CULTJAPAN!

Takeshi Kitano (Beat Takeshi, Beat Kitano, Takashi Kitano), born 1947, is a Japanese filmmaker, comedian, actor, film editor, presenter, screenwriter, author, poet, painter, and one-time video game designer who has received critical acclaim in Japan and abroad for his highly idiosyncratic cinematic work. Since April 2005 he has been a professor at the Graduate School of Visual Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts. In Japan Kitano is known primarily as a TV host and comedian. 

Some of Kitano’s earlier films are dramas about Yakuza gangsters or the police, described by critics as using an acting style that is highly deadpan or a camera style that approaches near-stasis. Many of his films express a bleak or nihilistic philosophy, but they are also filled with a great deal of humor and affection for their characters. Kitano’s films leave paradoxical impressions and can seem controversial.

After several other mostly comedic roles he was cast as the lead in Violent Cop (1989, Sono Otoko, Kyōbō ni Tsuki), playing a sociopathic detective who responds to every situation with violence. When the original director (Kinji Fukasaku) fell ill, Kitano offered to step in, and rewrote the script heavily. The result was a financial and critical success in Japan, and the beginning of Kitano’s career as a filmmaker.

Kitano’s second film as director and first film as screenwriter, released in 1990, was Boiling Point (3-4X JÅ«gatsu). Masahiko Ono plays the lead role of a young man whose baseball coach is threatened by the local yakuza. He and a friend travel to Okinawa to purchase guns so they can get revenge, but along the way they are befriended by a psychotic gangster played by Kitano, who is plotting his own revenge. With complete control of the script and direction, Kitano uses this film to cement his style: shocking violence, bizarre black humor and stoically shot ‘still’ scenes. In spite of this, the film was considered a failure and did not recover its production costs upon initial release.

Kitano’s third film, A Scene at the Sea (Ano Natsu, Ichiban Shizukana Umi), was released in 1991. It featured no gangsters, but instead a deaf garbage collector who is determined to learn how to surf after discovering a broken surfboard while working. A young girl (also deaf) follows his progress and is quick to assist him wherever possible. Kitano’s more delicate, romantic side came to the fore here, along with his trademark deadpan approach.

Foreign audiences began to take notice of Kitano after the 1993 release of Sonatine. Kitano plays a Tokyo yakuza who is sent by his boss to Okinawa to help end a gang war there. He is tired of gangster life, and when he finds out the whole mission is a ruse, he welcomes what comes with open arms.

The 1995 release of Getting Any? (Minna Yatteruka!) showed Kitano returning to his comedic roots. This Airplane!-like assemblage of comedic scenes, all centering loosely around a Walter Mitty-type character trying to have sex in a car, met with little acclaim in Japan. Much of the film satirizes popular Japanese culture, such as Ultraman or Godzilla and even the Zatoichi character that Kitano himself would go on to play eight years later. That year Kitano also appeared in the film adaptation of William Gibson’s Johnny Mnemonic (1995), although his on-screen time was greatly reduced for the American cut of the film.

In August 1994, Kitano was involved in a motorcycle accident and suffered injuries that caused the paralysis of one side of his body, and required extensive surgery to regain the use of his facial muscles. Kitano made Kids Return in 1996, soon after his recovery. At the time it became his most successful film yet in his native Japan.

After his motorcycle accident, Kitano took up painting. His bright, simplified style is reminiscent of Belarusian painter Marc Chagall. His paintings have been published, exhibited, adorn the covers of many of his movie soundtrack albums, and featured prominently in his most critically acclaimed film, 1997′s HANA-BI (released as Fireworks in North America), which cemented his status internationally as one of Japan’s foremost modern filmmakers.

Among his most significant roles were Nagisa Oshima’s 1999 film Taboo (Gohatto), where he played Captain Hijikata Toshizo of the Shinsengumi. Kikujiro (Kikujirō no Natsu), released in 1999, featured Kitano as a ne’er-do-well crook who winds up paired up with a young boy looking for his mother, and goes on a series of misadventures with him.

Kitano plays Kitano in Battle Royale (2000), a controversial Japanese blockbuster set in a bleak dystopian future where a group of teenagers are randomly selected each year to kill each other on a deserted island.

Brother (2001), shot in Los Angeles, had Kitano as a deposed Tokyo yakuza setting up a drug empire in L.A. with the aid of a local gangster played by Omar Epps. Despite a large buzz around Kitano’s first English language film, the film was met with tepid response in the US and abroad. Dolls (2002) had Kitano directing but not starring in a film with three different stories about undying love; it met with largely favorable critical and public reception.

Critics were not as lavish with their praise for Brother and Dolls as they had been with previous Kitano films. 2003′s Zatōichi, in which Kitano directed and starred, silenced many dissenters. With a new take on the character from Shintaro Katsu’s long-running film and TV series, Zatōichi was Kitano’s biggest box office success in Japan, did quite well in limited release across the world, and won countless awards at home and abroad.

Kitano’s film, Takeshis’ was released in Japan in November 2005 with an unusual tagline, reading “500% Kitano – Nothing to Add!” in English.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Takeshi Kitano“.