Kinji Fukasaku

Kinji Fukasaku was a Japanese film director and screenwriter who was 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). He also directed the Japanese portion of the Hollywood war film Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), jidaigeki such as Shogun's Samurai (1978), the space opera Message from Space (1978), the post-apocalyptic science fiction film Virus (1980), the fantasy film Samurai Reincarnation (1981), and the influential dystopian thriller Battle Royale (2000). He used a cinema verite-inspired shaky camera technique in many of his films from the early 1970s. He wrote and directed over 60 films between 1961 and 2003. Some Western sources have associated him with the Japanese New Wave movement of the '60s and '70s, but this belies his commercial success. He won the Japan Academy Film Prize for Director of the Year three times, out of nine total nominations. He served as President of the Directors Guild of Japan from 1996, until his death from prostate cancer in 2003. In 1997, he received the Purple Medal of Honor from the Japanese government for his work in film. His films have inspired directors such as Quentin Tarantino, William Friedkin, and John Woo. He was married to actress Sanae Nakahara and had a son, Kenta Fukasaku, who is also a filmmaker and screenwriter.