Yanagisawa Hisao

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

The documentary filmmaker Yanagisawa Hisao died today at 2:15 pm in a 
hospital in Kyoto.  He was 83.

Yanagisawa was one of the leading documentarists in Japan.  He began his 
film career in the prewar working in regular feature films for Shochiku, 
before moving into documentary.  Most of his work was in the world of PR 
films until he turned independent in 1968.  His most famous films, 
including _Children Before the Dawn_ (1968), _Night and Morning Inside 
Myself_ (1971), _Pampering Is Not Allowed_ (1975), _Not That Way But 
This_ (1982), _Kaze to yukishi_ (1989), were concerned with the lives of 
the mentally challenged, especially children, making him one of the few 
filmmakers in Japan to seriously deal with the issue.  Yanagisawa's work 
was frequently featured at the Yamagata International Documentary Film 
Festival and he served as chair of the jury for the 1993 Asia Program.

He and his wife, Isoda Mitsuko, also ran a nice minshuku in Kyoto where 
some of us have stayed (I actually experienced the Kobe quake there!).  
It was always nice eating breakfast there and talking film with 
Yanagisawa Kantoku.

Markus can probably say more about Yanagisawa, but interested people may 
want to see the interview Markus did with Yanagisawa for Documentary Box 
No. 4.

His presence will be missed.


Aaron Gerow
Yokohama National University
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