Takashi Miike

Takashi Miike, born August 24, 1960, in Yao, Osaka, is a Japanese director known for an unusually large and stylistically varied filmography. He attended the Yokohama Vocational School of Broadcast and Film, founded by director Shohei Imamura, and began working in the industry as an assistant director. During the 1990s, he directed numerous low-budget direct-to-video productions before gaining international attention through films that combined crime, horror, black comedy, melodrama, and extreme violence. Miike’s early yakuza films include Shinjuku Triad Society (1995), the first installment of his Black Society Trilogy, followed by Rainy Dog (1997) and Ley Lines (1999). His 1999 film Audition, adapted from Ryu Murakami’s novel, became one of his best-known works outside Japan. It stars Ryo Ishibashi as a widower who stages a fake casting call to find a new wife and Eihi Shiina as Asami Yamazaki, whose apparent gentleness conceals terrifying motives. The film’s final act made it a major title in international horror cinema. In the same year, Miike released Dead or Alive, a violent crime film starring Riki Takeuchi and Show Aikawa. It was followed by Dead or Alive 2: Birds (2000) and Dead or Alive: Final (2002), although the three films do not function as a conventional continuing narrative. Other provocative productions from this period include Visitor Q (2001), Ichi the Killer (2001), and Gozu (2003). Ichi the Killer, based on Hideo Yamamoto’s manga, features Tadanobu Asano as the sadomasochistic gangster Kakihara and Nao Omori as the title character. Miike has also directed major studio entertainment. Zebraman (2004), starring Show Aikawa, is a superhero comedy that later received a sequel. The Great Yokai War (2005) reworked the Japanese yokai fantasy tradition for a family-oriented audience. Crows Zero (2007) and Crows Zero II (2009), prequels to Hiroshi Takahashi’s manga Crows, became commercially successful school-delinquent action films. His 2010 samurai film 13 Assassins remade Eiichi Kudo’s 1963 picture and follows a group assembled to kill a sadistic lord before he can gain political power. The film competed for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Miike later directed Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011), a 3D remake of Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri, which competed at Cannes. His later work includes Lesson of the Evil (2012), Shield of Straw (2013), Blade of the Immortal (2017), and First Love (2019).