"Kon Ichikawa has long been internationally acknowledged as one of the most important and prolific masters of Japanese cinema.

Celebrated for his many adaptations of Japanese novels, such as Fires on the Plain, Harp of Burma, Kagi, Conflagration, and The Makioka Sisters, Ichikawa is an artist with an astounding command of many genres, forms and tones, from ferociously humanist war films to sophisticated social satires, formalist documentaries (the acclaimed Tokyo Olympiad) to extravagant period pieces (An Actor's Revenge)."--BOOK JACKET.