"Colored Lips" - Colored Lips

He is known as a master of literary films that created a trend in Japanese film history. Born in Kyoto, after graduating from Kyoto Prefectural First Middle School, he moved to Tokyo to aspire to be a playwright, but by chance he met pioneering Japanese film director Eizo Tanaka, who encouraged him to write screenplays. He then became assistant director to Yasujiro Shimazu at Shochiku's Kamata Studio, and became a director with "Colored Lips" (1929), based on his own script inspired by Haruo Sato's novel "Mari the Prostitute." After that, he had to work another five years as an assistant director, but in 1936 he joined Tokyo Sound Film Productions, which had been founded the previous year by Shochiku director Shigemune Kazunobu (1896-1971) (it was dissolved and absorbed into Toho in 1941). He gained recognition for his fresh film adaptation of Ishizaka Yojiro's best-selling novel, "Young People" (1937), which depicted free morals in an American mission school in the north of the country, and became known as a first-class director.

*Some of the terminology that refers to "Colored Lips" is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

…日本映画史に一つの流れをつくった〈文芸映画〉の名匠として知られる。京都に生まれ，府立一中を卒業後，東京へ出て劇作家を志すが，偶然の機縁で知り合った日本映画の先駆的監督田中栄三にシナリオを書くことをすすめられ，次いで松竹蒲田撮影所の島津保次郎の助監督となり，佐藤春夫の小説《売笑婦マリ》からヒントを得た自作の脚本による《彩られる唇》(1929)で監督となった。その後，ふたたび5年間の助監督生活を余儀なくされるという曲折があったが，1936年，松竹の監督であった重宗和伸(1896‐1971)が前年に設立した東京発声映画製作所に入社し(1941年，解散して東宝に吸収される)，北国のアメリカ系ミッション･スクールを舞台に自由なモラルを描いた石坂洋次郎のベストセラー小説をみずみずしい手法で映画化した《若い人》(1937)で認められ，一流監督として知られるようになった。…

※「《彩られる唇》」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

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