Masanori Hata
Illustration — Hata in 2003 17 April 1935 – 5 April 2023 was a Japanese zoologist, essayist, and filmmaker. A popular essayist under the pen name Mutsugorō, he was awarded the Kikuchi Kan Prize for his writing in 1977. He was perhaps best known in the West as the director and screenwriter of the 1986 film The Adventures of Milo and Otis.
Masanori Hata
- Born
- 1935 · Fukuoka.
- Died
- 2023 · Nakashibetsu.
- Nationality
- Japan · Empire of Japan
- Occupation
- novelist · screenwriter · zoologist · businessperson · actor · director · writer
- Education
- University of Tokyo · Hita High School
- Honours
- Kikuchi Kan Prize
- Languages
- Japanese
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Illustration — Hata in 2003 17 April 1935 – 5 April 2023 was a Japanese zoologist, essayist, and filmmaker. A popular essayist under the pen name Mutsugorō, he was awarded the Kikuchi Kan Prize for his writing in 1977. He was perhaps best known in the West as the director and screenwriter of the 1986 film The Adventures of Milo and Otis.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Masanori Hata. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q3297168 · wikipedia · Masanori Hata
In this article
Biography
Biography
Hata was born in Fukuoka Prefecture on 17 April 1935. He graduated from the Faculty of Biology at Tokyo University in 1958, and went on to complete a master's degree in 1959. Trained as a zoologist, he worked as a documentary filmmaker producing nature films. He moved to the eastern coast of Hokkaidō to establish the Mutsugorō Animal Kingdom nature preserve, where he and his family lived with over 300 wild and domestic animals. He was the author of over 100 books, including collections of his Mutsugorō essays on nature such as Warera dōbutsu mina kyōdai (All of Us Animals Are Brothers and Sisters, 1967) and Mutsogorō no hakubutsushi (Mutsugoro's Natural History, 1975). 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. It was shown that year at the Cannes Film Festival as The Adventures of Chatran. For US distribution by Columbia Pictures, it was cut down from 90 to 76 minutes and narration in English by Dudley Moore was added. It was released in 1989 as The Adventures of Milo and Otis. Hata died on 5 April 2023, at the age of 87.
Identity
Identity
Masanori Hata is recorded as novelist, screenwriter, zoologist, businessperson and actor.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1935
Masanori Hata born at Fukuoka.
2023
Masanori Hata died at Nakashibetsu.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Fukuoka.
Birth place
Nakashibetsu.
Death place
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 17 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Film memorabilia
37,284 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Masamitsu HidakaPerson
- Masanobu AndōPerson
- Masanobu DemePerson
- Masanobu TakashimaPerson
- Masanori TominagaPerson
- Masao AdachiPerson
- Masao InouePerson
- Masao UrinoPerson
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Masanori Hata?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.