Akira Iwasaki

Akira Iwasaki was a prominent left-wing Japanese film critic, historian, and producer. Born in Tokyo, he became interested in film from his student days at Tokyo University. Early on, he helped introduce German experimental film in Japan, and was instrumental in getting Teinosuke Kinugasa's masterpiece A Page of Madness screened in Tokyo. Afterward, he became involved in Marxist politics and established a career promoting progressive cinema and criticism. He wrote or edited over thirty books of film criticism, history, theory and biography during his career. He was also involved in film production, first serving from the late 1920s as a central member of the Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino), where he acted as not only the theoretical brain of the movement alongside Genjū Sasa, but also as a filmmaker. When Prokino was effectively eliminated by police oppression under the Peace Preservation Law, Iwasaki continued his critical activities, becoming involved in the Yuibutsuron Kenkyūkai with such thinkers as Jun Tosaka, but was eventually arrested in 1940, in part for his opposition to the Film Law, which authorized increased government control of the film industry. He was the only film critic arrested by the ideological police during the war. After his release, he worked for a time at the Tokyo office of the Manchukuo Film Association thanks to the help of Kan'ichi Negishi.