Ishirō Honda
Japanese film director
Died when: 81 years 297 days (981 months)Star Sign: Taurus
Ishirō Honda (Japanese: 本多 猪四郎（いしろう）, Hepburn: Honda Ishirō, 7 May 1911 – 28 February 1993) was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 44 feature films in a career spanning 59 years.
The most internationally successful Japanese filmmaker prior to Hayao Miyazaki, his films have had a significant influence on the film industry.
Honda entered the Japanese film industry in 1934, working as the third assistant director on Sotoji Kimura's The Elderly Commoner's Life Study.
After 15 years of working on numerous films as an assistant director, he made his directorial debut with the short documentary film Ise-Shima (1949).
Honda's first feature film, The Blue Pearl (1952), was a critical success in Japan at the time and would lead him to direct three subsequent drama films.
In 1954, Honda directed and co-wrote Godzilla, which became a box office success in Japan, and was nominated for two Japanese Movie Association awards.
Because of the film's commercial success in Japan, it spawned a multimedia franchise, recognized by Guinness World Records as the longest-running film franchise in history, and established the kaiju and tokusatsu genres; helping Honda gain international recognition and leading him to direct numerous tokusatsu films that are still studied and watched today.
After directing his eighth and final Godzilla film in 1975, Honda retired from filmmaking.Honda's former colleague and friend, Akira Kurosawa, would, however, persuade him to come out of retirement in the late 1970s and act as his right-hand man for his last five films.
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