Muraki Yoshirō

Muraki Yoshirō ( Japanese 村 木 与 四郎 ; * August 15, 1924 in Tokyo , Tokyo Prefecture ; † October 26, 2009 in Setagaya , Tokyo Prefecture) was a Japanese art director , costume and set designer who won three Oscar for best production design as well was nominated again for the Oscar for best costume design and received several Japanese film awards .

biography

Muraki Yoshirō began in the late 1940s as assistant art director at Yoidore tenshi (1948) and was involved in the equipment of over 70 films over the course of his career. He worked in particular with Kurosawa Akira and worked from A Life in Fear (Ikimono no Kiroku, 1955) on in all of his films with the exception of Uzala, the Kyrgyz (1975).

He received his first award as best art director in 1958 at the Mainichi Eiga Concours for the films Das Schloss im Spinnwebwald (1957) and Nachtasyl (1957). At the Academy Awards in 1962 he was nominated for the Oscar for best costume design in the black and white film Yojimbo - The Bodyguard (1961). In 1971 he was nominated for the Oscar for the best production design for the first time, with Jack Martin Smith , Richard Day , Taizō Kawashima , Walter M. Scott , Norman Rockett and Carl Biddiscombe for Tora! Torah! Torah! (1970).

He received another award as best art director at the Mainichi Eiga Concours in 1973 for Kaigun tokubetsu nensho hei (1972). For the film Kagemusha - Der Schatten des Kriegers (1980), he not only received his third win as best art director at the Mainichi Eiga Concours, but was also nominated again for the Oscar for best production design at the 1981 Academy Awards. He received his fourth and final Oscar nomination together with Shinobu Muraki at the 1986 Academy Awards for Best Production Design in Ran (1985). For this film, he and Shinobu Muraki received his first Japanese Academy Award for best production design and was also nominated in 1987 for the BAFTA Award of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

After a nomination for the Japanese Academy Award 1991 with Akira Sakuragi for the best production design in Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990), he then received this award four times, namely in 1992 for Rhapsody in August (1991), in 1994 for the two films Madadayo (1993) and Niji no hashi (1993), 1995 for 47 Ronin (Shijūshichinin no shikaku, 1994) and 2001 for After the Rain (1999).

After he and Sakai Tadashi were nominated for the last time in 2003 for the Japanese Academy Award as best art director for Amida-do dayori (2002), he was posthumously awarded the special prize of the Japanese Academy in 2010 .

In the course of his career he worked with not only Akira Kurosawa, but also with film directors such as Imai Tadashi , Matsuyama Zenzō , Ichikawa Kon , Koizumi Takashi , Richard Fleischer and Fukasaku Kinji .

Web links

• Muraki Yoshirō in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Muraki is the family name, Yoshirō the first name.