Eizō Tanaka

was an early Japanese film director, screenwriter, and actor.

Life and career 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. 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. (March 1918) (April 1918) (May 1918) (Oct. 1918) (June 1919) (June 1919) (Jan. 1922) - new version of 1918 film (Dec. 1922) (March 1923) (May 1932) (produced by Oriental Film ) (Feb.1933) (produced by Kyōdai Productions )