Eizo Tanaka

Personal Info

Known For Director

Gender Male

Birthday 1886-11-03

Deathday 1968-06-13 (81 years old)

Place of Birth Chūō, Tokyo, Japan

Eizo Tanaka

Biography

Tanaka initially trained as a stage actor in the shingeki movement under Kaoru Osanai, but eventually joined the Nikkatsu film studio in 1917. He debuted as a director in 1918 but mostly had to work with shinpa stories, not the shingeki techniques he was used to although two early films, The Living Corpse (Ikeru shikabane) and The Cherry Orchard (Sakura no sono) were based on Tolstoy and Chekhov respectively.[3] Working in parallel with the Pure Film Movement, Tanaka made two films, Kyōya eirimise (1922) and Dokuro no mai (1923), based on his own screenplays, that were highly praised for their cinematic technique.[1] He remained a rather conservative filmmaker and still used oyama (male actors) in female roles, including in his masterpiece Kyōya eirimise, a melodrama about a merchant's destructive love for a geisha. He used actresses for the first time in Dokuro no mai, a story of a monk reminiscing about his youth and early loves.

Known For

Director

1932
Namiko

as Director

1923
Skull Dance

as Director

1922
The Lapel Shop

as Director

1921
1921
1918
The Living Corpse

as Director

1918
Akatsuki

as Director

Actor

1953
The Wild Geese

as Zenkichi

1950
Street of Violence

as Hardware dealer

1949
Stray Dog

as Old Doctor

1949
The Blue Mountains: Part I

as Principal Takeda

Writer

1927
Five Women Around Him

as Screenplay

1927
Five Women Around Him

as Original Story

1923
Skull Dance

as Screenplay

1922
The Lapel Shop

as Writer