Heinosuke Gosho
About
Biography
Biography
Early master of Japanese cinema whose more than 100 features include the country's first sound film, "The Neighbor's Wife and Mine" (1931). Many of Gosho's works, through the mid-1930s and again after WWII, deal with common, everyday subjects; these are treated with a mixture of wry wit and sentimentality, and Gosho displays an honest, if simplistic understanding of his (mostly working-class) characters. "An Inn at Osaka" (1954) and "Growing Up" (1955) are prime examples of his work to have reached the West.
From the 1960s Gosho's old-style humanism, like that of contemporaries such as Yasujiro Ozu, seemed increasingly dated and his films generated little commercial interest.
Filmography
Director (Feature Film)
Life Events
1923
Assistant director to Shimazu
1925
Film director
1931
Directed the first Japanese talking picture "The Neighbor's Wife and Mine"
1949
Founded Studio Eight production company
