Masaichi Nagata

Early life

Masaichi was born into a ton'ya for yūzen and dye in Kyoto, however his family underwent misfortunes since when Masaichi was three-years-old, and eventually fell apart; loss of the factory by a fire, an elopement by a kozō (employee) and a jochū (housemaid) who stole money when they escaped, and the bankruptcy due to his father being a joint guarantor of his friend. Masaichi attempted to became a kozō for one of his relatives (an executive director of Tokyo Stock Exchange) to reconstruct the family for his parents. To gain a sufficient educational attainment, he attended the Ōkura College of Commerce (now Tokyo Keizai University), however lost his father due to an intracranial hemorrhage and dropped out the school in despair. As a member of a local seinendan, he diligently contributed in the cleaning of damaged cites following the Great Kantō Earthquake, and subsequently returned to Kyoto.

Nagata was gradually influenced by socialism due to his admire for heroism, and joined a local yakuza Senbongumi afterwards. He, along with Jun Okamoto, became one of apprentices of Suezaburō Sasai, while Nagata defended Suezaburō and his father and the crime boss Sanzaemon; Sanzaemon was a renowned kyōkaku known as the ""Fierce Tiger" (Japanese: 荒虎, Hepburn: Aratora)", and Nagata claimed Sanzaemon definitely not being an actual yakuza, and Suezaburō was the 10th highest taxpayer in Kyoto back then. However, Masaichi's mother strongly deplored the fact that her son became a subject of surveillance by the police, and she expelled Masaichi from the family.

It was not uncommon for yakuza syndicates to have connections with show business and entertainment industries, including the below-mentioned Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance, so as the Sasai family. The three (Nagata and Okamoto and Suezaburō) later joined those industries, where Nagata and Okamoto subsequently co-worked in Daiei Film, and various notable filmmakers and actors later emerged under Suezaburō.

Film industry

He joined the Nikkatsu studio in 1925 due to his relationships with the aforementioned Shōzō Makino and the Makino Family, and after working as a location manager, rose to become head of production at the Daiei Kyoto studio. As a fledgling handyman, Nagata was noticed for his eloquence and social skills, and was favored by notable figures (such as Yoshirō Fujimura, Nobuo Asaoka, Mochizuki Keisuke, and so on), and developed a relationship with the political world. Experiencing conflicts with the Nikkatsu president, he left the company in 1934, taking many Nikkatsu stars with him, to form Daiichi Eiga. While short-lived, that studio created such masterpieces as Kenji Mizoguchi's Sisters of the Gion (1936) and Osaka Elegy (1936).

When Daiichi Eiga folded, Nagata became head of the Kyoto studio of Shinkō Kinema until the government reorganized the industry during World War Two. Against a government plan to combine the fiction film companies into two studios, Nagata fought hard for the alternative option of creating a third studio. His efforts resulted in the creation of the Daiei Motion Picture Company, where he first served as an executive. He rose to become president in 1947 and, apart from a brief period when he was purged by Occupation authorities, remained in that position until 1971.

Under his reign, Daiei produced Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950) and entered it in the Venice Film Festival, where it won the grand prize and became the first Japanese film to win an international award, thus introducing Japanese cinema to the world. Nagata also spurred the production of Teinosuke Kinugasa's Gate of Hell (1953), the first Japanese color film to be shown abroad, earning both an honorary Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Nagata also produced such renowned films as Mizoguchi's Ugetsu (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954), as well as Jokyo (1960) which was entered into the 10th Berlin International Film Festival. On the popular front, Nagata's Daiei was also known for such successful film series as the Zatoichi films starring Shintaro Katsu, the Sleepy Eyes of Death series featuring Raizō Ichikawa, and the Gamera movies. In the early 1950s, Nagata attempted to export Japanese films to obtain foreign currencies for the post-war reconstruction of the Japanese economy; his later efforts to save the declining Japanese cinema resulted in the establishment of a governmental association to export Japanese films and to support productions of kaiju and tokusatsu genres in particular for foreign currencies. For the Gamera franchise, Nagata produced the second film Gamera vs. Barugon, with the remainder of the Showa Gamera films produced instead by his son Hidemasa Nagata.

However, Daiei Film's business model had a weak foundation due to multiple factors, including Nagata's imprudent managements, and Daiei particularly suffered significant decline among the eroding film industry, and it eventually went bankrupt in 1971. On the other hand, Nagata continued as an independent producer for some years after that. He produced more than 160 films during his career.