Masanori Hata

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Masanori Hata is a Japanese zoologist, essayist, and filmmaker. A popular essayist under the pen name Mutsugor?, he was awarded the Kikuchi Kan Prize for his writing in 1977. 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. Trained as a zoologist, he worked as a documentary filmmaker producing nature films. He moved to the eastern coast of Hokkaid? to establish the Mutsugor? Animal Kingdom nature preserve, where he and his family live with over 300 wild and domestic animals. He is the author of over 100 books, including collections of his Mutsugor? essays on nature such as Warera d?butsu mina ky?dai and Mutsogor? no hakubutsushi.

Over four years, Hata and associate director Kon Ichikawa shot 400,000 feet of film at the Mutsugor? Animal Kingdom. The resulting film, about the adventures of an orange tabby cat and a fawn pug, was released by Toho in 1986 as Koneko Monogatari 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.