Masanori Hata

A popular essayist under the pen name Mutsugorō,[1] he was awarded the Kikuchi Kan Prize for his writing in 1977.

[2] He graduated from the Faculty of Biology at Tokyo University in 1958, and went on to complete a master's degree in 1959.

[2] Over four years, Hata and associate director Kon Ichikawa shot 400,000 feet of film at the Mutsugorō 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 (子猫物語, A Kitten's Story) and was the highest-grossing film of the year in Japan, taking in about $36 million.

For US distribution by Columbia Pictures, it was cut down from 90 to 76 minutes and narration in English by Dudley Moore was added.