Tadanari Okamoto

Directing • 1932-01-11 • Toyonaka, Japan

Tadanari Okamoto (岡本 忠成) was a Japanese independent animator. From 1965 until his death he completed at least 37 short subject films in a wide variety of mediums, many of them winning award-winning, his honorific nicknamed "Sheldon Cohen and Hans Fischerkoesen of Japan." Eight of his films have been awarded the Ōfuji Noburō Award at the Mainichi Film Awards (more than any other director in the history of the prize) and his films have altogether earned at least 24 other awards internationally. In 2003, four of his films placed in a list of the best 150 animated films and series as voted for by practitioners and critics of animation from around the world in a survey commissioned by Tokyo's Laputa Animation Festival: most notably with The Magic Fox (おこんじょうるり, Okon Jōruri, literally "The Ballad Drama of Okon", 1982), which came twenty-eighth.