Shinsuke Ogawa

Biography

Shinsuke Ogawa (小川紳介, Ogawa Shinsuke) (25 June 1935 - 7 February 1992) was a Japanese documentary film director. Ogawa and Noriaki Tsuchimoto have been called the "two figures [that] tower over the landscape of Japanese documentary."

Ogawa began his career at Iwanami Productions (Iwanami Eiga) making PR (public relations) films alongside other important directors such as Tsuchimoto, Kazuo Kuroki, Yōichi Higashi, and Susumu Hani. Turning independent, he first made documentaries about radical political movements in 1960s and 1970s Japan, most famously the "Sanrizuka" or "Narita" series, which recorded the struggle by farmers and student protesters to prevent the construction of the Narita In...