Shōhei Imamura

Imamura was born to an upper-middle-class doctor's family in Tokyo in 1926. For a short time following the end of the war, Imamura participated in the black market selling cigarettes and liquor. He studied Western history at Waseda University, but spent more time participating in theatrical and political activities.[1] He cited a viewing of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon in 1950 as an early inspiration, and said he saw it as an indication of the new freedom of expression possible in Japan in the post-war era.[3]

Upon graduation from Waseda in 1951, Imamura began his film career working as an assistant to Yasujirō Ozu at Shochiku Studios on films like Early Summer and Tokyo Story.[1] Imamura was uncomfortable with the image of Japanese society portrayed in Ozu's films,[3] as well as with his rigid directing of actors,[1] although he later admitted that he profited from his apprenticeship for Ozu in terms of gaining technical knowledge.[4] While Imamura's films were to have a quite different style from Ozu's, Imamura, like Ozu, was to focus on what he saw as particularly Japanese elements of society in his films. "I've always wanted to ask questions about the Japanese, because it's the only people I'm qualified to describe," he said. He expressed surprise that his films were appreciated overseas, even doubting that they could be understood.[3]

Imamura left Shochiku in 1954 to join the Nikkatsu studios, where he worked as an assistant director to Yūzō Kawashima. According to Donald Richie, Imamura shared with Kawashima an interest in depicting the "real" Japan with its "uncivilized", amoral protagonists, in opposition to the "official" version as depicted in the films of Ozu, Mizoguchi Kenji, and late career Kurosawa.[5] He also co-wrote the screenplay to Kawashima's Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate, and much later edited a book about Kawashima, entitled Sayonara dake ga jinsei da.[6]

In 1958, Imamura made his directorial debut at Nikkatsu, Stolen Desire, about a travelling theater troupe which combines kabuki with striptease, a film which, according to Jonathan Rosenbaum, "characteristically finds some vitality in vulgarity".[7] He continued to direct films the studio had assigned him to, including Nishi Ginza Station, a comedy based on a Frankie Nagai pop song, and the black comedy Endless Desire.[8][9] My Second Brother, which portrayed a community of zainichi in a poor mining town, was described by Alexander Jacoby as an "uncharacteristically tender film".[2]

His 1961 satire Pigs and Battleships, of which Imamura later said that it was the kind of film he always had wanted to make,[4] depicted black market trades between the U.S. military and the local underworld at Yokosuka. Due to the film's controversial nature[10] and Imamura's overrunning production time and costs,[11] Nikkatsu did not allow Imamura to direct another project for two years, forcing him to concentrate on screenwriting.[11] He followed this hiatus with the 1963 The Insect Woman, which was shown in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, and the 1964 Unholy Desire. All three films presented female protagonists who were survivors, persevering despite misfortunes. Imamura disliked the self-sacrificing women portrayed in films like Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu and Mikio Naruse's Floating Clouds, arguing that "they don't really exist...My heroines are true to life".[5]

In 1965, Imamura established his own production company, Imamura Productions. His first independent feature was a free adaptation of a novel by Akiyuki Nosaka, The Pornographers (1966), which is nowadays regarded as one of his best-known films in the West.[12][13] In 1967, he followed with the pseudo-documentary A Man Vanishes,[2] which, while following a woman searching for her missing fiancé, increasingly blurred the line between non-fiction and fiction. His 1968 film Profound Desires of the Gods investigated the clash between modern and traditional societies on a southern Japanese island. One of Imamura's more ambitious and costly projects, this film's poor box-office performance led to a retreat back into smaller productions, causing him to direct a series of documentaries over the next decade, often for Japanese television.[14]

History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess and Karayuki-san, the Making of a Prostitute were two of these projects, both focusing on one of his favorite themes: Strong women who survive on the periphery of Japanese society. Two others followed Japanese ex-soldiers in Malaysia and Thailand reluctant to returning home, and speaking openly about their past war crimes on camera.[14]

Imamura returned to fiction with the 1979 Vengeance Is Mine, based on the true story of serial killer Akira Nishiguchi. Two large-scale remakes followed, Eijanaika (1981), a re-imagining of Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate, and The Ballad of Narayama (1983), a re-telling of Keisuke Kinoshita's 1958 The Ballad of Narayama. For the latter, Imamura received his first Palme d'Or at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival.

Black Rain (1989) portrayed the effect of the bombing of Hiroshima on a family years after the incident. Film scholar Alexander Jacoby discovered an uncommon, "almost Ozu-like quietism" in this film.[2] The Eel (1997) again secured Imamura a Palme d'Or, this time shared with Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry.

Starting with The Eel, Imamura's eldest son Daisuke Tengan worked on the screenplays of his films, including Imamura's contribution to the anthology film 11'09"01 September 11 (2002), his last directorial effort. In 2002, Imamura played the role of a historian in the South Korean film 2009: Lost Memories.[15]

Imamura died on 30 May 2006, aged 79.