Kinji Fukasaku

From Mito, Ibaraki, Japan • 1930 - 2003

Kinji Fukasaku (Japanese: 深作 欣二, Hepburn: Fukasaku Kinji; 3 July 1930 – 12 January 2003) was a Japanese filmmaker. Known for his "broad range and innovative filmmaking", he worked in many different genres and styles, but was best known for his gritty yakuza films, typified by the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series (1973–1976). According to the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, his "turbulent energy and at times extreme violence express a cynical critique of social conditions and genuine sympathy for those left out of Japan's postwar prosperity". He used a cinema verite-inspired shaky camera technique in many of his films from the early 1970s. Fukasaku wrote and directed over 60 films between 1961 and 2003. Some Western sources have associated him with the Japanese New Wave movement of the 1960s and 1970s, but this belies his commercial success. His works include the Japanese portion of the Hollywood war film Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), jidaigeki such as Shogun's Samurai (1978), the space opera film Message from Space (1978), the science fiction film Virus (1980), the fantasy film Samurai Reincarnation (1981), and the highly influential dystopian thriller film Battle Royale (2000). Fukasaku won the Japan Academy Film Prize for Director of the Year three times from nine nominations. He served as the sixth president of the Directors Guild of Japan from 1996 until his death from prostate cancer in 2003. He received the Purple Medal of Honor from the Japanese government for his work in 1997. His films have inspired directors such as Quentin Tarantino, William Friedkin, and John Woo. (Via Wikipedia)