The Biography

Kazuo Miyagawa (宮川 一夫 Miyagawa Kazuo, February 25, 1908 – August 7, 1999) was an acclaimed Japanese cinematographer. Miyagawa is best known for his tracking shots, particularly those in Rashomon (1950), the first of his three collaborations with preeminent filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. He also worked on films by major directors Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujirō Ozu, and Kon Ichikawa, such as Ugetsu Monogatari (1953), Floating Weeds (1959) and the documentary Tokyo Olympiad (1965) respectively. Miyagawa is regarded as having invented the cinematographic technique known as bleach bypass, for Ichikawa's 1960 film Her Brother.