Tokuma Yasuyoshi

[Aaron Gerow]

The news reported that Tokuma Yasuyoshi, the president of Tokuma 
Publishing and the Daiei film company, and producer of many recent hits 
like Shall We Dance and Princess Mononoke,  died on the 20th of liver 
failure.  He was 78.

Tokuma moved his way up the publishing world before he bought Daiei after 
it went bankrupt, turning his Tokuma Group into a multimedia 
conglomerate.  At Daiei, he produced such works as Suo's Shall We Dance?, 
Kurosawa's Madadayo, and the recent Gamera films, and at Tokuma helped 
produce most of the Miyazaki films, from Nausicaa to Mononoke.  His 
largesse also created such big-budget epics and Dun Huang and 
Oroshiyakoku suimudan.

Tokuma was also instrumental in creating the Tokyo International Film 
Festival and was recently appointed director of the Tokyo Museum of 
Photography.

Aaron Gerow
Yokohama National University
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