Hiromichi Horikawa

Directing·Dec 28, 1916·Kyoto Prefecture, Japan

Rate

NA/10 avg

Hiromichi Horikawa (28 November 1916 – 5 September 2012) was a Japanese director and assistant director. Akira Kurosawa’s assistant on numerous films including Ikiru (1952) and Seven Samurai (1954), Horikawa never achieved his mentor’s fame. Kurosawa himself scripted his directorial debut, Tomorrow I’ll Be a Fire-Tree (1955), about an adolescent and the first three women in his life. A concern with youthful experience was also visible in Horikawa’s second and third films, Summer in Eclipse (1956), a taiyōzoku (“sun tribe”) film based on a Shintarō Ishihara novel, and Last Days of the Samurai (1957), a reworking of the Chūshingura story that focused particularly on the youngest of the participating ronin and his fiancée. Another retelling of a classical Japanese story was the Chikamatsu adaptation The Oil-Hell Murder (1957), after which Horikawa returned to contemporary subject matter with The Naked General (1958), a portrait of mentally handicapped collage artist Kiyoshi Yamashita. During the sixties, Horikawa made several thrillers, the socially conscious aspects of which suggest the continuing influence of Kurosawa while also evoking Masaki Kobayashi, whose regular actor Tatsuya Nakadai appeared in The Blue Beast (1960), Pressure of Guilt (1963), and The Last Judgement (1965). Later, Horikawa’s drama Good-bye Moscow (1968) used the relationship between a Japanese jazz pianist, an American soldier on leave from Vietnam, and a group of young Russian dissidents as a metaphor for Japan’s situation in the Cold War era. The Militarists (1970) was a critical biopic of General Tōjō, which dramatized the military coup of February 26, 1936, while Sun Above, Death Below (1968) was a conventional if snappily edited thriller about a doomed hitman.

Film	Credit
Asian Blue: Ukishima-maru Incident1995 · Director	Director
War and Flowers1989 · Director	Director
Mutchan1985 · Director	Director
HHave Wings on Your Heart1978 · Director, Screenplay	Director, Screenplay
The Alaska Story1977 · Director	Director
Without Complaint1975 · Director	Director
The King1973 · Director	Director
School Festival Night: A Sweet Experience1970 · Director	Director
The Militarists1970 · Director	Director
Sun Above, Death Below1968 · Director	Director
Good-bye Moscow1968 · Director	Director
You Can If You Try1965 · Director	Director
The Last Judgment1965 · Director	Director
The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers1964 · Director	Director
Fumiko's Five Benefactors1964 · Director	Director
Brand of Evil1964 · Director, Screenplay	Director, Screenplay
TThe Prodigal Son1964 · Director	Director
Pressure of Guilt1963 · Director	Director
Musume to watashi1962 · Director	Director
A Cat and Dried Bonito Flakes: The Story of a Swindler1961 · Director	Director
Eternity of Love1961 · Director, Writer	Director, Writer
The Blue Beast1960 · Director	Director
The Lost Alibi1960 · Director	Director
The Path Under the Platanes1959 · Director	Director
The Naked General1958 · Director	Director
The Oil-Hell Murder1957 · Director	Director
Last Days of the Samurai1957 · Director	Director
Summer in Eclipse1956 · Director	Director
Tomorrow I'll Be a Fire-Tree1955 · Director	Director