Compound Cinematics

Shinobu Hashimoto was born in the Hyogo Prefecture in west central Japan on April 18, 1918. He enlisted in the army in 1938, but contracted tuberculosis during his training and spent the next four years in a veterans' sanitarium. After he was discharged from the sanitarium, he went to work as an accountant for a munitions company and wrote screenplays in his spare time.

His first film, Rashomon, won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival and received what was then called the honorary foreign-language film award at the Oscars. He went on to collaborate with director Akira Kurosawa on numerous films including Ikiru, Seven Samurai, I Live in Fear, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, The Bad Sleep Well, and Dodes'ka-den.

Hashimoto started his own production company, Hashimoto Pro, in 1974. His other screenplays include Harakiri, Samurai Rebellion, The Castle of Sand, and Village of Eight Gravestones. His memoir was entitled Compound Cinematics: Akira Kurosawa and I. He received the Jean Renoir Award, presented by the Writers Guild of America for outstanding contributions to international screenwriting. He died on July 19, 2018 at the age of 100.

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