Teinosuke Kinugasa

Who was Teinosuke Kinugasa?

Teinosuke Kinugasa was a Japanese actor and film director. He was born in Kameyama, Mie Prefecture and died in Kyoto. Kinugasa won the 1954 Palme d'or at Cannes for Jigokumon.

Kinugasa was among the pioneers of Japanese film, but began his career as an actor specializing in female roles at the Nikkatsu studio. When Japanese cinema began using actresses in the early 1920s, he switched to directing and worked for such producers as Shozo Makino before going independent to make his best known film, A Page of Madness. Also called A Crazy Page, or A Page Out of Order, it was lost for fifty years before the director rediscovered it in his shed in 1971. A silent film, Kinugasa released it with a new print and score to world acclaim. He also directed the film Jujiro in 1928. He directed jidaigeki at the Shochiku studios, where he helped establish the career of Chōjirō Hayashi. After the war, he helmed big-budget costume productions for the Daiei studios.