Teinosuke Kinugasa

Teinosuke Kinugasa is one of those figures where the sheer timeline of his career stops you cold — born in 1896, working through the silent era, all the way into postwar Japanese cinema, and doing it as director, screenwriter, and actor at once. His 1926 experimental silent film A Page of Madness is legitimately one of the most formally daring things Japanese cinema produced in that decade, shot without a conventional narrative structure at a time when most filmmakers were still figuring out the basics. He didn't come from some fancy film school; he came up through the industry itself, starting as a female-role actor before stepping behind the camera. The Order of the Purple Ribbon he received is the kind of quiet institutional recognition that suits a craftsman of his generation — no fanfare, just acknowledgment that the work mattered. He died in 1982, which means he lived long enough to see the industry he helped build become something the whole world was paying attention to. That arc, from Meiji-era Mie to international film history, is genuinely remarkable.

Teinosuke Kinugasa (1896–1982) was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, and actor born in Mie Prefecture. Active during the formative decades of Japanese cinema, he worked across multiple disciplines within the industry. He was awarded the Order of the Purple Ribbon (Shiju-hosho) in recognition of his contributions to Japanese culture and film. He passed away on February 26, 1982.

Name (English)

Teinosuke Kinugasa

Name (Japanese)

衣笠貞之助

Reading

きぬがさ ていのすけ

Born

January 1, 1896 – February 26, 1982

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Capricorn / Monkey (申)

Origin

Mie Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

Film Director / Screenwriter / Actor

Awards & achievements

• Order of the Purple Ribbon (Shiju-hosho)

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%A1%A3%E7%AC%A0%E8%B2%9E%E4%B9%8B%E5%8A%A9

Tags

• From Mie Prefecture
• Film Director
• Screenwriter
• Actor

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.