Yō Takeyama

Hiroshi Takeyama (Yō Takeyama (竹山 洋, Takeyama Yō); July 28, 1946 – April 12, 2023) was a Japanese screenwriter. Besides his work for television, he is best known for his screenplays for Hotaru (2001) and Shijushichinin no shikaku, Kon Ichikawa's 1994 version of the Forty-seven rōnin story. Both of these were nominated but did not win the Award of the Japanese Academy for "Best Screenplay".

Background

Takeyama was born in Saitama Prefecture, Japan on July 28, 1946. He graduated from the Literature program at Waseda University. He then became a dramatist working in television production, and credited with screenplays beginning in 1979. In the early 1980s, Takeyama worked in Nikkatsu's softcore Roman Porno films, writing three scripts for Shōgorō Nishimura, director of Apartment Wife: Affair In the Afternoon (1971), the first entry in this long-running series. For Nishimura, Takeyama penned Nurses' Journal: Nasty File (1980), Kōichirō Uno's Girl Dormitory (1980), and "My Girlfriend Wears a Uniform" (1981).

Film

Takeyama co-wrote director Kon Ichikawa's 1994 film 47 Ronin, working on the screenplay with the director. Variety writes of the film's storyline that it, "reportedly sticks closer to the historical events than other versions have," and that it is, "clean and uninflected, with the action zipping back and forth between a series of indoor locations (denoted by captions)." The review points out that the amount of historical detail given in the film is likely to alienate audiences who are not familiar with the story of the Forty-seven Ronin.