Biography
Kazuo Miyagawa (宮川一夫) was a Japanese cinematographer. Born in Kyoto on 25 February 1908, he began studying traditional Japanese ink painting as a child and joined the Nikkatsu studio in 1926 after graduating from Kyoto Commercial School. He worked extensively in Japanese cinema from the 1930s onwards.
Miyagawa served as cinematographer on Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) and Yojimbo (1961), as well as films by Kenji Mizoguchi including Ugetsu (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954), Yasujirō Ozu’s Floating Weeds (1959), and Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad (1965). He is credited with developing the bleach bypass technique for Ichikawa’s Her Brother (1960). He received three Japan Academy Film Prizes and died in Tokyo on 7 August 1999.
