Hiroshi Teshigahara

Birthday: 1927-01-28
Deathday: 2001-04-14
Birthplace: Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan
Gender: Male

Hiroshi Teshigahara (January 28, 1927 – April 14, 2001) was an avant-garde Japanese filmmaker.

He was born in Tokyo, son of Sofu Teshigahara, founder and grand master of the Sogetsu School of ikebana. He graduated in 1950 from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and began working in documentary film. He directed his first feature film, Pitfall (1962), in collaboration with author Kōbō Abe and musician Tōru Takemitsu. The film won the NHK New Director's award, and throughout the 1960s, he continued to collaborate on films with Abe and Takemitsu while simultaneously pursuing his interest in ikebana and sculpture on a professional level.

In 1965, the Teshigahara/Abe film Woman in the Dunes (1964) was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1972, he worked with Japanese researcher and translator John Nathan to make the movie Summer Soldiers, a film set during the Vietnam War about American deserters living on the fringe of Japanese society.

From the mid-1970s onwards, he worked less frequently on feature films as he concentrated more on documentaries, exhibitions and the Sogetsu School and became grand master of the school in 1980.

In 1978, Teshigahara Hiroshi directed the final two episodes of the long running and popular Japanese television series Shin Zatouichi, starring Shintarō Katsu as the blind wandering Yakuza. During Akira Kurosawa's 5 year hiatus from filmmaking, he watched a lot of television and was particularly taken by the final episode of Shin Zatouichi - Episode: Journey of Dreams (1978). The influence of this particular episode included the initial casting of Shintaro Katsu in the lead roles in Kagemusha and the extended artistic dream sequences contributed to those seen in Kagemusha (1980).

On the first anniversary of his death, April 14, 2002, a DVD box set containing his best known work was released in Japan in commemoration.

Credits

Year Title
1992-04-11 Basara: The Princess Goh
1989-09-15 Rikyu
1984-05-25 Antonio Gaudí
1981-01-01 Moving Sculpture: Jean Tinguely
1972-03-25 Summer Soldiers
1970-03-15 240 Hours in One Day
1968-06-01 The Man Without a Map
1967-02-04 Explosion Course
1966-07-15 The Face of Another
1965-03-04 Jose Torres II
1964-08-31 Ako
1964-08-19 That Tender Age
1964-02-15 Woman in the Dunes
1962-07-01 Pitfall
1962-05-15 Sculptures by Sofu - Vita
1959-01-30 Jose Torres
1959-01-01 Gaudi, Catalunya
1958-04-24 Tokyo 1958
1957-05-14 Ikebana
1955-05-18 12 Photographers
1953-01-01 Hokusai