Hideo Gosha

Hideo Gosha (五社 英雄, Gosha Hideo, February 26, 1929 – August 30, 1992) was a Japanese film director. Born in Nishigahara, Tokyo Prefecture, Gosha graduated from high school and served in the Imperial Navy during the Second World War. After earning a business degree at Meiji University, he joined Nippon television as a reporter in 1953. In 1957 he moved on to the newly founded Fuji Television and rose through the ranks as a producer and director. One of his television shows, the chambara Three Outlaw Samurai, so impressed the heads of the Shochiku film studio that he was offered the chance to adapt it as a feature film in 1964. Following this film's financial success, he directed a string of equally successful chambara productions through the end of the 1960s. His two most critical and popular successes of the period are Goyokin and Hitokiri (also known as Tenchu), both released in 1969 and both considered to be two of the finest examples of the chambara genre. In The Samurai Film, the first book-length study of the genre in English, film historian Alain Silver devoted an entire chapter to Gosha's work and note... ()