Is Takeshi Kitano making his last movie? We look back at the Japanese icon’s cinema career, from Zatoichi to Ghost in the Shell
- Former stand-up comedian turned actor, director and TV presenter, Kitano is known abroad for his Outrage yakuza trilogy
- ‘Loved by critics and hated by public’, Kitano’s directing career spans three decades
The last time Takeshi Kitano was on the film festival circuit, it was with 2017’s Outrage Coda. Word had it this yakuza drama, the third in a trilogy, was to be his final film. The Japanese entertainment icon was having none of it. “I have ideas, a lot of ideas,” he told this writer through a translator. “I have the will to continue making movies. If I make a violent movie again, you can assume I have trouble with money!”
Now it seems those rumours of Kitano’s retirement have been greatly exaggerated, as they say. Last week, it was widely reported in the Japanese media that the 74 year-old filmmaker will go into production in May with Kubi. Titled Neck in English, it’s a period action film based on his own 2019 novel of the same name. The subject centres on the real-life Honno-ji Incident, in which famed warlord Oda Nobunaga was assassinated at a temple in Kyoto in 1582.
Again, it’s being suggested Kubi will be Kitano’s final film. In 2018, he stepped down from Office Kitano, the talent agency and production company he co-founded in 1992 with long-time producer Masayuki Mori. Back then, Mori said that Kitano wanted to “lay down the burdens he has been carrying … and increase his personal time.” A workaholic, Kitano has for years fronted nightly shows on Japanese television, often recording two weeks’ worth of episodes in one day.
A former stand-up comic who first came to attention in a double act called ‘The Two Beats’ (lending him his stage name, ‘Beat Takeshi’), Kitano made the switch to directing in 1989, when he took over from director Kinji Fukasaku on Violent Cop, a brutal police procedural that he also took the lead in. Yet it was his fruitful partnership with Mori that established him on the international stage, writing, directing and starring in a remarkable string of films.
Famed for his laconic, poetic style, punctuated by occasional bouts of brutality, Kitano delivered a high point with the 1997 film Hana-bi, which collected the Venice Film Festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion. Six years later, he was awarded best director in Venice for Zatoichi, his take on the mythical blind swordsman of Japanese popular culture. The film went on to become the most successful of his career, earning US$27 million alongside huge critical acclaim.
