[Film Director]

Tetsuya Yamanouchi was born in 1934 in Hiroshima. He entered Toei’s Kyoto Studio in 1957 and studied filmmaking under director Daisuke Itō. He joined film productions led by Masahiro Makino, Tomu Uchida, and Tai Kato to name a few during the golden age of cinema in Kyoto Studio. He debuted as a director in 1964 with Ninja Hunt. Depicting a deathly battle between ninjas and ronin with super-realistic action sequences, the film was recognized as a masterpiece in the genre of “collective struggle jidaigeki”. In 1966 amid the kaijū boom, he directed Kairyū Daikessen, adapting the traditional Jiraiya ninja story into a SFX tokusatsu jidaigeki. In 1968, he took over the role of director from his mentor Daisuke Itō for Gion-matsuri (1968), an authentic jidaigeki created for the revival of Japanese cinema, which ended up becoming a representative work of Yamanouchi’s. He then transitioned to working on TV drama shows, directing popular series including Mito Kōmon, Ōoka Echizen, and Akakage.