Japanese film critic Nagaharu Yodogawa dies (fwd)

moshi moshi crsg
Fri Nov 13 09:09:14 EST 1998


Sorry for the cross-posting. Is this news services information useful to
anyone? I'll stop forwarding it if it isn't, please just tell me.

Have a good day,
Olivier

"See more movies"

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 5:56:49 PST
From: AFP <C-afp at clari.net>
Newsgroups: clari.living.movies, clari.world.asia.japan,
    clari.world.asia+oceania
Subject: Japanese film critic Nagaharu Yodogawa dies

  	  				 
   TOKYO, Nov 12 (AFP) - Renowned Japanese film critic, Nagaharu  
Yodogawa, who helped introduce world cinema to Japan, has died in a 
Tokyo hospital aged 89, close associates said Thursday. 
   His death comes just two months after that of famed film  
director Akira Kurosawa, prompting media to brand 1998 a dark year 
for Japanese cinema. 
   Yodogawa, a Kobe native who first saw a movie at four, worked at  
a Japanese advertising branch for the US movie giant United Artists 
before World War II. 
   His friendship with comedy king Charlie Chaplin, dating back to  
their encounter aboard a ship off Kobe in 1935, has been a boost for 
Yodogawa who inspired other Japanese movie critics with his open-arm 
approach to movies at home and abroad. 
   "My god is cinema. Cinema is Chaplin," Yodogawa once said. "I  
think Chaplin is great for preaching about eating, working and 
loving in a straightfoward manner and acting it out that way." 
   Yodogawa, with a pair of scholarly spectacles and a disarming  
smile, amused Japanese television viewers for his commentary on the 
popular US Western series "Laramie" in the 1960s. 
   He then went on to charm the nation with his comments for a  
long-running Sunday night programme featuring foreign movie hits on 
a nationwide TV network. His last take was to be aired on December 
1. 
   Kurosawa's death appeared to have affected Yodogahawa as he said  
after attending the funeral for the director: "Mr. Kurosawa's movies 
all brimmed with humanism. I loved each and every one." 
   He added, "He will be missed but I won't cry. I have whispered  
to him, 'Thank you, Kuro-san. I will follow you soon.'" 
   In the final hour of his life, a comatose Yodogawa kept mumbling  
to people at his deathbed, "See more movies," associate Yamato 
Shiine told a press conference. 
   Kurosawa, renowned for his movies including "Rashomon", "Seven  
Samurai" and "The Shadow Warrior", succumbed to a stroke last 
September at the age of 88, nine months after Toshiro Mifune, the 
key actor of Japan's golden days of cinema, died at 77. 
  	   	







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