Until recently Ichikawa's work has received scant attention in the West and yet he's made some the most culturally challenging works of the last century. Many of Ichikawa's 75 films are adapted from classic Japanese novels and at 86 he continues to make movies. His oft quoted dictum "I don't have any unifying theme. I just make pictures I like..." certainly comes across in his work but linking his diverse range of subjects is an underlying questioning of society.

It's perverse yet suitably uncompromising that Ichikawa should reveal a long-term affection for Walt Disney. Beginning his career as an animator in Kyoto, Ichikawa soon rose to directing his own films but it wasn't until he met his wife and screenwriter Natto Wada that his true artistry began to take shape.

Post-war paranoia

Until 1955, Ichikawa was known for his satires and screwball comedies. The cloud of Hiroshima barely lifted, Ichikawa's cinematic response was one of absurdism and chaos on a world gone mad. Mr Pu (1953) concerns a teacher, stultified by his fear of a nuclear attack and A Billionaire (1954) portrays a similar paranoia with one character so intent on avoiding potential targets, that he moves into a near derelict house, only to find his neighbour obsessively constructing her own A-bomb.

Ichikawa's talent for comedy soon gave way to more composed and compassionate illustrations, notably with two very different anti-war films. The Burmese Harp (1956) is now considered a classic of Japanese cinema with its depiction of a soldier turned Buddhist monk. A symphony of one man's search for atonement, it bares more similarities to David Lean's one-man crusade in Lawrence of Arabia, than the war genre.

Fires on the Plain (1959) although more brutal, explores similar themes through its portrayal of a TB sufferer's refusal to submit to cannibalism, despite facing starvation. As in many of Ichikawa's films, the spirit of alienation is viewed as both a preferable and necessary reaction to the horrors of society. In Conflagration (1958), an acolyte burns down Kyoto's Temple of the Golden Pavilion rather than witness its purity tainted by human corruption. These are the true heroes of Ichikawa's films.

Controversial social commentary

Sexuality and teenage rebellion figure in two of Ichikawa's most controversial social commentaries. Odd Obsession: The Key (1959) juxtaposes sexual conduct on many levels while the teenage anti-social exploits of The Punishment Room (1956) would send James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause (1955) posse running to mummy.

After 1965, Natto Wada bowed out of any direct input to Ichikawa's films and his later works yield both a greater degree of commercialism (I Am a Cat, 1975) and prefigure the ironic social melodramas (I Am Two, 1962) later associated with the Japanese New Wave. Leveled within this tsunami of work is one of cinema's finest documentaries Tokyo Olympiad (1965), focusing on the 1964 Olympics and An Actor's Revenge (1965), a wonderful kabuki style, Jacobean revenge piece.

Submersion is the only way to approach these uniquely non-conformist, experimental movies but once emerged, you'll be gasping for more.

Clare Norton-Smith

Previous films on BBC Four