Yonki-no-kai Productions

Yonki-no-kai Productions (四騎の会 The Four Horsemen Productions) was a Japanese entertainment company formed by leading Japanese directors Akira Kurosawa, Masaki Kobayashi, Keisuke Kinoshita, and Kon Ichikawa in 1969.^[1]

In the five years since Kurosawa's last film in 1965, he had a public falling out with Toshiro Mifune. He was appointed co-director of the Japanese-American production Tora! Tora! Tora!, working on script development and pre-production for two years, only to be replaced by Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku two weeks after shooting had commenced. The Japanese film industry was also going through a turbulent time, with TV viewership rising and the increasing popularity of Hollywood films among the younger audience. There was a 40% decrease in theatres that played only Japanese movies during the same period. Many production houses had either shut down or were forced to produce Roman Porno films for revenue.^[2] In these circumstances, Kurosawa formed the Yonki-no-kai production company with three other leading directors of the era to finance his next project with a stated aim of producing "films that would rejuvenate the flagging industry".^[3][4][5]

The directors had planned to direct a film each in turn, initially deciding on a period drama Dora-heita as their first film, but it was deemed too expensive. They later settled on the idea of making Dodes'ka-den, based on the 1962 novel A City Without Seasons by Shūgorō Yamamoto. It was also Kurosawa's first color film and was shot in nine weeks for a budget of $300,000. It was released in October 1970 to a commercial failure in Japan but received praise abroad, including a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 44th Academy Awards.^[6]

The company was dissolved soon afterward.^[3][7] The failure of Dodes'ka-den meant that funds were not available for filming Dora-heita.^[8][9] Many years later, after the deaths of the other three partners, Ichikawa was able to produce the film adapted from the 1969 screenplay.^[9][10]