Mitsuo Wakasugi was a Japanese film director born in Oita, Kyushu, in 1922. He studied at Beppu Municipal Middle School and read law at Kyoto Imperial University. In 1947 he passed an assistant-director recruitment exam and joined Daiei's Kyoto studio, working under directors such as Marune Santaro and Akira Kurosawa; on Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950) he was first assistant director while his contemporary Tai Kato was second. In September 1950, caught up in the Japanese film industry's 'Red Purge', he resigned with Kato and turned to the theatre, later helping to found the Mingei Eiga company and working across film, television and stage. He directed his first film, about motherless children, in 1952, and two years later married the stage actress Yoko Minakaze. Among his more than fifty films are a 1953 drama dedicated to a life given for others, Tojin Aki (1954), Ishigassen (1955) starring Mitsuo Hamada, and a 1960 film starring Sayuri Yoshinaga; he also wrote the screenplay for Kei Nishikawa's new version of The Izu Dancer (1974). In 1957 he went with cinematographer Nishi Moto to Shaw and Sons in Hong Kong to shoot a Hong Kong-Korean Eastmancolor romance (1958). Regarded as the first Japanese director to work for Shaw, he was advised to adopt the Chinese name Wah Hak-ngai because of anti-Japanese feeling in South Korea, and during his Hong Kong stay he directed a black-and-white suspense thriller (1957) at the request of the star Yoshiko Yamaguchi (Li Xianglan). Serious in manner, his films often express anger at social injustice and a sincere love of humanity. He won a Soviet filmmakers' union award in 1972, and his last film was Star Ranch in 1987. He died on 18 December 2008.
As the first Japanese director hired by Shaw and Sons, Wakasugi Mitsuo brought Japanese studio technique to Hong Kong in 1957 when he shot a Hong Kong-Korean co-production and directed a thriller starring Li Xianglan. A former assistant director on Kurosawa's Rashomon, he went on to make more than fifty films marked by a concern for social injustice.
Achievements
- 1950 · Served as first assistant director on Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, with Tai Kato as second.
- 1957 · Became the first Japanese director to work for Shaw and Sons and directed a black-and-white suspense thriller in Hong Kong.
- 1972 · Won a Soviet filmmakers' union award for the film Women, Stand Up.