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Kon Ichikawa

His films are often adaptations of novels.
His films often showcase the conflict between the younger and older generations.
Highly versatile filmography ranging from historical drama to satire.
Protagonists are often outsiders.
Frequently collaborates with his real-life partner Natto Wada.

Keisuke Kinoshita, Akira Kurosawa, Kon Ichikawa and Masaki Kobayashi founded their own company, Yonki No Kai ('Club of The Four Knights'), in 1969 to assert an independent film making process and escape the studio system. They managed to produce only one movie, Kurosawa's Dodesukaden (1970).
Out of all his own films, he likes Enjo the best.
He apprenticed under Abe Yutaka and consequently remade The Girl Who Touched His Legs in 1950.
Education: Ichioka Commercial School, Osaka (animation)
Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 442-451. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

I just make any picture I like or any that the company tells me to do.
[If he has advice for young directors] No, no advice. The film industry has changed tremendously. The movies they are making now are very different from the ones I made when I was young. I can't say whether people in the industry are happier or unhappier as a result. Everything has changed so much.
I've made various types of films: period dramas, modern dramas, films set in the Meiji period. But I don't make any distinctions between them - they're all films. True, with a period drama, there are certain conventions. With a modern drama, there is a different style of shooting. So you have to make changes according to the genre, but I never think, "This is a period drama, so I have to shoot it in such and such a way." Films are films. If you don't understand that, then you start filming lies.