ICHIKAWA KON

born Nov. 20, 1915, Ise, Japan Japanese motion-picture director who introduced sophisticated Western-style comedy to Japan in the 1950s. Later he became concerned with more serious subjects such as antiwar sentiment and modern man's search for identity. Ichikawa graduated from the Ichioka Commercial School in Osaka. He worked in the animation department at the J.O. motion-picture studio in Kyoto and entered the Toho Motion Picture Company in 1942, when J.O. was merged with Toho. He made his first motion picture, Musume Dojo-ji (The Girl at Dojo Temple), in 1946 for the Shintoho Motion Picture Company. Sambyaku rokujugo ya (1948; Three Hundred and Sixty-five Nights) was his first big box-office success. He collaborated with his wife, Wada Natto, a screenwriter, on the screenplays for many of his early films. In the 1950s, Ichikawa and Wada developed the genre of the verbally witty comedy in Japan in such pictures as Ashi ni sawatta onna (1953; The Woman Who Touched the Legs), a remake of an earlier silent comedy, and Pu-san (1953; Mr. Pu). Two of Ichikawa's later features, Biruma no tategoto (1956; The Burmese Harp) and Nobi (1959; Fires on the Plain), are strong antiwar statements. Of the films that followed, Kagi (1959; Odd Obsession), Bonchi (1960); Kuroi junin no onna (1961; Ten Dark Women), Yukinojo henge (1963; The Revenge of Yukinojo), and Matatabi (1973; The Wanderers) are notable for Ichikawa's delicate treatment of the material and the strikingly beautiful visual composition of each scene. One of his greatest achievements was the documentary Tokyo Orimpikku (1965; Tokyo Olympiad), in which he emphasized the attitudes and responses of the spectators and competitors over the outcome of the events. His later work included a serialization of The Tale of Genji and a number of popular suspense melodramas.