Shigehiko Hasumi


Shigehiko Hasumi is a film critic and an academic researcher on French literature from Japan. He was president of the University of Tokyo from 1997 to 2001.

Life and work

Hasumi's father Shigeyasu was a professor at Kyoto University. His wife Chantal Van Melkebeke is a teacher from Belgium.
Hasumi was influential in introducing French post-structuralist theory to Japan, and was himself influenced by such French thinkers as Gilles Deleuze. He has written on the film directors Yasujirō Ozu, Sadao Yamanaka, John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Jean Renoir. He promoted such new directors as Takeshi Kitano. Several of his students, including Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Shinji Aoyama, Kunitoshi Manda, Masayuki Suo, and Makoto Shinozaki, have gone on to become filmmakers.
His personal name has been spelt variously as Shigehiko, the standard Hepburn romanization, Shiguehiko and Shiguéhiko on his publications. For example, his biography of Yasujirō Ozu features the name Shiguéhiko on both the original Japanese and the French translation, whereas many translations of his books feature the form Shigehiko.

Selected bibliography