Shimizu Hiroshi

Other Name: 清水宏

Age: 121

Birthday: March 28, 1903

Nationality: Japanese

Gender: Male

Shimizu Hiroshi was a Japanese film director active during the Taisho and Showa periods in Japan. He was born in Nishiwataru, Yama-ka, Iwata, Shizuoka, Japan. Due to his parents' strained relationship, he was raised by his grandfather at his mother's family home upstream of the Tenryu River. His father was said to be an employee of Furukawa Mining, while his mother was the daughter of the Ohashi family, who owned extensive land and engaged in forestry in the mountain village. He is distantly related to Uraoka Keiichi, an editor of Shochiku Nouvelle Vague. During his childhood in the village, he was mischievous and had poor grades. Because of this, he was taken in by his father, who lived in Hamamatsucho, Shibaku, Tokyo, Japan. In 1910, he transferred to the second grade at Shinmei Elementary School in Sakuragawa-cho, Shibaku. At his father's insistence, he enrolled in a junior high school in Hamamatsu. However, he admitted to engaging in petty theft and entertainment with his delinquent friends, neglecting both his studies and extracurricular activities. After graduating in 1920, Shimizu claimed to have enrolled at the Faculty of Agriculture at Hokkaido University. According to his own account, he dropped out after one year due to finding his studies boring. However, many film industry insiders at the time doubted his academic credentials. After returning to Tokyo in 1921, he lived as a projectionist in Asakusa. Through an introduction by Suzuki Teruo, a cinematographer at Kokkatsu Sumazu Studio, he became an assistant to Harada Mitsuo. In 1922, Harada's "Gakugei Katsudo Shashinsha" disbanded, and Shimizu became a live-in assistant to Harada. Around November 1922, through his father's acquaintance with Arishima Takeo during his time in the United States, Shigeru Shimizu was introduced to Osanai Kaoru and entered the Shochiku Kamata Studios with the recommendation of Kurishima Sumiko. He was assigned as an assistant to director Ikeda Yoshinobu. In June 1924, at the age of 21, Shimizu was promoted to director. In July of the same year, just two years after joining the company, he made his directorial debut with "Beyond the Pass". In 1924 Shimizu fell in love with the actress Tanaka Kinuyo, but due to her rising status as a potential star actress, they couldn't openly marry. They were advised to have a "trial marriage." They cohabitated from 1927 but constant quarrels led to their breakup in 1929. In 1930, Shimizu married a famous courtesan from Izu, but they did not have children and instead adopted a daughter. In 1939, at the age of 36, Shimizu became the leading director at Shochiku Ofuna. Amidst the socio-political backdrop of the Sino-Japanese War that began in 1937, he responded to the demands of the era by filming "Tomodachi" (1940) in Korea and "Sayan no Kane" (1943) in Taiwan. However, in 1943, during the production of "Sayon no Kane" in Taiwan, he was expelled from the Shochiku Ofuna Studios. For a time, he left the studio and lived a life exploring Buddhist statues in Kyoto and Nara. After leaving Shochiku following the war, there were rumors that he had temporarily withdrawn from public life. However, during this period, he took in over a dozen war orphans and raised them in the mountains of Atami. In 1948, he founded his independent production company, "Hachinonisu Eiga". In 1956, he was invited by Mizoguchi Kenji to join Daiei and signed an exclusive contract. His final project was as a supervisor for the NHK television drama series "Ryokan-sama to Kodomotachi". In his private life after the war, he moved to a farm in Izu, which he purchased in 1949. He became well-known for living there with war orphan children in a communal setting. In his later years, in 1965, he built a large mansion in Kitasaga, Kyoto, as part of his recuperation from a heart attack he suffered in 1951. On June 23, 1966, at 2 a.m., while in his study at his home in Kitasaga, he suddenly passed away from a heart attack. (Source: Japanese = Wikipedia || Translation = MyDramaList).