to rapidly develop into a critical and increasingly independent film movement. One distinction in the French movement was its roots with the journal Cahiers du cinéma; as many future filmmakers began their careers as critics and cinema deconstructionists, it would become apparent that new kinds of film theory (most prominently, auteur theory) were emerging with them. The Japanese movement developed at roughly the same time (with several important 1950s precursor films), but arose as more of a movement devoted to questioning, analyzing, critiquing and (at times) upsetting social conventions. One Japanese filmmaker who did emerge from a background akin to his French colleagues was Nagisa Oshima, who had been a leftist activist and an analytical film critic before being hired by a studio. Oshima's earliest films (1959–60) could be seen as direct outgrowths of opinions voiced in his earlier published analysis. Cruel Story of Youth, Oshima's landmark second film (one of four he directed in 1959 and 1960) saw an international release very immediately in the wake of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and François Truffaut's The 400 Blows. Directors and themes Directors initially associated with the Japanese New Wave included Susumu Hani, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Koreyoshi Kurahara, Yasuzo Masumura, Masahiro Shinoda, Nagisa Oshima, Yoshishige Yoshida, Shōhei Imamura and Terayama Shūji. Certain other filmmakers who had already launched careers – Seijun Suzuki, Kō Nakahira, Masaki Kobayashi, and Kaneto Shindo also came to be occasionally associated with the movement. Working separately, they explored a number of ideas previously not often seen in more traditional Japanese cinema: social outcasts as protagonists (including criminals or delinquents), uninhibited sexuality, changing roles of women in society, racism and the position of ethnic minorities in Japan, and the critique of (or deconstruction of) social structures and assumptions. Protagonists like Tome from Imamura's The Insect Woman (1963) or the adolescent delinquents of Oshima's Cruel Story of Youth (1960) represented rebellion, but also gave domestic and international audiences a glimpse into lives that would otherwise likely escape cinematic attention. Susumu Hani Unlike other Japanese New Wave filmmakers, Susumu Hani directed his works almost entirely outside of the major studios. Hani moved into feature filmmaking from an earlier career in documentary film, and favored non-actors and improvisation when possible. The documentaries Hani had made during the 1950s (1954's Children in the Classroom, and 1956's Children Who Draw) had introduced a style of cinema verite documentary to Japan, and were of great interest