Takashi Miike (三池 崇史, Miike Takashi, born August 24, 1960) is a Japanese film director, film producer and screenwriter. He has directed over 100 feature film, video, and television productions since his debut in 1991. His films span a variety of different genres, ranging from violent and bizarre to dramatic and family-friendly movies. He is a controversial figure in the contemporary Japanese cinema industry, with several of his films being criticised for their extreme graphic violence. Some of his best known films are Audition, Ichi the Killer, Visitor Q, Dead or Alive, and various remakes: 13 Assassins, Hara-kiri, and Graveyard of Honor. He has also acted in more than 20 films.
Miike's first films were television productions, but he also began directing several direct-to-videoV-Cinema releases. Miike still directs V-Cinema productions intermittently, due to the creative freedom afforded by the less stringent censorship of the medium and the riskier content that the producers will allow.
Miike's theatrical debut was the film The Third Gangster (Daisan no gokudō),[4][5] but Shinjuku Triad Society (1995) was his first theatrical release to gain public attention. The film showcased his extreme style and his recurring themes, and its success allowed him to work on higher-budgeted pictures. Shinjuku Triad Society was the first film in what is labeled his "Black Society Trilogy", which also includes Rainy Dog (1997) and Ley Lines (1999). He gained international fame in 2000 when his romantic horror film Audition (1999), his violent yakuza epicDead or Alive (1999), and his controversial adaptation of the manga Ichi the Killer played at international film festivals. He has since gained a strong cult following in the West that is growing with the increase in DVD releases of his works. His film Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai premiered In Competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.[6] His 2013 film Straw Shield was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.[7]
Themes of his work
Miike achieved notoriety for depicting shocking scenes of extreme violence and sexual perversions. Many of his films contain graphic and lurid bloodshed, often portrayed in an over-the-top, cartoonish manner. Much of his work depicts the activities of criminals (especially yakuza) or concern themselves with gaijin, non-Japanese or foreigners living in Japan. He is known for his dark sense of humor and for pushing the boundaries of censorship as far as they will go.
While Miike often creates films that are less accessible and target arthouse audiences and fans of extreme cinema, such as Izo and the "Box" segment in Three... Extremes, he has created several mainstream and commercial titles such as the horror filmOne Missed Call and the fantasy drama The Great Yokai War.
Several of Miike's films have been subject to scrutiny due to heavy violence. His 2001 horror film Ichi the Killer, adapted from a manga of the same name and starring Tadanobu Asano as a sadomasochisticyakuza enforcer, was highly controversial; during its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2001, the audience received "barf bags" emblazoned with the film's logo as a promotional gimmick.[12] The British Board of Film Classification refused to allow the release of the film uncut in the United Kingdom, citing its extreme levels of sexual violence towards women; the film required 3 minutes and 15 seconds of mandated cuts to be allowed release.[13] In Hong Kong, 16 minutes and 59 seconds of footage were cut.[14][unreliable source?]Ichi the Killer was also banned outright in Norway, Germany and Malaysia.[15]
In 2005, Miike was invited to direct an episode of the Masters of Horror anthology series. The series, featuring episodes by a range of established horror directors such as John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper and Dario Argento, was supposed to provide directors with relative creative freedom and relaxed restrictions on violent and sexual content (some sexual content was edited from the Argento-directed episode "Jenifer"). However, when the Showtime cable network acquired the rights to the series, Miike's episode, "Imprint", was deemed too disturbing for the network. Showtime cancelled it from the broadcast lineup even after extended negotiations, though it was retained as part of the series' DVD release. Mick Garris, creator and executive producer of the series, described the episode as "amazing, but hard even for me to watch... definitely the most disturbing film I've ever seen".[16] While "Imprint" has yet to air in the United States, it has aired on Bravo in the United Kingdom,[17] on FX in Mexico, South and Central America, the Dominican Republic, France, Israel, Turkey, on Nelonen in Finland, and on Rai Tre in Italy. Anchor Bay Entertainment, which has handled the DVD releases for the Masters of Horror series in the US, released "Imprint" uncut on Region 1 DVD on September 26, 2006.[18]
In 2005, Takashi Miike directed a Kabuki-style play titled Demon Pond. The DVD recording of the performance was released by Cinema Epoch.[27][28]
Takashi Miike directed the play Zatoichi based on the character Zatoichi. The stage production was performed and filmed on December 12, 2007, and the DVD was released on May 30, 2008.
References
^Schneider, Steven Jay, ed. (2007). 501 Movie Directors. London: Cassell Illustrated. p. 597. ISBN9781844035731. OCLC1347156402.
^Mes, Tom. Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike. Godalming: FAB Press, 2003. ISBN1-903254-21-3. p. 15.
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