[2] At his death in 2008, The New York Times recalled that "The Globe and Mail, the Canadian newspaper, called him in 2001 “the last living link between the golden age of Japanese cinema, the spunky New Wave that followed and contemporary Japanese film.”"[3] Ichikawa was born in Ise, Mie Prefecture as Giichi Ichikawa (市川儀一).

Natto Wada's original name was Yumiko Mogi (born 13 September 1920 in Himeji, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan); the couple both had failed marriages behind them.

[8] It was after Ichikawa's marriage to Wada that the two began collaborating, first on Design of a Human Being (Ningen moyo) and Endless Passion (Hateshinaki jonetsu) in 1949.

Among his many literary adaptations were Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's The Key (Kagi), Natsume Sōseki's The Heart (Kokoro) and I Am a Cat (Wagahai wa neko de aru), in which a teacher's cat critiques the foibles of the humans surrounding him, and Yukio Mishima's Conflagration (Enjo), in which a priest burns down his temple to save it from spiritual pollution.

The Key, released in the United States as Odd Obsession, was entered in the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, and won the Jury Prize with Antonioni's L'Avventura.

[2] After Tokyo Olympiad Wada retired from screenwriting, and it marked a significant change in Ichikawa's films from that point onward.

Concerning her retirement, he said "She doesn't like the new film grammar, the method of presentation of the material; she says there's no heart in it anymore, that people no longer take human love seriously.

It can be said that his main trait is technical expertise, irony, detachment and a drive for realism married with a complete spectrum of genres.

[32] The Kon Ichikawa Memorial Room, a small museum dedicated to him and his wife Natto Wada displaying materials from his personal collection, was opened in Shibuya in 2015, on the site of his former home.