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Donald Richie (April 17, 1924 – February 19, 2013) was an American author, journalist, and film critic. He was known for writing about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also directed a number of experimental films, the first when he was 17. He was awarded the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun in 2005.
In 1947, Richie first visited Japan with the Occupied Japan, a job he saw as an opportunity to escape from Lima, Ohio. He first worked as a typist, and then as a civilian staff writer for the Pacific Stars and Stripes. While in Tokyo, he became fascinated with Japanese culture. He was struck by the relative acceptance of gay men and women and by the beauty of Kabuki, in which a seventy-three year old man could transform himself into nineteen year old woman. He was further attracted by Japanese cinema. He was soon writing movie reviews in the Stars and Stripes. In 1948 he met Kashiko Kawakita who introduced him to Yasujirō Ozu. During their long friendship, she and Richie collaborated closely in promoting Japanese film in the West.Donald Richie, "Remembering Madame Kawakita" in: A wreath for Madame Kawakita, Kawakita Memorial Film Institute, Tokyo 2008, pp. 5–7 He began composing contemporary music and released a title for ballet at that time.Yoshida, Yukihiko, Jane Barlow and Witaly Osins, ballet teachers who worked in postwar Japan, and their students, Pan-Asian Journal of Sports & Physical Education, Vol. 3, Sep. 2012.
After returning to the United States, he enrolled at Columbia University's School of General Studies in 1949 and received a B.S. degree in English in 1953. Richie then returned to Japan as film critic for The Japan Times and in 1959 published his first book, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, coauthored with Joseph Anderson, which gave the first English language account of Japanese film. The greater tolerance in Japan for male homosexuality than in the United States was one reason he gave for returning to Japan, as he was openly bisexual. He spent much of the second half of the 20th century living and working alone in Tokyo, with the exception of a brief marriage to the American writer Mary Evans from 1961 to 1965. Richie served as Curator of Film at the New York Museum of Modern Art from 1969 to 1972.
He is credited with raising the awareness of several including the Hawaii International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, San Francisco International Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, and the Tokyo International Film Festival amongst others, serving as a juror and speaker. He served as a guest director at Telluride and has received awards from HIFF and SFIFF for his years of support.
Richie was a prolific author. Among his most noted works on Japan are The Inland Sea, a travel classic, and Public People, Private People, a look at some of Japan's most significant and most mundane people. He has compiled two collections of essays on Japan: A Lateral View and Partial Views. A collection of his writings has been published to commemorate fifty years of writing about Japan: The Donald Richie Reader. The Japan Journals: 1947–2004 consists of extended excerpts from his diaries.
In 1991, film makers Lucille Carra and Brian Cotnoir produced a film version of The Inland Sea, which Richie narrated. Produced by Travelfilm Company, the film won numerous awards, including Best Documentary at the Hawaii International Film Festival (1991) and the Earthwatch Film Award. It screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992.
He was honored by his adopted home with a number of awards including being inducted as a member of the Order of the Rising Sun in 2005.
Author Tom Wolfe described Richie as "the Lafcadio Hearn of our time, a subtle, stylish, and deceptively lucid medium between two cultures that confuse one another: the Japanese and the American."Arturo Silva, ed. (2001). The Donald Richie Reader. Promotional blurb, Thomas Wolfe
Although Richie spoke Japanese fluently, he could neither read nor write it proficiently.
Richie died, aged 88, on February 19, 2013, in Tokyo.
Richie wrote the English subtitles for Akira Kurosawa's films Throne of Blood (1957), Red Beard (1965), Kagemusha (1980) and Dreams (1990).
In the 21st century, Richie provided audio commentaries for The Criterion Collection on DVDs of various classic Japanese films, notably those of Ozu ( A Story of Floating Weeds and Early Summer), Mikio Naruse ( When a Woman Ascends the Stairs), and Kurosawa ( Drunken Angel, Rashomon, The Lower Depths, and The Bad Sleep Well), among others.
An early supporter of the Hawaii International Film Festival, Richie has been recognized as introducing Roger Ebert to Japanese cinema through Richie's recommendation of Ebert to also serve with him on the festival jury.
Among the short works not included in the collection are for example Small Town Sunday (1941, 8 mm), filmed when he was still resident in the United States, A Sentimental Education (1953), Aoyama Kaidan (1957), Shu-e (1958), and Life (1965).
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Categories: 1924 Births, 2013 Deaths, American Expatriates In Japan, American Japanologists, American Film Critics, American Film Historians, American Travel Writers, American Male Non-fiction Writers, Bisexual Male Writers, People Associated With The Museum Of Modern Art, People From Lima, Ohio, United States Merchant Mariners, Writers From Ohio, Columbia University School Of General Studies Alumni, American Subtitlers, American Bisexual Writers, Lgbtq Media Critics
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