Takeshi Kitano

Takeshi Kitano (?? ?, Kitano Takeshi, b. January 18,1947) is a Japanese comedian, actor, author, poet, painter, one time video game designer and film director who has received critical acclaim, both in his native Japan and abroad, for his highly idiosyncratic cinematic work. With the exception of his works as a film director, he is known almost exclusively by the name Beat Takeshi (??????, B?to Takeshi). Since April 2005 he is a professor at the Graduate School of Visual Arts, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.

Film career

After several other roles, mostly comedic, in 1989 he was cast in the lead for Violent Cop (Sono Otoko, Kyōbō ni Tsuki) as a sociopathic detective who responds to every situation with violence. When the original director 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.

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Kitano's second film as director and first film as screenwriter, released in 1990, was Boiling Point (3-4X Jūgatsu). Masahiko Ono plays the lead role of a young man whose baseball coach is threatened by a 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 has his own revenge to plot. With complete control of the script and direction, Kitano uses this film to cement his style: shocking violence, bizarre black humor and stoicly shot 'still' scenes. In spite of this, the film was considered a failure and did not recover its production costs upon initial release.

Related Topics:
Boiling Point - Masahiko Ono - Baseball - Yakuza - Okinawa

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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.

Related Topics:
A Scene at the Sea - Deaf - Surf

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Foreign audiences (that would outnumber his domestic audience in the coming years) 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.

Related Topics:
Sonatine - Tokyo - Yakuza - Okinawa

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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.

Related Topics:
Getting Any? - Airplane! - Walter Mitty - Ultraman - Godzilla - Zatoichi

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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. (The severity of his injuries was apparently due to him not fastening the chin strap on his helmet.) Many in the foreign press speculated that he might never be able to work again. Kitano put any such thoughts to rest by making Kids Return in 1996, soon after his recovery. At the time it became his most successful film yet in his native Japan.

Related Topics:
Kids Return - Japan

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After his motorcycle accident, Kitano took up painting. His bright, simplified style is reminiscent of Belarusian painter Marc Chagall. His paintings have been published in books, featured in gallery exhibitions, and adorn the covers of many of the soundtrack albums for his films. His paintings were featured prominently in his most critically acclaimed film, 1997's Hana-bi (released as Fireworks in North America). Although for years already Kitano's largest audience had been the foreign arthouse crowd, Hana-bi cemented his status internationally as one of Japan's foremost modern filmmakers.

Related Topics:
Belarus - Marc Chagall - Hana-bi - North America

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Kitano has continued to work regularly since his accident. Kikujiro (Kikujirō no Natsu), released in 1999, featured Kitano as a ne'er-do-well gangster who winds up paired up with a young boy looking for his mother, and goes on a series of misadventures with him. 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 unfavorable critical and public reception.

Related Topics:
Kikujiro - Brother - Los Angeles - Omar Epps - Dolls

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Between the underwhelming response to Brother and Dolls, Kitano became a punching bag for the press in the United States, who wondered if he had lost his ability to make a good film. Criticism was less severe in Europe and Asia though many commentators were not as lavish with their praise as they had been with previous Kitano films. 2003's Zatoichi, in which Kitano directed and starred, silenced many of these dissenters. A remake of Shintaro Katsu's 1970s film series, Zatoichi 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.

Related Topics:
Punching bag - Zatoichi - Shintaro Katsu - Japan

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Office Kitano has recently confirmed that production has begun on Kitano's next film, Takeshis' which is tentatively scheduled to be screened for the first time this Autumn. Little is known specifically about the film's content though many have begun to speculate as to the significance of its unusual tagline, reading "500% Kitano - Nothing to Add!"

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Kitano also stars regularly in other films. Among his most significant roles were Nagisa Oshima's 1999 film Taboo (Gohatto), where he played Captain Hijikata Toshizo of the Shinsengumi; and "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. He also appeared in the film adaptation of William Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic, although his on-screen time was greatly reduced for the American cut of the film.

Related Topics:
Nagisa Oshima - Taboo - Hijikata Toshizo - Shinsengumi - Battle Royale - Blockbuster - Dystopia - William Gibson - Johnny Mnemonic

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Kitano is a regular collaborator with composer Joe Hisaishi, who has created the scores for most of his films.

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