Minoru Shibuya (渋谷実, Shibuya Minoru, 2 January 1907 – 20 December 1980) was a Japanese film director.

Minoru Shibuya
Born(1907-01-02)2 January 1907
Died20 December 1980(1980-12-20) (aged 73)
OccupationFilm director
Years active1937-1966

Career

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Born in Tokyo, Shibuya attended Keiō University but left before graduating.[1] He joined Shochiku in 1930 and worked as an assistant under Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse, and Heinosuke Gosho, before making his debut as a director in 1937.[2] Shibuya "worked with equal facility in comedy and melodrama, [and] made his mark as an ironic but compassionate chronicler of the difficulties of the early postwar period".[3]

One notable film was The Radish and the Carrot, which was supposed to be Ozu's next film before he died. But as the critic Chris Fujiwara notes, Shibuya's "films are a world apart from Ozu: harsh, sometimes strident, in tone, splashed with dark humor, tending to contort the human body or thrust it into the bottoms of violently modernist compositions".[3]

He directed over four dozen films between 1937 and 1966.

Selected filmography

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References

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  1. ^ "Shibuya Minoru". Nihon jinmei daijiten+Plus. Kōdansha. Retrieved 23 June 2011.
  2. ^ "Minoru Shibuya". Moving Image Source. Museum of the Moving Image. Retrieved 23 June 2011.
  3. ^ a b Fujiwara, Chris (9 February 2011). "Finished Business". Moving Image Source. Museum of the Moving Image. Retrieved 23 June 2011.
  4. ^ Joseph L. Anderson and Donald Richie. The Japanese Film: Art and Industry. New York: Grove Press, 1960, 177.
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