Yoshida Kiju

Yoshida Kiju

YOSHIDA Kiju (Yoshida Yoshishige) (1933, Japan) is an eminent master of the modern Japanese art cinema, with a career spanning half a century. Yoshida burst upon the film scene in 1960 with his raw debut, Good for Nothing. The classic melodrama The Affair at Akitsu (1962) marked Yoshida’s first collaboration with the star actress Okada Mariko. Before long they became inseparable, both privately and professionally, and they established their own independent production company, Gendai Eigasha. Okada also starred in the six so-called ‘anti-melodramas’ Yoshida made. From 1968 onwards, Yoshida became completely independent. In this period, a strong political element entered his oeuvre. Later he made three moving films on euthanasia, patriarchy and, in his most recent film The Woman in the Mirror (2002), the atom bomb.

Filmography

Roku de nashi/Good for Nothing (1960), Arashi o yobu juhachinin/The Eighteen Who Stirred up a Storm (1963), Akitsu onsen/The Affair at Akitsu (1962), Mizu de kakareta monogatari/A Story Written on Water (1965), Erosu purasu gyakusatsu/Eros + Massacre (1969), Kaigenrei/Coup d’état (1973), The Human Promise (1986), Wuthering Heights (1988), Kagami no onnatachi/The Women in the Mirror (2002)