Minoru Inuzuka

Minoru Inuzuka (犬塚 稔, Inuzuka Minoru, 15 February 1901 – 17 September 2007) was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. Starting out as a screenwriter at Shochiku in 1924, he also participated in the production of Teinosuke Kinugasa's A Page of Madness. When Chōjirō Hayashi (later known as Kazuo Hasegawa) became a jidaigeki star at Shochiku, Inuzuka directed many of his films. After World War II, Inuzuka returned to specializing in screenplays and was known for his scripts for the Zatoichi series. He published his autobiography in 2002, and died in 2007 at the age of 106. When he died, he was called the last surviving director to have directed a silent film in the 1920s. Inuzuka wrote scripts for over 150 films and directed over 50.