Kazuo Miyagawa

was a Japanese cinematographer. He worked with some of the most prominent directors of Japanese cinema during the 1950s and '60s, notably Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Kon Ichikawa and Yasujirō Ozu. He won three Japan Academy Film Prizes for his work. The Museum of Modern Art called him "most influential cinematographer of postwar Japanese cinema."

Career Born in Kyoto, Miyagawa was taken with sumi-e Chinese ink painting from the age of eleven and began to sell his work as an illustrator while a teenager. He became interested in the cinema during the 1920s, particularly admiring the German Expressionist silents. He joined the Nikkatsu film company in 1926 after graduating from Kyoto Commercial School. He began as a laboratory technician before becoming an assistant cameraman.

Miyagawa is best known for his tracking shots, particularly those in Rashomon (1950), the first of his collaborations with filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Other films with Kurosawa include Yojimbo (1961) and initial preparations for Kagemusha (1980).

Selected filmography

Floating Weeds (1959)

Her Brother (1960)

A Certain Killer (1967) Zatoichi and the Fugitives (1968) Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (1970) Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival (1970) Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril (1972)