Takashi Miike, along with 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano and Ring director Hideo Nakata, is one of the very few contemporary Japanese directors whose name is well known among mainstream western cinema-goers. The global acclaim which he received for Audition, coupled with western video/DVD releases of Dead or Alive , Visitor Q and Fudoh: The New Generation , has made western audiences aware that Miike is something special.
Born on 24th August 1960 in Osaka, Miike's early ambition was to be a motor mechanic, and his interest in engines saw him become a successful amateur motorbike racer. But the complications of achieving a professional racing license, coupled with a poor grasp of the mathematics essential to be a good engineer, led to a drift away from this interest. A radio advert for Yokohama Hoso Eiga Senmon Gakko (Yokohama Vocational School of Broadcast and Film) caught his attention and, since there was no entrance exam, he duly applied.
But Miike was uninterested in the artistic side of film-making and paid as little attention at film college as he had in high school, frequently cutting classes. Eventually, by chance, he landed a job as replacement assistant director on an episode of the TV series Black Jack , and from there started to gain other TV credits, up to 30 or 40 shows a year for seven years. "I actually preferred working in television over working in film," he says. "All these intellectuals are at the filming locations for theatrical release movies. And they consider it the 'real thing.' I had rebellious feelings that, despite their attitudes, they weren't making anything good. And besides, TV shows get more viewers."
Miike's first feature film credit was as AD on Zegen , directed by Shohei Imamura, dean of the Yokohama School, in 1987. Four years later he gave up his TV work when he made the movie to First AD on Hideo Onchi's Shimanto-gawa , and later that same year he took on directorial duties for the first time. "I did my job, I worked hard on whatever was assigned to me," he says. "But I never went out to find work for myself. I wasn't really trying to make a career for myself."
For four years. Miike directed straight-to-video movies, his first theatrical feature being 1995's SHINJUKU TRIAD SOCIETY, a startling and original take on the yakuza/gangster genre which immediately identified Miike as a director to watch. "I don't set out to say: yakuza films are like this, I want to do something different," he explains. "But maybe my idea of a yakuza film is different to most people's. I don't set out to be different - it just happens that way. I make what to me is a normal gangster movie."
SHINJUKU TRIAD SOCIETYwas the first part of a loose trilogy which continued with RAINY DOG in 1997 and LEY LINES in 1999, but in the meantime the extraordinarily prolific Miike continued to build his extensive filmography. It was Fudoh: The New Generation which really made his name, attracting critical acclaim not just in Japan but in the west too, and the direct-to-video FULL METAL YAKUZA followed less than a year later.
Miike's films are usually violent in a way which is over the top yet rarely strays into comedy (unless deliberately so, as in the hilariously dark The Happiness of the Katakuris ) because each film has a twisted internal logic to which it adheres. But it is not violence, or horror, or gangsters which define a Takashi Miike films: four films as different as, say, Audition , Fudoh , Visitor Q and The Happiness of the Katakuris it would be difficult to imagine, yet there are recognisable similarities which define them as part of Miike's oeuvre: family is an important element of his films, along with a view of modern Japan as a multicultural society, and an attitude to violence which sometimes betrays his love of Monty Python but is all the more horrific for being played straight. "I want to shoot violent scenes, but not action scenes," he says. "The blood and pain makes it more real to the audience. Hollywood can make nice, violent movies, but I can't. In my films, people are like monsters or beasts. Their violence is extreme but at least honest." In addition, Miike plays with form and structure, often using the editing suite to jump around the time and space in which each film is set.
FULL METAL YAKUZA is Miike's blackly comic take on RoboCop and can be seen as a prototype of his later film Ichi the Killer . There is the same ultra-violence laced with dark/sick humour and Ichi's body armour is not dissimilar to the cyborg suit seen in this film.
Working sometimes as a director for hire, yet still stamping his individual take on each film, Miike has directed everything from atmospheric fantasies ( THE BIRD PEOPLE IN CHINA ) to behind-the-scenes documentaries on other people's films ( The Making of Gemini ). It is perhaps because he never had any directorial ambition, and is the absolute antithesis of the auteur theory, that his work nevertheless has a cohesive element which has alerted critics and audiences in both east and west to his undoubted talent.
"I'm not especially conscious that I have a style of my own," says Miike. "And I certainly don't shoot for a jump cut or that staccato editing. Some people would say that my films devolve in my editing. But I always like the concept of scratching, like with records when I was a kid, so maybe my editing is like a form of scratching."
As more and more of his films become available in the west, and with the director himself showing no sign of letting up his astonishing production rate, Takashi Miike is developing a massive critical and popular following around the globe. His former classmates from the Yokohama School, who actually wanted to be film-makers and studied hard in classes, must be amazed.
Filmography
2004
· Zebraman
· Chakushin Ari / You've Got a Call
· Izo: Kaosu Mataha Fujori no Kijin
2003
· Koshonin (TV movie)
· Yurusarezaru Mono / The Man in White / The Unforgiven
· Gozu / Gokudo Kyofu Daigekijo: Gozu
· Kikoku
· Last Life in the Universe (dir. Pen-ek Ratanaruang) - cameo appearance
2002
· Jitsuroku Ando Noboru Outlaw-den Rekka / Deadly Outlaw: Rekka / Violent Fire
· Dead or Alive: Final / Dead or Alive 3
· Onna Kunishu Ikki
· Sabu (TV Movie)
· Shin Jingi no Hakaba / Graveyard of Honor - also cameo role
· Pandora
· Kinyu Hametsu Nihon: Togenkyo no Hito-bito / Shangri-la
2001
· Family - also cinematographer
· Visitor Q / Love Cinema Vol. 6
· Koroshiya Ichi / Ichi the Killer
· Araburu Tamashii-tachi / Agitator / Outlaw Souls - also cameo role
· Katakuri-ke no Kofuku / The Happiness of the Katakuris
· Zuido Genso: Tonkararin Yume Densetsu
· Kikuchi-jo Monogatari: Sakimori-tachi no Uta
2000
· Tajuu Jinkaku Tantei Saiko: Amamiya Kazuhiko no Kikan / MPD Psycho (TV series)
· Hyoryuu-gai / The City of Lost Souls / The City of Strangers / Hazard City
· Tengoku Kara Kita Otoko-tachi / The Guys from Paradise
· Dead or Alive 2: Tobosha / Dead or Alive 2
· Tsukamoto Shinya ga Rampo / The Making of Gemini
1999
· Tennen Shojo Man Next (TV Series)
· Tennen Shojo Man (TV Series)
· Nihon Kuroshakai / Ley Lines
· Silver
· Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha / Dead or Alive
· Salaryman Kintaro
· Tennen Shojo Man Next: Yokohama Hyaku-ya-hen (TV movie)
· Audition
1994
· Shinjuku Outlaw
· Bodyguard Kiba: Shura no Mokushiroku
1993
· Bodyguard Kiba
· Oretachi wa Tenshi ja Nai 2
· Oretachi wa Tenshi ja Nai
1992
· Ningen Kyoki / Human Murder Weapon
1991
· Toppuu! Minipato tai / Eyecatch Junction
· Ai to Urugari no Hyaku-oku Yen / Last Run (TV movie)
· Koroshi no Prelude / Lady Hunter
· Shimanto-gawa ( dir. Hideo Onchi) - chief assistant director
1990
· Peesuke: Gatapishi Monogatari (dir. Shuji Goto) - assistant director
· Ronin-gai (dir. Kazuo Kuroki) - assistant director
1989
· Kuroi Ame / Black Rain (1989, dir. Shohei Imamura) - assistant director
1988
· Kujaku O / Hung Cheuk Wong Ji / Kong Qiao Wang Zi / Legend of the Phoenix / Peacock King (dir. Ngai Kai Lam) - assistant director
1987
· Zegen (1987, dir. Shohei Imamura) - assistant director
In addition, Miike makes cameo appearances in the following films:
· Ryuko Kyudo / Blood Brothers (2002, dir. Hitoshi Ozawa
· Nikutai Keibiin: Sakareta Seifuku / The Security Women Affair (2001, dir. Naoto Kumazawa)
· Isola: Taju Jinkaku Shojo (2000, dir. Mizutani Toshiyuki)
· Yomigaeru Kinro 2: Fukkatsu-hen (1998, dir. Takeshi Watanabe)
