Motoyoshi Oda

Motoyoshi Oda (Japanese: 小田基義) (July 21, 1910; Moji City, Fukuoka – October 21, 1973; Tokyo) was a Japanese film director.

An English major who graduated from Waseda University, one of Japan's most prestigious, in 1935, Motoyoshi Oda was promptly accepted into the directors' program at Tokyo's P.C.L. (Photo Chemical Laboratories, a film company later incorporated into Toho Studios). He studied under director Kajiro Yamamoto, as did Akira Kurosawa, Ishirō Honda, and Senkichi Taniguchi. When the latter two trainees were drafted into Japan's war in China, Oda found his career accelerated. He was promoted to director in 1940 with Song of Kunya, after a relatively scant few years of training. Perhaps because of this relative lack of training, and certainly because Oda was not drafted into the army, P.C.L. and Toho kept Oda going as a maker of programmers - trivial pictures that had to be made in order to keep product flowing into the theaters, but which offered little time or room for artistic achievement.