Keisuke Kinoshita 木下 惠介 Kinoshita Keisuke December 5 1912 December 30 1998 was a Japanese film director Hugely popular in his home country of Japan Keisuke Kinoshita worked tirelessly as a director for nearly half a century making lyrical sentimental films that often center on the inherent goodness of people especially in times of distress He began his directing career during a most challenging time for Japanese cinema World War II when the industrys output was closely monitored by the state and often had to be purely propagandistic He refused to be bound by genre technique or dogma Kinoshita excelled in almost every genre comedy tragedy social dramas period films He shot all films on location or in a onehouse set He pursued severe photographic realism with the long take longshot method and went equally far toward stylization with fast cutting intricate wipes tilted cameras and even classical scrollpainting and Kabuki stage technique Kinoshita was highly prolific turning out some 42 films in the first 23 years of his career For this Kinoshita explained that he cant help it Ideas for films have always just popped into my head like scraps of paper into a wastebasket While lesserknown internationally than contemporaries such as Akira Kurosawa Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujirō Ozu he was a household figure in his home country beloved by both critics and audiences from the 1940s to the 1960s Although few concrete details have emerged about Kinoshitas personal life his homosexuality was widely known in the film world Screenwriter and frequent collaborator Yoshio Shirasaka recalls the brilliant scene Kinoshita made with the handsome welldressed assistant directors he surrounded himself with His 1959 film Farewell to Spring Sekishuncho has been called Japans first gay film for the emotional intensity depicted between its male characters Kinoshita received the Order of the Rising Sun in 1984 and was awarded the Order of Culture in 1991 by the Japanese government He died on December 30 1998 of a stroke His grave is in Engakuji in Kamakura very near to that of his fellow Shochiku director Yasujirō Ozu
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