Masanori Hata

Masanori Hata (畑 正憲, Hata Masanori^?) (born 1935)^[1] is a Japanese zoologist, essayist, and filmmaker. A popular essayist under the pen name Mutsugorō,^[2] he was awarded the Kikuchi Kan Prize for his writing in 1977.^[1] He is perhaps best known in the West as the director and screenwriter of the 1989 film The Adventures of Milo and Otis.

Hata was born in Fukuoka Prefecture and graduated from Tokyo University.^[1] Trained as a zoologist, he worked as a documentary filmmaker producing nature films.^[1] He moved to the eastern coast of Hokkaidō to establish the Mutsugorō Animal Kingdom nature preserve, where he and his family live with over 300 wild and domestic animals.^[1][2] He is the author of over 100 books,^[2] including collections of his Mutsugorō essays on nature such as Warera dōbutsu mina kyōdai (All of Us Animals Are Brothers and Sisters, 1967) and Mutsogorō no hakubutsushi (Mutsugoro's Natural History, 1975).^[1]

Over four years, Hata and associate director Kon Ichikawa shot 400,000 feet of film at the Mutsugorō Animal Kingdom. The resulting film, about the adventures of a orange tabby cat and a fawn pug, was released by Toho in 1986 as Koneko Monogatari (子猫物語, A Kitten's Story) and was the highest grossing film of the year in Japan, taking in about $36 million. It was shown that year at the Cannes Film Festival as The Adventures of Chatran. For US distribution by Columbia Pictures, it was cut down from 90 to 76 minutes and narration in English by Dudley Moore was added. It was released in 1989 as The Adventures of Milo and Otis.^[2]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} "Hata Masanori". Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. 1. Tokyo: Kodansha. 1993. pp. 508. ISBN 4069310983. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d} Buehrer, Beverley Bare (1990). Japanese Films: A Filmography and Commentary, 1921-1989. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. pp. xiv-xv. ISBN 0899504582. 

External links

• Masanori Hata at the Internet Movie Database

Persondata
Name	Hata, Masanori
Alternative names	Mutsugorō
Short description	Japanese zoologist, essayist, and filmmaker
Date of birth	1935
Place of birth	Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan
Date of death
Place of death