Ichikawa, Kon

Ichikawa was born in Ise, Mie Prefecture as Giichi Ichikawa. In his teens he was fascinated by Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies and decided to become an animator. He attended a technical school in Osaka. Upon graduation, in 1933, he found a job with a local rental film studio, J.O Studio, in their animation department. Decades later, he told the American writer on Japanese film Donald Richie, "I'm still a cartoonist and I think that the greatest influence on my films (besides Chaplin, particularly The Gold Rush) is probably Disney." Passed away on February 13, 2008 of pneumonia at the age of 92.

Ichikawa's films are marked with a certain darkness and bleakness, punctuated with sparks of humanity. It can be said that his main trait is technical expertise, irony, detachment and a drive for realism married with a complete spectrum of genres. Some critics class him with Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujirou Ozu as one of the masters of Japanese cinema.

(Source: Wikipedia)