Daisuke Itô

Daisuke Itō (伊藤 大輔, Itō Daisuke; 12 October 1898 – 19 July 1981) was a Japanese film director and screenwriter who played a central role in the development of the modern jidaigeki and samurai cinema.

Born in Ehime Prefecture, Itō joined the actors school at Shochiku in 1920, but soon began writing screenplays under the recommendation of Kaoru Osanai.[1] He made his directorial debut in 1924 at Teikoku Kinema with Shuchū nikki.[1] After trying to start his own production company, he settled at Nikkatsu and established his name in 1927 with the three-part A Diary of Chuji's Travels, which is considered one of the masterpieces of jidaigeki.[1]

Especially in the silent era, he was known for a very mobile camera style that earned him the nickname "Idō daisuki" (Loves Motion), which is a pun on his name. The heroes of his films, such as Tange Sazen and Kunisada Chūji, were often disaffected, nihilistic loners and thus Itō's early films were sometimes considered tendency films.[2] He was criticized, however, for being more of a stylist than a thematically committed filmmaker. While being a director who was less successful after the coming of sound, Itō worked with many great jidaigeki stars, especially Denjirō Ōkōchi, Yorozuya Kinnosuke, Ichikawa Raizō VIII, and Tsumasaburō Bandō at studios such as Nikkatsu and Daiei, in a career that spanned nearly half a century.

In 1991, a partial print of A Diary of Chuji's Travels, long considered a lost film, was discovered and screened for the public.[3]