Hiroyuki Tanaka (田中博行[1], Tanaka Hiroyuki, born November 18, 1964), known professionally as Sabu (サブ), is a Japanese actor and film director.
Career
Born in Wakayama Prefecture, Sabu studied at an Osakafashion school before deciding to go to Tokyo to become a professional musician.[2] It was suggested he try acting and in 1986 he made his film debut in Sorobanzuku. He earned his first starring role in the 1991 World Apartment Horror, a live-action film directed by Katsuhiro Ōtomo of Akira fame. Working from a script he wrote himself, he made his directorial debut with the 1996 Dangan Runner, a film that set his early style of "quirky action-comedies propelled by characters who hurtle headlong though squirming narratives steered more by the forces of incidence and coincidence than the actions of the protagonists themselves."[3]Shin'ichi Tsutsumi played the lead in Sabu's first five films. Blessing Bell, starring Susumu Terajima (who has played minor roles in nearly all of Sabu's films), was a turn away from his kinetic, parodic, and black comedy narratives, and earned the NETPAC Award at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival.[4] Later films featured the J-pop band V6. In 2009, he directed The Crab Cannery Ship, a modern adaptation of a classic of Japaneseproletarian literature written by Takiji Kobayashi.
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