriage was not favored by the outside world, but as time went on, Masahiro Shinoda became the envy of his peers in the film industry.
Masahiro Shinoda and Shima Iwashita when they were young
"It is because of meeting Shinoda that I can portray various characters in many works. Today, I really have to thank him. Shinoda once said, 'We are like two people possessed by the monster of movie, always working together to conquer it.' For such Shinoda, I am full of gratitude." Iwashita Shima, who lost his partner, said, "We have walked through 58 years of life together. Now my heart is filled with endless sadness and loss."
