“When I was a teenager, even if I didn’t understand what exactly a director was, I felt a sense of admiration for films like Bruce Lee’s”

— Miike, Arrow Video

After finishing high school at the age of 18, Miike would enroll at the Yokohama film school, primarily due to its lack of entrance exams. He would miss classes regularly, insisting, in an interview at the BFI London Film Festival 2017, that his decision to go to university was simply to escape from the responsibilities of life:

“I didn’t think I would be able to make films. [...] As a child I think I was a little bit more realistic about my own ability. [...] So, when I graduated from high school at that time you either had to go work or go to university but [at Yokohama] you didn’t have to take any exams to get into. [...] for me the school was somewhere I could escape to”

— Miike, BFI

Under the guidance of renowned Japanese filmmaker, Shôhei Imamura [the Dean of Yokohama], Miike went on to be nominated by his classmates, in jest, for an unpaid production assistant position at a local TV company. Little did his peers know, however, quite how instrumental the position would be to Miike’s success as a director.

He accepted the position and spent the next ten years working in a diverse variety of roles behind the camera; providing him with firsthand experience in film and TV, and establishing himself as a competent assistant director to many of Japan’s acclaimed filmmakers [such as Toshio Masuda, Kazuo Kuroki and even Imamura himself].

“As an assistant director I did so many different jobs [...] and in that work, I found it was fun for me. I hadn’t made much fun things that I really liked while I was at school”

— Miike, BFI

V-Cinema

Miike’s first directorial duties would come in the form of Japanese V-Cinema, a direct-to-video industry that allowed filmmakers to produce works low in budget and high in creative freedom. This is where Miike flourished, working tirelessly to pump out project after project [around four movies per year] where, as long as it sold around 10,000+ copies, the studio would consider it a success. Additionally, as Japan’s economic bubble began to burst in the early 90’s, studios were becoming far less inclined to put up for big-budget productions, preferring filmmakers, like Miike, to have full creative control over a much smaller investment [around 20 to 40 million yen or 200 to 400 thousand US dollars].

“[We would] make one Original Video [direct-to-video] with around 30 to 40 people, in two or three weeks with no sleep, and the industry is very happy if it goes to sell 10 or 20 thousand copies”

— Miike, CrystalStarTube

This is where the bulk of Miike’s early works would arise. With formative features such as Lady Hunter: Prelude to Murder [1991] and Bodyguard Kiba [1993] starting to circulate in Japan’s underground video sphere, Miike's infamously outrageous trademark style began to emerge as he cemented himself as a bankable creative.

Miike’s success in V-Cinema would lead him to direct his first theatrical effort, The Third Gangster in 1995; a film in which a yakuza gang goes to war with a more powerful rival [a trait that would be echoed frequently throughout his later efforts]. And while a commercial success, that would prove Miike a profitable filmmaker in a tentative industry, it wasn’t until Shinjuku Triad Society - the first of Miike’s Black Society trilogy - that the director would find fame for his versatility and his notorious affinity for the extreme.

Black Society Trilogy [+ The Way To Fight]

Shinjuku Triad Society has all of Miike’s cinematic mannerisms in spades: two warring mafia gangs, graphic portrayals of sex and violence, larger than life characters, and maniacal direction. Sporting his signature hand-held camera style infused with the considerable work ethic of the V-Cinema filmmaker, the film is the progenitor to the director’s famously eccentric body of work. And, while attaining its fair share of controversy for its extreme depictions of torture and assault, the film finds coercion in its central familial motif as Kiriya [Kippei Shiina] - a corrupt police detective - struggles to take down his brother, Yoshihito [Shinsuke Izutsu] a lawyer for the Chinese mob - and his sadistic partner, Wang [Tomorô Taguchi].

Starring an array of underground filmmakers such as the noted Taguchi [Tetsuo: The Iron Man] and SABU [Non-Stop], Shinjuku Triad Society helped establish Miike as a definitive voice in Japanese exploitation cinema - joining the likes of Takeshi Kitano, Kinji Fukasaku and Kiyoshi Kurosawa - and proving an appetite for his style within the mainstream. Playing well to Japanese audiences in an industry that, due to the noted economic crash of 1991, had studios purchasing more international movies than they were making themselves. Shinjuku Triad Society was a moderate success, allowing Miike to stretch his directing legs and make cinema that he wanted to make, with little to no limitations.

“I never made films with [becoming famous] in mind. I made [...] things that I wanted to make, with stuff that I cared about.”

— Miike, BFI

It was after the success of Shinjuku Triad Society that Miike would helm several films centered around the genre of yakuza; including the latter additions to his Black Society trilogy - Rainy Dog and Ley Lines - which, while dissimilar from the original, followed suit in terms of their familial motifs. Each of the series additions, albeit seemingly only tied by the recurrence of Taguchi [who plays a different character in each movie], are propagated by themes of identity, family and the fragility of home. With varying degrees of balls-to-the-walls action and Miike’s staple absurdist comedy, the films act as a tapestry of diaspora. In Shinjuku Triad Society the central brothers are half-Japanese, half-Chinese, while the villainous Wang is a gay Taiwanese man. As the brothers fight to maintain their respective positions in the traditionally Japanese space - Yakuza - their ethnicities are constantly brought into question. After trying so hard to bury their non-purely-Japanese heritage, it is precisely that quality - the one they share most intrinsically - that brings them into conflict. Additionally - being gay and Taiwanese in a space that would traditionally look down on such identifiers - Wang shares this sense of alienation. Thus, he acts to carve out a place for himself in an overtly heterosexual and Japanese institution, just as the brothers do in their respective positions [Kirya as a detective and Yoshihito as a lawyer for the mob]. As Kiriya uses his power to solidify his stature as police, and Yoshihito carves out a career as a criminal lawyer, Wang establishes himself as a major member of the Dragon's Claw triad society despite his Taiwanese descent. Kiriya, Yoshihito and Wang are, in essence, fighting the same fight for place and identity albeit through varying means of corruption.

Tomorô Taguchi in “Shinjuku Triad Society”

The later additions in the trilogy are thematically linked to this search for identity. In Rainy Dog, assassin Yuuji, played by cool guy Show Aikawa, searches for meaning in Taipei after being fired from his yakuza syndicate. In a foreign country where his skills are the sole benefactor to his identity, Yuuji wanders the rainy streets, finding solace in an unconventional family that he curates alongside his prostitute girlfriend and estranged son. Again we see Miike’s central character thrust into a world where he, as an outsider, carves out a slice of life from the grimy world of mafia crime. A film, which from the offset is about drugs and murder, ends up firmly in the space of family, with our hero disenfranchised with the life he has been forced to lead and thus breaking out through violent means.

This theme follows in Ley Lines, as two brothers and their friend - a trio of Japanese youths of Chinese descent - travel to Shinjuku, Tokyo to make a life for themselves in criminal enterprises. Things go awry, however, and our heroes are forced to plan an elaborate escape to Brazil, where the central character, Ryuichi [Kazuki Kitamura] believes their happiness lies. It is at this point that the trilogy’s recurrent motifs of family and identity are brought to a climax. After each film, each character’s fight for a place in societies that perceive them as Other, they are forced to escape after turning one too many heads. It is perhaps telling that Miike, whose grandfather supposedly had to leave his hometown of Kyushu after “he’d done something that meant he couldn’t stay”, interweaves notions of identity and diaspora in these films.

According to Miike’s frequent collaborator, Toshiki Kimura, who under the pseudonym Ichiro Ryu, wrote and produced many of the director’s films, has stated that “something Miike focused on were people who are considered weaker, the so-called minorities”. He explains that the characters in Miike’s movies are generally outsiders and thereby limited in their career paths. They become criminals out of necessity, carving out what they can and exploding outwards when their respective institutions run out of use for them. Supposedly, Miike’s The Way to Fight [1996] - an exceedingly difficult film to obtain - explores this feeling of homelessness exponentially; utilizing elements of diaspora and family to establish a deeply personal film about heritage and societal alienation.

Kazuki Kitamura and Kyôsuke Yabe in “The Way to Fight”

“In The Way To Fight, there’s actually a father who was based on a Korean living in Japan. There probably wouldn’t be any problems now, but, at the time, the people sponsoring that film wanted nothing to do with that, and there was a lot of resistance”

— Kimura, Arrow Video

Described by Miike as “his best work so far”, The Way To Fight presents a pair of fighters poised for combat, their entwined pasts and familial familiarities bonding them, yet binding them to a predestined and inevitable conflict. Whether through abuse, mental health illnesses or their mixed ethnicities, the characters in the film are pushed to the edges of society by the lives they were born into and forced to fight in order to carve out a semblance of life, family and belonging. As with Yuuji in Rainy Dog, the characters are dissatisfied with their situations and push to make a change through violence. According to Kimura, both films are about “naive characters who are searching for where they belong”; about “‘family’ and about minorities in society as well”. The Way To Fight, Rainy Dog and indeed the remaining Black Society trilogy, while filled to the brim with excess - violent, sexual and comedic - expose this nascent inspection of identity, family, those seeking family, and characters pushed to desperation by their migrant status. As affirmed by film historian, Aaron Gerow, in his seminal essay The Homelessness of Style and the Problems of Studying Miike Takashi, Miike’s early work is defined by its lack of centre. Themes such as “mixed blood” and “the rootless individual”, “the outcast”, “the search for happiness”, “nostalgia”, “the family unit”, and “violence” are all present in Miike’s films. Like many of his characters, Miike’s style was born out of an inability to fit into one distinct genre. His films sit on the wayside of cinematic conventions and popular subject matter. Yet, through their unrelenting vision and outlandish sensibilities, they carve out a space of cinema solely for Miike. And while varying in quality, these early efforts only prove that there’s a lot more bite to the filmmaker’s buck than meets the eye.

Fudoh: The Next Generation

Miike’s film’s soon became known for their eccentric characters, grotesque imagery, comedic absurdity and for presenting themes often regarded as taboo or too extreme for general audiences. Take Fudoh: The Next Generation [1996] for example; a seemingly generic yakuza film from the offset - with warring factions and gratuitous bloodshed - yet one that sports teenage killers, prolicide, patricide and even a child stripper who at one point accidentally sprays a man in the face with her menstrual blood. Yes, you read that right.

Based on the unfinished manga by Hitoshi Tanimura, Fudoh would continue exploring the familial themes introduced in his earlier efforts albeit with arguably less substance and more spectacle. The film takes us on an anime-esque dive into the trials and tribulations of Riki Fudoh [Shosuke Tanihara], who after witnessing his yakuza father decapitate his beloved brother to appease his higher-ups, beckons on a journey of violent retribution.

We observe Riki combat his burgeoning criminal activities while maintaining his high grades at school. We follow his rise to power and respect, enlisting the help of his lieutenants: the intimidating Aizone [Kenji Takano], who transitions into a cyborg mid-film, and of course the part-time stripper, full-time killer, Mika [Miho Nomoto] who enacts the aforementioned menstrual spray. We see Riki upturn the foundations of a traditional mafia syndicate, the only familial structure he’s ever known, and assume the position desecrated by his father’s prolicide. As with Miike, who deconstructs the conventions of the yakuza genre with his unique style and unflinching vision, Riki rejects the role thrust upon him by his status as a member of the Nioh yakuza, obliterates the institution it inhabits and, again like Rainy Dog, establishes a family out of the rubble.

Shosuke Tanihara in “Fudoh: The Next Generation”

Sporting two sequels that act to further explore the film’s decrepit world of underage assassins and develop its prospective villain, the mullet-sporting Daigen Nohma played by Miike’s go-to cool guy [and V-Cinema alum] Riki Takeuchi, Fudoh remains one of the director’s most brazen works and includes many aspects now-considered typical of his filmic palette. Sadly Miike would not return to direct either sequel and wouldn’t reunite with Takeuchi until four years later.

With Fudoh, Miike ventured hard into the violent absurdism introduced in Shinjuku Triad Society and reinforced his infamy as a budding provocateur of cinema to such an extent that even experimental filmmaker, Alejandro Jodorowsky [The Holy Mountain, El Topo] lauded Miike’s affinity for the bizarre, exclaiming in an interview in 2002 that when he watched Fudoh he almost had an orgasm.

After Fudoh, Shinjuku Triad Society and its later sequels, Miike soon began directing more and more theatrical pictures, enlisting the talent and the equipment of his direct-to-video days and making movies of a higher budget and a higher propensity for the extreme. And no other franchise meets this criterion more thoroughly than that of the utterly insane, and hugely divisive, Dead or Alive trilogy.

Dead Or Alive Trilogy

The Dead or Alive trilogy can be described in one word: subversive. Taking the conventions laid out by the Black Society trilogy, and the rest of the yakuza genre, and breaking protocol wherever possible.

Beginning with the titular Dead or Alive, released in 1999 and starring the aforementioned V-Cinema legend Riki Takeuchi and the endlessly charismatic Show Aikawa, Miike looks to establish a generic yakuza film; adorned with warring gangs, familial institutions and a corrupt police detective. Yet, as the film proceeds the insanity within soon sprouts, turning the film into something of a subversive masterpiece.

Show Aikawa and Riki Takeuchi in “Dead or Alive”

The police detective, played by Aikawa, is enlisted by a local yakuza boss to find and deliver the members of a rival gang making waves in the organised crime scene. This gang, led by Takeuchi’s, Ryūichi, is befitted with a flurry of young wannabe mobsters made up of his childhood friends and younger brother, Toji [Michisuke Kashiwaya], who has returned home from studying in the United States. Intent on building their budding reputation, the gang decide to steal money from the aforementioned yakuza boss, played by Renji Ishibashi, who is currently in the middle of negotiating a deal with a triad gang led by Mr. Chen [Shingo Tsurumi]. Things seemingly go to plan until Ishibashi’s Aoki hears wind of Ryūichi’s gang after drowning one of their members in a pool of her own faeces. Things go from worse to worst when Aikawa’s Detective Jojima soon gives chase to the budding gang, culminating in an exchange of bullets during a celebration of a new partnership between Aoki's yakuza and Chen’s triad.

And in that, you have all the ingredients of an early Miike film: yakuza, triad, family, violence and repugnant imagery. Yet what makes this film so subversive is its iconic final scene which, if you haven’t watched it, involves Detective Jojima and the remaining members of Ryūichi’s gang coming to final blows in a shootout for the ages.

Taking everything the film has set up - the grounded violence, the familial values, the warring factions - and subverting all expectations in a finale as explosive as they come, Miike proves, once again, to be a master of the extreme and, as coined by Wisecrack, “The Biggest Troll in Movie History”. With the climactic shootout ramping up to country-destroying levels of insanity as Detective Jojima pulls out a bazooka to face off with Ryūichi’s incoming energy blast - yes, again, you read that right - Miike, after putting together a narrative typical of his style and absurdity, breaks conventions yet again by having his central characters battle in ways that subvert even the most extreme aspects of cinema.

Producing, as described by Gerow, “a reactionary and nihilistic form of cinematic postmodernism that has broken down all forms of serious meaning through cynical playfulness” Dead or Alive enjoys Miike at his most subversive, literally annihilating Japan as perhaps symbolic of him annihilating cinematic conventions, as well as his own.

Riki Takeuchi and Show Aikawa in “Dead or Alive: Birds”

The subsequent sequels, Dead or Alive 2: Birds and Dead or Alive: Final, released respectively in 2000 and 2002, follow this level of nonconformism, yet to varying degrees of success. Birds takes aspects typical of Miike’s films - violent excess and exaggerated characters - and embeds them in a piece that feels more about the whimsical nature of childhood than anything else. With its two protagonists Mizuki Okamoto and Shuuichi Sawada, played again by Aikawa and Takeuchi, estranged childhood friends turned hired killers, who venture to their home island in order to hide out after a hit gone wrong. Here, instead of violently carving a slice out of the yakuza pie, the two reconnect with their childhood friend, Kōhei [Kenichi Endō] and reminisce about life on the island before being thrust into the world of contract killing.

While bookended by Miike’s use of violence and crime, the film seems more intent on exploring the nature of nostalgia than that of yakuza. For long periods of Birds we witness the protagonists reflect on their lives, histories and values. We find out that they’re all orphans from the same orphanage, that their criminal lives have been established by a want to find place and purpose, with Mizuki, after his adoption, finding his profession on the mainland and Sawada following suit. Again, much like the Black Society trilogy, Miike’s characters - pushed to the fringes of society - are forced to find their place in the only way they can, through crime and violence. Yet, in Birds, these characters are less concerned with carving out a life for themselves and more about reconnecting with their pasts. This film, along with many other of Miike’s works, depicts the “impossibility of dreaming something one cannot dream, of feeling nostalgic about a home one never had” (Gerow 2009). Mizuki and Sawada, as orphans, seek to find a home that does not exist. They reflect on their decisions and whether their chosen professions have helped them formulate full-bodied identities or whether they have simply been handed to them by societal ostracization and contempt for minorities.

Returning to Gerow: “Memories of childhood and children who remind characters of their youth are repeated motifs [in Miike’s work], but their presentation often marks their failures, their loss of innocence - as beginning far too early”. In Birds, Miike’s characters are pushed to realise their flaws, and the flaws of the systems around them, by reminiscing about the only home they've ever known, and the only familial institution that has offered any form of care - their childhood friendship. It is in this reflection that our characters decide to make a positive change in their lives, deciding to continue their work as hitmen only to funnel their money into water and medicinal supplies for children in Africa. Our heroes - once forced into lives of crime due to their minority status - now choose to live those lives in order to positively affect those born into poverty and similarly narrow life paths. Sprouting wings and freeing themselves from the confines placed upon them by society, our heroes’ journeys provide another example of Miike’s tendency to subvert expectations; taking characters [albeit from different movies] who began by blowing up Japan in Dead or Alive and having them provide charity for children on the other side of the world in Birds.

In Final, Miike’s madness returns in a film that harbours considerably less depth than Birds yet succeeds in channeling and even surpassing, the level of mania as seen in Dead or Alive. Set in the near-future, where the corrupt mayor of Yokohama is forcibly sterilising the local population with birth control pills, the film enjoys the same absurdity of Miike’s first film but falters significantly in terms of its plot and supporting characters. With a misfit group of rebels who, while adept at stunt work, can’t act to save their lives, Aikawa returns as Ryō, a replicant [android] fighter leftover from a civilization-ending war who must face off with Takeuchi’s, Officer Takeshi Honda.

To attempt any sort of meaningful analysis of this film would be misspent as while exploring the nascent woes of dystopia - human suffering, societal misgivings and an oppressive totalitarian regime - the film acts chiefly to bring the Dead or Alive trilogy to an appropriately bizarre climax. And to this end, it achieves its goal, at least in part.

With the typical familial motifs of Miike’s early works, Ryō, whose replicant status makes him an outsider, establishes an unconventional family out of the freedom fighters and Honda’s kidnapped son. After years in hiding, and a lifetime of perceived otherness, Ryō finds a place amidst the rubble of the post-apocalypse. As the mayor tries to annihilate the foundations of a conventional family, by sterilising the local population, Ryō inadvertently curates one for himself from the leftovers of a world on fire.

Additionally, Honda, who acts as the Mayor’s hard boiled henchman, is thrust on a journey of self-discovery when he uncovers that he, and his entire family, are replicants. After dedicating himself to the search and destruction of androids, he finds out that he is one and reacts accordingly, with fire and fury. Ryō and Honda, both outsiders of a society that views them in contempt, are placed on the same journey, albeit from opposite ends of the spectrum; one in which a family is gained and the other where it is lost. Again, Miike reinforces that despite all the craziness - the blood, the gore - the overall excess of his Dead or Alive trilogy, they remain all about “‘family’ and about minorities in society as well”, to echo Kimura’s earlier statement.

This, however, in typical Miike fashion, is outshone by the film’s mind-numbingly bizarre climax, which has the two central androids fusing to create a giant penis-shaped mecha in order to take down the villainous Mayor Woo. And while arguably undermining the more reflective aspects of the movie, it is a celebration of excess to see Takeuchi and Aikawa’s characters accept their minority identities [as androids in this instance] and fight back against a system that has exploited and oppressed them thus far. As with the Black Society trilogy and the previous parts of the Dead or Alive trilogy, Miike reaffirms, with Final, his recurrent theme of minorities forced to make a life for themselves amidst an environment of alienation and contempt. To return to Kimura, with Miike’s films, it’s all about minorities “So that’s why in the third Dead or Alive, they’re minorities, really, aren’t they? Thinking they were human, but they were really androids. Androids that could feel sadness”. Miike, with his eccentric style and unwavering disposition for the extreme, brings the Dead or Alive trilogy to a ridiculous and yet weirdly cohesive end. With the series leads fusing into a massive penis robot to fight injustice and to remind us all what makes the infamous filmmaker so goddamn unique: his ability to interweave human introspection with even the most outlandish of subjects. Did we mention the giant robot penis?

The Bird People in China

Jumping in briefly to discuss one of Miike’s most underrated films, The Bird People in China [1998] which, while Yakuza-driven, and again starring Renji Ishibashi - one of Miike’s recurrent toys - proves to be more pensive and subdued than much of the director’s early work.

Starring Masahiro Motoki as Wada, a young salaryman from Japan who travels to a remote village in Yunnan, China to prospect for a local vein of jade. Accompanied by Ishibashi’s Ujiie, a disenfranchised Yakuza member, and Shen [Mako], their Chinese guide, Wada soon discovers that the people of the village harbour more secrets than that of the coveted jade deposit. Upon arrival, the trio uncovers a woman with blue eyes who, abiding by a set of documents left by her grandfather, teaches the children of the village to fly; at least in theory.

Masahiro Motoki and Renji Ishibashi in “The Bird People in China”

Sporting makeshift wings and overwhelming sentiment, Bird People, based on the novel of the same name by Makoto Shiina, soon reveals itself to be a poignant depiction of the effects of globalisation and the threat of civilization. Encountering an archaeologist along the way who believes that the origin of Japanese culture comes from this very village, our characters soon begin to question the ethics of their quest, the diminishing ecology of the world’s environments and the fragility of the self concurrently.

Wada and company seek to decipher the enigma of the village, the secrets of its flying school, and the origins of an entire people. However, in doing so, Miike’s central characters discover more about themselves than they do the village or indeed the mysteries therein. Wada finds that he’s more interested in uncovering the heritage of the blue-eyed girl than inspecting the jade vein, while Ujiie becomes enveloped in the village’s preservation; going insane and impeding the prospective mining operation to save the village from the exploitation of global commerce. With long takes that feel more in line with Rainy Dog or Ley Lines than anything from the Dead or Alive trilogy, Bird People demonstrates Miike’s ability to “[wander] between stylistic positions”; exploring the film’s reflective themes with stillness rather than the frantic camera movements he is known for [Gerow 2009].

In tandem with the ambiguity of the village’s location, its harboured mysteries, and the reflective nature of Ujiie, the film - with its minimalist camera techniques - reiterates Miike’s disposition for identity and place; “[providing] thrilling evocations of liberation in liminality, the freedom away from home” [Gerow 2009]. Ujiie uncovers more about himself in the village than he could possibly have known working as a Yakuza in Japan; realising his humanistic values in the village’s unspoiled beauty and choosing to fight against his established identity. Miike’s alternating style is “essential to the depiction of characters floating over space and materiality, yet still grasping at shreds of identity and location” [Gerow 2009]. As Wada deciphers the heritage of the blue-eyed girl, and Ujiie the truth of his ecological values, the film ponders over the significance of origin and self in an “effort to proliferate rootlessness itself” [Gerow 2009].

Returning to Gerow, Miike’s work is “an evocation of diaspora” and the “impossibility of dreaming something one cannot dream, of feeling nostalgic about a home one never had”; and Bird People implies these epithets wholly. Ambiguous to the end with Miike choosing to resolve the film’s innate reflection with a bittersweet conjoining of ethics - continuing the mining at the behest that the village remains protected - the film is an utter triumph of adventure cinema, proving that a journey to the edge of the world is a journey to the edge of the soul.

Audition

The success of Bird People and the Dead or Alive trilogy marked a significant turning point in Miike’s career, leaving his V-Cinema days behind and directing films that would go on to be iconic within the mainstream. One of these films, and indeed the first to gain international acclaim, and truly cement the director as a budding creative force, was the highly controversial Audition, which, while garnering its fair share of criticism, remains a staple of Japanese cinema and one of the greatest horror films of all time.

Released in 1999, Audition depicts the tale of widower Shigeharu Aoyama [Ryo Ishibashi], spurred on by his film producer friend, Yasuhisa Yoshikawa [Jun Kunimura], to evaluate a slew of prospective girlfriends under the guise that they are auditioning for a film. After falling head over heels for the alluring Asami Yamazaki [Eihi Shiina], who appears to be the perfect candidate - with her immaculate beauty, her captivating innocence, and her apparent emotional depth - Aoyama’s test seems to surpass all expectations. Yet, as Aoyama begins to date Asami, things get weird as she disappears for extended periods, leading the widower to seek out and discover many questionable aspects of her past, and ultimately uncovering a perversely murderous cycle.

Now, we won’t divulge too much into spoiler territory with this one as to witness Audition for the first time is an experience unmatched by any of Miike’s films. Involving piano wire, defecation, and torture, Audition is the reason Miike enjoys the infamy that he is known for today. So shocking was the film that it caused many critics to walk out during its debut at the Vancouver International Film Festival and later at its more renowned showing at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2000, where it won multiple awards including the prestigious FIPRESCI Prize. The film was so extreme in its subject matter, so unexpected in its twist and so gloriously gruesome that, according to film critic, Mark Kermode, it had him “cowering in awed terror” and even caused Evening Standard’s Alexander Walker to implore the Metropolitan Police to “investigate the circumstances of the film’s production”.

And it’s not just the film’s shock horror that maintains its ever-popular allure, as it also remains a heavily disputed film for fans and critics alike with many calling it a misogynistic nightmare that demonises the sadistic Asami as a cautionary tale for men seeking women. Yet, the more astute position, we would argue, is that of the opposite; that Audition is a feminist film in disguise, as praised by movie magazine, Little White Lies.

Lured to audition for a man whose goal isn’t to employ her but to exploit her, for her beauty and naivety, Asami is symbolic of the abuse women face in the film industry every day. At the time of release, the power dynamics of men and women in Japan were shifting with the latter being encouraged to take on more career prospects and thereby diminishing the role of the traditional housewife. Additionally, the objectification of women was and continues to be present in many aspects of pop culture, making Asami’s visual “perfection” a dig at the patriarchal concerns of society. In true Miike excess, Asami is the archetypal woman for Aoyama [and for that of the undeniably misogynistic film industry]; making the exposure of her sadism so effective. As affirmed by Daisy Phillipson, for Little White Lies: “By Asami lashing out against these increasingly tiresome expectations, proving to be the most extravagant paradox to the “obedient” wife Aoyama was hoping for, the subtext appears to mock the anti-feminist push-and-pull still present in today’s society”.

Asami, “a near-perfect archetype of what [a] docile wife should be: timid, soft-spoken, attractive, modest, talented, sweet; her alleged purity expressed through an all-white attire” is revealed to be a vengeful killer who brings excessive justice to the men who’ve abused her. Through gut and bone, blood and puke, the film establishes “an exaggerated feminist icon in leather-clad disguise” who cuts through the facade of traditional womanhood and deep into the tissue of sexism itself; leaving a gaping wound in the patriarchy and bleeding the oppression within.
Whether a feminist allegory or “an exploitative projection of male anxiety”, Miike exhibits a more innocuous take: that the film is purely a love story about “a man who betrays a woman and the [woman] who betrays him”. Based on the novel by Ryu Murakami, Audition remains an incredible feat of subversive filmmaking and arguably the director’s greatest work to date.

Ichi The Killer

Who would’ve thought that after the subversive masterpiece of Audition - a film which is credited as one of the forebears to the influx of J-horror movies in the west in the early 2000s - that Miike could produce something more violent, more grotesque and more absurd than any of his previous works. And yet, in 2001, at the Toronto International Film Festival [TIFF], Miike debuted his next theatrical controversy - an adaptation of Hideo Yamamoto's seminal manga series - to a sea of hungry attendees. Each accompanied with a barf bag, as a not-so-subtle publicity gimmick for the film, the audience was the first to bear witness to quite possibly the most violent movie we’ve ever seen. This is Ichi the Killer.

Depicting the ongoing feud of two rival yakuza gangs in Tokyo, Ichi begins by introducing us to its titular hero [Nao Omori], who we find masturbating to an ongoing sexual assault on a balcony. After reaching a sticky end, the film cuts to the posthumous massacre of a sadistic mob boss, whose blood and guts are quickly disposed of and whose murder is accredited to the aforementioned Ichi.

We are then introduced to Kakihara [Tadanobu Asano], a yakuza enforcer whose penchant for sadism and masochism knows no bounds. Fascinated by the mysterious Ichi, and the brutal methods of his bosses’ murder, Kakihara begins a search for him into Tokyo’s underground scene, torturing and killing his way towards his goal, and having an altogether merry time while doing so.

Tadanobu Asano and Susumu Terajima in “Ichi the Killer”

It is soon revealed that Ichi is a troubled vigilante, who shares Kakihara’s penchant for sadism, yet fails to fully understand his sexual preferences. He serenades as a reluctant; dressed up in superhero garments, and laced with Miike’s usual yakuza milieu. Ichi enjoys presenting the complex world of fetishism through abject violence and comedic absurdity.

Banned in several countries due to its portrayal of torture, cruelty and graphic violence, and you only have to watch the opening scene to find out why. It is insanely brutal, with some of the most gruesome depictions of torture, the most outlandish uses of special effects blood and guts, and the most controversial explorations of sex and fetishism that have ever been put to film.

Many times criticised for its overabundance of gruesome imagery and its arguably problematic portrayals of S&M, Ichi is Miike at his most explicit “gritty, [...] rough, [...] ridiculous and [...] bursting with originality”, as described by Cinema Nippon. And, to argue against the critics, the film is so absurd in its portrayal of violence and sex that to feel it in any way resembles the reality of what it depicts is, in our opinion, delusional. The film is extreme for the sake of being extreme. It’s Miike for crying out loud! Infamous for piano wire, buckets of blood and drowning his characters in their own faeces. What did you expect?!

In the words of James Gates of The Culture Trip: “Depending on what you read or who you speak to, Ichi is the most violent film ever made, so hard to stomach that it is still banned in some countries. A more discerning eye, however, will see a film with a jet black sense of humour and a comic book sensibility far too outlandish to be taken even remotely seriously.”

And with that, any prospective viewers should be prepared for the worst or the best, cinematic gore in history. Watching Kakihara traverse the criminal underworld, enjoying every little violent morsel in his search for the enigmatic Ichi, is some of the most absurd fun Miike has ever put out. And while Ichi may not be a film for everyone, it will stand the test of time, not for its special effects [which suffer from that early-to-mid noughties PS2 era CGI] but for its uncompromising vision, and unfiltered excess.

PSA: the semen is real…

The Happiness of the Katakuris

Now, this is where it’s at. A comedy-horror musical that frequently dips into stop motion and even morphs into a karaoke performance at one point, The Happiness of the Katakuris is a trailblazing romp of entertaining madness and individual vision. Debuting at the Tokyo International Film Festival a mere month after the highly controversial Ichi the Killer, The Katakuris is a beautifully insane portrait of a family struggling to make ends meet after the patriarch, played by Japanese popstar Kenji Sawada, buys a rundown house positioned on a former garbage dump near Mount Fuji.

Tamaki Miyazaki, Keiko Matsuzaka, Shinji Takeda, Kenji Sawada, Tetsurō Tamba and Naomi Nishida in “The Happiness of the Katakuris”

Renovating the house into the White Lover's Inn, the film depicts the family’s struggle to keep their business afloat amid lacking returns, with very few residents choosing to stay at the inn’s remote location. To make things worse, when they do receive a visitor, it just so happens that he commits suicide mysteriously in the night, leaving the family to hide the evidence and hope that their newly-founded business isn’t cursed to fail. And that’s just the set-up, as the film proceeds to descend into whimsical insanity with the family becoming enveloped in a nightmare of unfathomable horror, and a surprising amount of sentiment.

Through song and whimsy, Miike establishes a poignant tale of a family’s desperate hope for stability under terrible circumstances. Returning to Gerow, the impossibility of the Katakuris to save themselves from the ongoing mania is symbolic of “[an] identity one never had [...] only [to be] be “reestablished” as an illusion”. Miike, whose own family were admittedly “very ordinary”, paints a farcical portrait of the Japanese nuclear family through stop-motion horror. And it is through this farce that we are subject to the impossibility of the dream; that this family, presented in a world where the ends are met with inexplicable paradise, and whose characters lie frequently, are highlighted as fictitious and thereby a glamorous ideal. Miike, alongside his earlier works - Dead or Alive, The Bird People in China - directs another film that depicts a narrative filled with eccentricities, yet feels centered around the idea of identity and the struggle to identify. The film, as with the family’s unconventional circumstances, is situated far out of the mainstream; relishing in its individuality and carving a place for itself within the cinematic canon. It is Miike’s answer to the question; where to next? To which, he responds dutifully with song and dance.

““I don’t want to make the same film over and over again. Once is enough so I’m trying to strike a balance there.”

— Miike, Scout Tafoya, RogerEbert.com

There is nothing quite like The Katakuris. Loosely based on the South Korean film The Quiet Family by Kim Jee-woon, Miike’s version sits separate from the original due to its musical inclination and patchwork finesse, with the actors all “capable of dancing and singing better” but deciding not to for the sake of authenticity: “this is a family who was trying to run a hotel [...] and so we felt that it didn’t need to be better”. It is Miike at his most experimental, and that ain’t no bad thing.

Graveyard of Honor [2002]

Miike’s remake of Kinji Fukasaku's 1975 film of the same name, Graveyard of Honor depicts the tale of Rikio Ishikawa, a real-life yakuza, who, after building up a reputation and forging close bonds with his higher-ups, loses his self-control and spirals into a cycle of violence and drug addiction.

A lesser-known artefact in Miike’s 100+ cinematic portfolio, Graveyard of Honor is one of the more traditional of his films, taking a true to life story, and filling it with deplorable excess. Rikio, played by Goro Kishitani, begins life as a simple bartender, dishing out drinks to yakuza members who frequent his place of work. Yet, after surviving and ultimately saving the life of a yakuza boss during a shootout orchestrated by an unnamed gunman [played by Miike himself], Rikio is thrust up the ladder of crime in which he so ambivalently secured.

Featuring the same dramatisation of “thuggery and [the] dishonour of postwar yakuza” as described by Little White Lies’ Anton Bitel, Miike’s interpretation takes the same epithets of the original, which condemns the apathetic actions of gangsters in the period after World War 2, and brings his own frenetic flair to the piece.

Rikio quickly ascends the ladder of yakuza, enjoying the power and benefits of his scaling status. Yet as the benefits multiply - with designer clothes, fluctuating hairstyles, good food and lots of money - Rikio is soon detested by many of his peers as per his upstart reputation.

Again, as with many of Miike’s character’s, Rikio is seen as an outsider, a foreign presence in an otherwise familial institution [yakuza]. Therefore, it’s no surprise that the character ends up, similar to Yuuji in Rainy Dog, forging his own family from his alienation, coercing a prostitute to be his wife and controlling her with violence and drugs. Much like Rainy Dog and Ley Lines, Miike’s character establishes a family out of crime after being continuously ostracised by the community around him. However, in this instance, the consequences are far less hopeful, with his wife dying of a drug overdose, and Rikio himself, failing to break away from his societal condemnation and killing himself as his only way of escape.

Narimi Arimori and Goro Kishitani in “Graveyard of Honor”

A more classically driven affair than much of Miike’s early works, with enough insanity to make the journey entertaining - Rikio crawling up a staircase cascading with his own faeces is certainly a stand out moment - Graveyard of Honor, while hard to stomach and featuring many dishonourable activities, is an interesting watch for sure. And when paired with Fukasaku's original, it makes the whole experience more intricate, juggling with the “juggernaut of a character and [letting] him run riot through two very different periods of crisis in Japan’s history” [Bitel, LIttle White Lies].

Gozu

After digesting the myriad extremes of Miike cinema, we find ourselves faced with the question: what would happen if the director went full David Lynch and directed a piece based chiefly on epithets of the subconscious?

Gozu is what. A 2003 psychosexual horror-comedy about a mentally unstable yakuza, who kills dogs, dwindles under his growing paranoia, and battles with his budding transgenderism, all the while having to avoid being whacked by his own mobster brother. Oh, and did we mention the latent incestuous desires, the dream of being one’s own parent, and the fetishisation of anal penetration via soup ladles? Because Gozu has it all, in spades.

Played by Dead or Alive alum, Show Aikawa, Ozaki - an enforcer for Renji Ishibashi’s yakuza clan - begins to elicit paranoid tendencies, beating a chihuahua to death in the film’s opening scene as he’s convinced it’s trained to kill gangsters. Consequently, Ihibashi’s Boss, instructs underling Minami to kill the paranoid yakuza - his own brother - to avoid any further security risks. The film then proceeds to descend rapidly into a hilarious nightmare of bestial excess, with Minami failing to murder Ozaki, leading them onto a hallucinatory escapade into the confines of their collective subconscious. Yet, to divulge the plot in its entirety would take away from the insanity it boasts, so, we’ll just say that there’s a reason that “Gozu” translates to “Cow’s Head”...

Featuring a slew of Miike’s returning collaborators, including Sakichi Sato, a filmmaker in his own right and the man who penned the script for Ichi, Gozu’s exploration into the bizarre aspects of the human psyche reflects that of his irregular production practices. Electing fun as his choice of motivation, Miike reflects that “making a film is like a festival; it’s a big [...] party. But for the staff and actors, it’s actually their job and they’re very much used to [it]. It’s not very special to them anymore, [...so] when they come to make a film with me I’d like them to feel that this is special even though to them it’s something they're used to”.

With Miike it’s all about pushing the boundaries of what he’s made before, no matter the subject, nor how explicit the depiction. He professes the importance of fun and freedom exploring the depths of human depravity and having a blast while doing so.

“I think by showing how much I enjoy making film myself, I’d like [my crew] to feel that passion. [...] I want them to have the same kind of fun making the film; that’s what I try to convey”

— Miike, BFI

Frequent player, Ishibashi explains Miike’s penchant for fun when making a film in an exclusive interview with Arrow Films as part of their Takashi Miike collection [SPOILERS AHEAD]:

“For the movie Gozu, a metal ladle gets stuck in my arse. I get electrocuted through the ladle and die. And when I saw Miike during the next movie, he brought the ladle and asked me to wear it around my chest. My character was the top person in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. I asked him if it’s weird and he said the guy likes ladles. So we ended up having the ladle on my hip for the role for some reason. He doesn’t care how bizarre it is. When I work with him, even for a small role which takes only one day to shoot, he asks me to wear the ladle”

— Ishibashi, Arrow Video

13 Assassins

After Miike found international acclaim for films such as Audition and Ichi the Killer, his repertoire expanded accordingly and he began creating works of higher budget and arguably higher calibre. 13 Assassins [2010] is one of these works; an adaptation of Eiichi Kudo's 1963 period drama of the same name and quite possibly Miike’s greatest film to date.

Set in the Edo period, during the decline of the Tokugawa Shogunate, 13 Assassins depicts the tale of a sadistic lord, who mutilates, rapes and tortures his subjects at will, and the 13 men who endeavour to assassinate him. A simple and direct plot which when left in the hands of Miike becomes a cinematic marvel of violence, honour, tension and rivers of blood.

Tsuyoshi Ihara and Masataka Kubota in “13 Assassins”

Introduced to the aforementioned Lord Matsudaira Naritsugu of Akashi [Gorō Inagaki] in the film’s opening, we discover that while the Shogunate has ensured that Japan is at peace - with no wars, and governed under a strict class system - it has allowed the remaining samurai, the once-revered warrior servants, to become stagnant, unnecessary, and Lord Naritsugu to become bored. He commits terrible atrocities to his subjects, things not unusual for a Miike villain, and yet, in a film such as this - with its penchant for honour and justice - seem all the more brutal.

With seemingly no distinction between commoner or noble, Naritsugu’s actions inevitably end up ruffling some feathers, causing Sir Doi Toshitsura [Mikijirō Hira] to enlist Shimada Shinzaemon, a retired samurai - played by the incredible Kōji Yakusho - to conduct a plan to bring justice to the power-frenzied Lord. Elated by the opportunity to die an honourable death, as is the way of the samurai, Shinzaemon agrees vehemently and proceeds to seek out 11 other assassins to take part in the plot, accumulating a 13th member in the form of a trustee hunter; whose abilities in sex, combat and survival seem fantastically unmatched.

The ensuing 2 hours and 21 minutes provides an exceedingly tense build-up that cultimantates in 40 minutes of the bloodiest carnage in Miike’s filmography, with the samurai facing off against Naritsugu and his loyalists in an exquisite action set-piece in the film’s final act. To see it is to believe it, but to describe it plainly; think of it as Seven Samurai’s climactic battle on steroids.

Yet despite the volume of blood, 13 Assassins, Miike’s samurai epic, proves that while the director is known for his violence and cinematic eccentricities, his ability to adapt is profound. Jumping into the world of “chanbara” [samurai] cinema - one of Japan’s most historically significant genres - and holding his own against the greats; Akira Kurosawa, Kihachi Okamoto, Masaki Kobayashi. Through slow burning tension, great stunt work and elegant cinematography, amidst a considerably more serious tone than much of his work, Miike moulds his filmmaking techniques to adapt to the feted footprints of classic samurai cinema, and establishes a place for himself within that lauded sphere. In the words of Kimura,

“something [...] amazing about Miike [is] that [he’s] like a rubber band, constantly adapting to fit his surroundings”

— Toshiki Kimura

It seems that to become legendary in the world of Japanese film, one must aspire to make great samurai cinema. And with 13 Assassins, Miike achieves this in spades.

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai

After the success of the multi award-winning 13 Assassins, Miike kept his foot on the gas and went on to helm another samurai adaptation that, while arguably fails to eclipse the impact of its original, is noteworthy in itself for its strong narrative tension, beautiful cinematography and dutiful score by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

A remake of Masaki Kobayashi’s 1962 film Harakiri, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai depicts the sorrow of Tsukumo Hanshiro [Ichikawa Ebizō XI], a samurai whose clan has lost its status, and has thus led him to request permission to perform seppuku - ritual suicide - in the courtyard of the castle of a local lord. The Senior retainer, Saitō Kageyu [[Kōji Yakusho] accepts his audience and proceeds to tell Hanshiro about another samurai, Chijiiwa Motome [Eita Nagayama], from the same clan, who’d requested the same thing a year ago. Things however, did not go so well for the previous samurai after failing to commit seppuku effectively with his broken, bamboo sword,

Ichikawa Ebizō XI in “Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai”

It becomes apparent that Hanshiro has his own story to tell about Motome; that he fostered him after his own father, Chijiiwa Jinnai [Nakamura Baijaku II], was banished from the castle many years prior. Tensions rise as Hanshiro’s objective at the castle becomes suspect, and the story unfolds to reveal an intricately designed narrative about the transgressions of honour and the lengths a father might go to save, or avenge, the ones he loves.

With Hara-Kiri, Miike cements what he’d laid out with 13 Assassins, that “[f]earless and adept, he is able to bounce effortlessly between multiple styles and genres with ease”. Taking the time to expose the nascent contradictions of bushido [“the way of the samurai”] and sacrifice, Hara-Kiri rejects the themes of 13 Assassins - a film which glorifies the samurai epithet to die honourably - in order to explore a more human side to the constrictive code of honour. In Hara-Kiri death is exploited by class and power. It is a way to ensure glory and money where no other options seem feasible. No matter the cost, death brings honour in samurai doctrine. Yet, what happens to Motome, and subsequently Hanshiro, is nothing but tragedy, outlining the inherent complexities of the legendary Japanese warriors and the problems of living to a credo. Additionally, the fact that Miike can bounce between such different convictions proves testament to the adaptability he displays as a director:

“[...] as a director I am not really conscious of a specific style I have or how it is developing. I just like to be natural, not thinking about style or the process of style. When you think about style you aspire and that means you are considering a goal or becoming into a role you would like to be that is not necessarily something that you are. I like to be as natural as possible. [...] I like to let everything flow like water.”

— Miike, Daniel Goodwin, HeyUGuys

Ichikawa Ebizō XI, Takashi Miike and Kōji Yakusho on the set of “Harakiri: Death of a Samurai”

Coming a mere year after the epochal 13 Assassins, Hara-Kiri is a prime example of the prodigious work effort of Miike as well as his want to reject those who compartmentalise him as the “black, beating heart of world cinema”, or a provocateur whose films act to instill fear, repugnance and irreverence. With Hara-Kiri, Miike demonstrates the contrary; that, despite his reputation, he is no “enfant terrible hanging churlishly to a reputation for shock and awe. He [is] an artist with desires that spread all over the generic landscape. He could and would do anything that pleased him”.

Reinforced by Goodwin of HeyUGuys.com:

““In his one hundred plus film canon, [Miike’s] work spans multiple genres melding frenetic action, absurdist comedy and supernatural horror, all of which point towards [him] as being more of a driftwood visionary with a need to rip the medium a new one than a guileless gore hound going through the motions.””

— Goodwin, HeyUGuys

Blade of the Immortal

Marketed as Miike’s 100th film, Blade of the Immortal is the 2017 live-action adaptation of the manga of the same name by Hiroaki Samura. Depicting the tragedy of samurai Manji [Takuya Kimura] who, after failing to rescue his kid sister from a group of rōnin, is made immortal by Yaobikuni; a sorceress who implants "sacred bloodworms" into his body.

Cut to fifty years later and Manji is living on the edges of civilization, wracked with guilt over the death of his sister and forced into isolation by his immortality. Yet, when Rin Asano [Hana Sugisaki], a young girl whose father has been unceremoniously murdered by Kagehisa Anotsu [Sota Fukushi] and the Ittō-ryū, a society of samurai assassins, Manji feels obligated to seek out the killers and bring bloody justice in the form of his blade. Things however, are not as simple as they seem, and Manji ends up thrust into the midst of a violent rebellion in which he must fight to survive against an onslaught of colourful assailants.

Takuya Kimura and Hana Sugisaki in “Blade of the Immortal”

And that’s precisely where this film succeeds; it’s world, it’s characters and its creativity. Set in the Tokugawa Shogunate period, Blade of the Immortal enjoys a slew of inspiring costume design, beautiful set pieces and gloriously bloody action. It commits to the original source material, presenting fantastical characters in a historical setting that sport extraordinary abilities and singular personalities. It takes the sensibilities of the ultra-violent manga - it’s distinctive action, which varies from character to character - and translates it for the screen in spectacular veracity.

Takuya Kimura and Takashi Miike on the set of “Blade of the Immortal”

“In Blade of the Immortal there are pictures, illustrations, manga that I have to turn into real people. Yes, I also have a script but when I am filming, if there is something that doesn’t work or feel right, I will think of something that will make it even more true to the spirit of the source and veer from the script there and then. But to me, I feel like I am always true to the original.”

— Miike, Goodwin, HeyUGuys

With Blade of the Immortal, Miike takes the fundamentals of samurai cinema and magnifies them to the tenth degree; enlisting what makes the manga great and doing a bang tidy job at bringing it all together in this super-violent knockout of cinematic bloodshed.

First Love

The final piece in our exploration of Miike’s filmography and the first romance film to boot, unless you count Audition. 2019’s First Love is Miike coming home, returning to the Yakuza genre and directing a film which is more about love and life than crime and violence; while sporting both in equal measure.

It depicts the story of Leo Katsuragi [Masataka Kubota], an emotionless boxer who’s told that he has a brain tumour and only a short amount of time to live. Simultaneously, Yuri [Sakurako Konishi], a call girl who goes by the pseudonym, Monica, is forced into prostitution and drug-addiction all the while being haunted by her abusive father. Both characters fall in with a drug-smuggling scheme fabricated by gangster, Kase [Shota Sometani] and corrupted cop, Ōtomo [Nao Omori], who inadvertently cause an all out gang war between the Chinese triad and the Japanese yakuza.

Sakurako Konishi and Masataka Kubota in “First Love”

And that’s the film: two characters, out of place and yearning for purpose in a world which constantly puts them down - via terminal illness or ceaseless abuse - and finding love in the process. With action, gore and absurd comedy in abundance, First Love is the culmination of Miike’s cinematic efforts blasted onto the screen with a fresh coat of neon paint and contemporary sensibilities. As described by Peter Bradshaw for The Guardian, “Here is his 103rd feature credit, a violent yakuza caper that hits the ground sprinting from the opening credits”.

First Love depicts the downtrodden, the oppressed, the abused; those brought to desperation by their surroundings, their heritage, and encouraged to escape, albeit out of fear of death. The journey’s of both Yuri and Leo reflect the same motivations of many of Miike’s earlier characters; choosing to break away from the restrictions placed upon them by society and form a life for themselves. It is fitting that Miike would return to such an epithet; that after a flurry of blockbuster films - including the big-budget adaptation of popular video game Ace Attorney [2012] - he would come back to the genre that made him a household name [yakuza] and revamp it accordingly, while reinstating what made those films so impactful. Returning to Bradshaw:

“It all hangs together, and Miike brings his own mad, punk-rock energy to the whole thing.”

— Bradshaw, The Guardian

Masataka Kubota, Sakurako Konishi and Takashi Miike on the set of “First Love”

With First Love, Miike comes full circle, exploring the complexities of identification - heritage, meaning and purpose - through violent action, bizarre comedy, while injecting enough sentiment to make the whole thing palatable.

Full Circle

And that pretty much wraps things up for this article; a deep and analytical dive into the film’s of Japan’s most prodigious director, Takashi Miike.

From Fudoh to Gozu, Audition to First Love, through sex and gore, V-Cinema and international controversy, Miike has carved himself a space within the history of film. He is a director of supreme versatility and incredible proliferation. With 110 credits to his name, we’ve taken the time to look at a slew of films which we find so significant and analyse Miike’s everchanging presence in the world of cinema.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the ride, and implore you to check out as many of the films we’ve listed above as, no matter which one you pick, you’re in for a treat [or a trick]. To put it plainly, love him or hate him, Miike’s films are as distinctive as they are legion, and we haven’t even had a chance to discuss his kids films.

Finally, please see below for five additional Miike films which, while notable, haven’t made the list purely due to the fact that to discuss all of the director’s mammoth portfolio would take millenia.

Sayonara and goodbye from everyone at Sabukaru. Keep watching, keep learning and let us know your thoughts on Takashi Miike, and the myriad movies under his belt.