Nagamasa Kawakita

was a Japanese entrepreneur, film producer and importer. Together with his wife Kashiko Kawakita and daughter Kazuko Kawakita, he was instrumental in the development of the Japanese film industry, sponsoring actors and actresses, and in promoting Japanese cinema to overseas audiences. Biography Early life Kawakita was born in Tokyo. His father, Kawakita Daijiro, a highly decorated officer in the Imperial Japanese Army during the Russo-Japanese War, and subsequently an instructor at the Baoding Military Academy in Beijing, was killed under mysterious circumstances, possibly for treason by Japanese agents. Following graduation from high school in Japan, Kawakita travelled to China in 1922 to study at Beijing University and continued on to Heidelberg in Germany for further studies. He was hired by the German movie company Universum Film AG and sent back to Japan as its representative. Pre-war career Kawakita formed his own company, Towa Shoji G.K. (lit. "Towa Trading Limited Partnership", now Toho-Towa) in October 1928. He met his wife, Kashiko, when she came to work at the company as his secretary, and they used their honeymoon in 1932 to make the first of many trips to Europe to acquire movies for the Japanese market. Among his earliest successes were Leontine Sagan's Mädchen in Uniform, although he also worked with many other European directors, including G. W. Pabst, René Clair, Fritz Lang and Julien Duvivier. The films Kawakita imported were released to the market via Toho Studios. Kawakita also brought Japanese films to the Venice Film Festival and other overseas venues.