Japanese film director Kon Ichikawa dies at 92

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese film director Kon Ichikawa, who won a raft of awards for his work in the 1950s and 1960s, has died of pneumonia, movie studio Toho Co said on Wednesday. He was 92.

Born in 1915 in western Japan, Ichikawa is perhaps best known for his bleak 1956 anti-war epic, "The Burmese Harp," based on a novel in which a hapless Japanese soldier tries to persuade a group of comrades to surrender after the end of World War Two.

Ichikawa also achieved widespread recognition for his adaptations of various other works of Japanese literature and for his documentary "Tokyo Olympiad," a behind-the-scenes look at the 1964 Summer Games, the first to be held in Asia.

One of the country's best-known directors at a time when the West was discovering Japanese cinema, Ichikawa often worked with his wife, Natto Wada, a respected scriptwriter, until she became disillusioned with the industry in the 1960s.

Ichikawa made his last film in 2006 - a remake of his earlier release "The Inugami Family."

(Reporting by Isabel Reynolds; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)