Cinematographer

Masaki Tamura

January 26, 1939 – May 23, 2018

Masaki Tamura (たむら まさき, Tamura Masaki, 26 January 1939 – 23 May 2018) was a Japanese cinematographer. Born in Aomori Prefecture, Tamura early on worked at Iwanami Productions (Iwanami Eiga), where. as an assistant, he helped photograph documentary films. He became a full-fledged cinematographer working on many of the documentaries of Shinsuke Ogawa. At the same time, he began photographing feature fiction films by directors such as Kazuo Kuroki, Yōichi Higashi, and Toshiya Fujita. He particularly became known for his collaborations with Mitsuo Yanagimachi. After working with many famous directors such as Juzo Itami, Sōgo Ishii, Gō Takamine, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and Kaizō Hayashi, he began working in the 1990s with a new generation of directors, such as Nobuhiro Suwa, Naomi Kawase, and Makoto Satō. His collaborations with Shinji Aoyama were notable in his final years. In 1982, he won the Mainichi Film Award for best cinematography for the film Farewell to the Land. The same year, he won the best cinematography award at the Yokohama Film Festival for Farewell to the Land and A Japanese Village - Furuyashikimura.