Curated playlist
Japanese film directors
- Kenzō MasaokaKenzo Masaoka was the first in Japan to put recorded sound into animation. Before him, film sound was live.
- Noburō ŌfujiNoburō Ōfuji animated with patterned handmade Japanese paper. He used washi, including Edo chiyogami.
- Mitsuyo SeoAnimator Mitsuyo Seo was jailed as a leftist in 1931, then made a film of Momotarō bombing Pearl Harbor.
- Yoko OnoYoko Ono hung a magnifying glass atop a white ladder in a London gallery. Climbers read one tiny word: YES.
- Akira KurosawaRashomon won Venice's Golden Lion in 1951 after its own studio entered it reluctantly.
- Hideaki AnnoHideaki Anno wrote his own experiences of depression into the characters of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
- Katsuhiro OtomoManga artist Katsuhiro Otomo planned Akira as only about ten chapters. It ran for eight years and two thousand pages.
- Yoshiyuki TominoMobile Suit Gundam was cut short in 1979 and still became one of anime's longest-running franchises.
- Hiroyuki MoritaHiroyuki Morita danced the idol choreography himself before drawing it into Perfect Blue.
- Osamu TezukaOsamu Tezuka was a licensed physician who never practiced medicine. He is the manga artist behind Astro Boy.
- Kihachirō KawamotoPuppet animator Kihachirō Kawamoto said his puppets only came alive after a year studying in Prague.
- Isao TakahataIsao Takahata survived an air raid at age nine, then made Grave of the Fireflies.
- Yukio MishimaYukio Mishima shouted to soldiers from a Tokyo balcony in 1970, then killed himself.
- Satoshi KonWhen Satoshi Kon died in 2010, the news landed as a shock. He had kept his illness private, and only a short time earlier he had appeared at public events with no visible sign that anything was wrong. Kon was a Japanese film director,…