Takashi Miike (born August 24, 1960) in a small town of Yao on the outskirts of Osaka, Japan in an area inhabited by the poor working class immigrants from the Korean Peninsula.
During World War II, his grandfather was stationed in China and Korea, and his father was born in Seoul in today's South Korea. His father worked as a welder and his mother as seamstress.
His main interest growing up was motorbikes, and for a while he harbored ambitions to race professionally. Although he claimed to have attended classes only rarely, but at the age of 18 he went to study at Yokohama Vocational School of Broadcast and Film school founded by renowned director Shôhei Imamura and graduated from there. The school proved a lucrative endeavor that helped Miike to focus his youthful energy into a powerfully creative medium - despite the fact that it took him nearly a decade to graduate. Inspired more by Bruce Lee than Seijun Suzuki, Miike's distinctive style came more as a result of not studying the traditional rules of filmmaking than a conscious attempt to break them.
By his own account Miike was an undisciplined student and attended few classes, but when a local TV company came scouting for unpaid production assistants, the school nominated the one pupil who never showed up: Miike. He spent almost a decade working in television, in many different roles, before becoming an assistant director in film to, amongst others, his old mentor Imamura.
Takashi MIIke is considered one of the most prolific directors in the world. He has directed over one hundred theatrical, video and television productions since his debut in 1991. His films range from violent and bizarre to dramatic and family-friendly.
The "V-Cinema" (Direct to Video) boom of the early 1990s was to be Miike's break into directing his own films, as newly formed companies hired eager young filmmakers willing to work cheap and crank out low-budget action movies. Miike's theatrical debut was the film ‘The Third Gangster’ (Daisan no gokudō). However, it was ‘Shinjuku Triad Society’ (1995) that was the first of his theatrical releases to gain public attention and from then on he alternated V-Cinema films with higher-budgeted pictures. The film showcased his extreme style and his recurring themes, and its success gave him the freedom to work on higher-budgeted pictures. ‘Shinjuku Triad Society’ is also 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), and since then he has an ever expanding cult following in the west. His violent yakuza epic ‘Dead 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. His 2013 film Straw Shield was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
A prolific director, Miike has directed (at the time of this writing) 60+ films in his 13 years as director, his films being known for their explicit and taboo representations of violence and sex, as seen in such works as ‘Visitor Q’ (2001) (Visitor Q), ‘Ichi the Killer’ (2001) (Ichi The Killer) and the ‘Dead or Alive Trilogy’: Dead or Alive (1999), ‘Dead or Alive 2: Birds’ (2000) and ‘Dead or Alive: Final’ (2002).
A contemporary of such noted film experimentalists as Shinya ‘Tsukamoto’ (Tetsuo: The Iron Man [1989]), maverick Japanese workhorse director Takashi Miike became one of the most talked about filmmakers in the international festival circuit after taking audiences on kinetically unhinged and frequently disturbing joyrides as ‘Dead or Alive’ (2000) and ‘Ichi the Killer’ (2001). Despite the derailed manic energy of the aforementioned films, it was the stark relationship drama turned sadistic nightmare Audition that found the director receiving increasing international exposure. With its quiet menace and decidedly humanized horror, Audition succeeded in pulling the rug from under viewers as it turned the age-old image of the submissive Japanese female on its head with a shocking and nearly unbearable finale that had many horrified viewers shell-shocked.
Frequently shooting on budgets that wouldn't cover an American movie set's craft services tab, and often preferring to shoot on 16 mm or digital video as opposed to traditional 35 mm film, Miike's freeform style can find his films taking numerous unexpected turns during production. Miike views himself more as an arranger than an author, and his willingness to let a film develop on its own path and constant encouragement of actors and other crew members to flex their creative muscles has resulted in some of the most dynamic films of the last decade. 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.
Despite his notorious reputation, Miike has directed film in a range of genres. He has created lighthearted children's films ‘Ninja Kids!!!’, ‘The Great Yokai War’, period pieces ‘Sabu’, a road movie (The Bird People in China), a teen drama ‘Andromedia’, a farcical musical-comedy-horror ‘The Happiness of the Katakuris’, and video game adaptations ‘Like a Dragon, Ace Attorney’. Other less controversial works include ‘Ley Lines’ and ‘Agitator’, which are character-driven crime dramas.
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 film ‘One Missed Call’ and the fantasy drama ‘The Great Yokai War’.
Miike has cited Starship Troopers as his favorite film. He expressed admiration for directors Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Gosha, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Paul Verhoeven.
His refusal to succumb to the traditional temptation to produce a film that will please the masses has also been a key factor in the development of his distinctive style, and further refusal to bend to widely accepted narrative structure has earned him both harsh critics and a fiercely loyal fan base. Though critics have pegged him as a genre filmmaker, Miike is reluctant to accept that distinction and prefers not to categorize his films as it may limit their appeal and impact. Miike's films are also frequently targeted for their excessive and often gratuitous violence, though the director sites that the inherent honesty in that violence is more sincere than what he feels is his contemporaries' romantic misrepresentation of current culture, viewing cinema as an important outlet for such images. Following his directorial debut in 1991, Miike turned out an exhausting 24 films (including two television miniseries) between 1999 and 2002, confirming his status as one of the busiest directors in world cinema. And though Miike may not be a household name, the release of such enticingly quirky and curious efforts as the comedy/musical/horror The Happiness of the Katakuris hints at big things in store for the tireless auteur.
