During the 1920s, Teinosuke Kinugasa's startlingly modern experimental movies infused Japanese film with a sophistication that rivalled the best European art films. His innovations, along with those of Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, and Sadao Yamanaka, helped Japanese cinema develop a distinct cinematic voice.
Born in 1898, in Mie, Kinugasa entered film in 1917, as an onnagata, a man who specialized in...