Notes of an Itinerant Performer

Hiroshi Shimizu was born in Shizuoka Prefecture on March 28, 1903 and passed away in Kyoto on June 23, 1966. He dropped out of his studies at Hokkaido University in order to join Shochiku’s Kamata studio as an assistant director 1922. Promoted to the director by the age of 21 with his first film, Toge no Kanata (Beyond the Pass) (1924), he enjoyed a reputation of being a skillful director, particularly for melodramas and comedies. A “trial marriage” to the actress Kinuyo Tanaka in 1927 ended in divorce two years later. Shimizu directed 140 films for Shochiku up to and throughout World War 2.

After the war he established the Hachinosu Eiga studio in collaboration with several colleagues. This allowed him to work independently of the studios, and films such as Children of the Beehive (1948), where he employed homeless children he had taken in and raised himself, resulted. He also directed films for Shin-Toho and Daiei, the last of which, Hana no Omokage (Image of a Mother), he made in 1959. Shimizu directed a total of 163 films over his career.

Shimizu was highly regarded by the other master filmmakers of his era. Yasujiro Ozu, a close friend who was born in the same year, once declared, “I can’t shoot films like Shimizu,” while Kenji Mizoguchi is quoted as saying, “People like me and Ozu get films made by hard work, but Shimizu is a genius.” Disliking anything contrived, Shimizu preferred to improvise in his films, making frequent use of children and location shots and weaving lyrical stories that used Japan’s natural surroundings to maximum effect. The work of Hiroshi Shimizu are unique: full of wit and humor, and possessing a rare and special charm all their own. —shochikufilms.com