COMPANY TOWN : The Twain Are About to Meet : Japanese Producer Looks to American Studios for Keys to Success

The plot: A Samurai warrior travels from Japan to the American West, confronts the people who live there and ends up joining a tribe of Native Americans.

That’s the summary of “East Meets West,” an upcoming movie from the Japanese studio Shochiku Co., one of the country’s three major television and film entertainment companies.

But it is also an appropriate metaphor to describe Kazuyoshi Okuyama, Shochiku’s executive vice president and son of Chief Executive Toru Okuyama.

The junior Okuyama earned national scorn in Japan last year for shortening his own version of “The Mystery of Rampo,” a film he produced but did not direct. Japanese custom gives directors near-exclusive control of their works, but Okuyama found the original version too depressing.

The gamble paid off: Okuyama’s “Rampo” became the highest-grossing live-action film in Japan last year. It also made him determined to style the company he is likely to inherit in two years after American studios, which produce films and television programming that are both entertaining and profitable.

So while Matsushita Electric Industrial Corp. was working to shed its MCA subsidiary and Sony Corp. struggled with its Culver City studio, Okuyama--who heads Shochiku’s international business division--went to Hollywood. So far, his efforts have produced the following:

* A deal with Universal Pictures to produce a remake of “The Yellow Handkerchief,” a story about a young couple, an ex-convict and his wife. The project will go forward if the screenplay is satisfactory to both companies, Universal President Casey Silver said.

* A deal to make “The Amateurs,” a film about Olympic rowers based on the book by David Halberstam, with Aska Film Productions of Montreal. The movie is scheduled for release next summer.

* Negotiations with Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Productions to jointly produce movies over the next five years.

* An understanding that Samuel Goldwyn Co. will co-produce several films with Shochiku.

Shochiku’s alliances with Samuel Goldwyn and Tribeca are the “two pillars” of Okuyama’s plan to produce internationally marketable movies with American companies.

Goldwyn will distribute “The Mystery of Rampo” in the United States; it opens in Los Angeles and New York on May 19. In Japan, Shochiku has distributed a number of Goldwyn films and will add “The Madness of King George” to its list this fall.

Meyer Gottlieb, president and chief operating officer of Goldwyn, said he is looking forward to building a production relationship with Shochiku--a relationship that makes good sense given the Japanese studio’s new focus.

“They’re entering into production of feature films that would have international appeal,” Gottlieb said. Any jointly produced film would probably have “an Oriental element,” not necessarily in the casting but in the sensibility, he said.

Okuyama has raised $42 million from a collection of Japanese companies to fund the production of international-style films over the next five years. “East Meets West,” which begins filming this month outside Santa Fe, N.M., and “Amateurs” will use some of that funding, but Okuyama said he will spend a good portion of that money on projects with Tribeca.

Though Okuyama’s strategy is being well-received among Shochiku’s U.S. partners, his colleagues in Japan are keeping a decidedly neutral position. In a culture that values tradition and self-sufficiency, Team Okuyama--Kazuyoshi’s band of followers within Shochiku who want to make profitable films in the American style--has earned both scorn and admiration.

“After all of the criticism, it’s hard for them to admit that they were wrong, but I think they all feel that way within themselves,” Okuyama says.

Gottlieb, who has enjoyed a long relationship with Okuyama’s father, Toru, says the elder Okuyama is pleased with the results of the controversial decision to release two versions of “Rampo.”

Kazuyoshi Okuyama believes that to make international-quality films that turn a profit, the Japanese movie-making process must incorporate more American customs, and that the best way to learn them is to work directly with U.S. companies. For example, Okuyama said he admires the degree of collaboration between American scriptwriters, directors and producers.

“I have read that the ‘Forrest Gump’ script was rewritten 10 times,” he said of the film that swept the Academy Awards and grossed more than $600 million at box offices worldwide. “That doesn’t happen in Japan.”

If Okuyama succeeds, it very well might.