Brooding Japanese
clown Kitano recently performed his moody yakuza antics in Los Angeles with
the film Brother,
one of the finest achievements of a career that has taken the polish of international
recognition since the 1997 Golden Lion for Hana Bi.



Born in the eastern suburbs of Tokyo, Takeshi Kitano made his debut as a comic
sketch artist before conquering TV with an all-out savage emceeing presence.
Despite his heavy contract engagements, he managed and still manages to make
films that often vignette his fascination with death through series of seaside
" human puppet shows."

"My films often
take place on the beach," he once said, "because as a child I never could go
there. And I like to confront people who carry the burden of death on their
shoulders to the sea which is a source of life... " Rudiger Suchsland held a
three-part interview with this great director.



As a young boy, what interested you first: TV or the Movies?



As I said many times before in interviews, I grew up in Shita-Machi, which is
a typical working-class area east of Tokyo. It was a little while after the
World War II and the whole country was undergoing reconstruction, so common
Japanese people were living in poor conditions. In fact, no families in my neighborhood
had a TV until my older brother, who was working as a translator at the US military
base, bought a secondhand one. I remember all the neighbors came over to our
tiny one-room house to watch professional wrestling matches on TV.



My mother was a strict person and excessively education-minded. So much so that
she would never allow me to watch TV, let alone movies. I wasn't so much interested
in any other programs on TV but I loved watching sports, especially baseball
games and boxing matches. I used to sneak out to watch baseball behind my mother's
back. On top of that, movies were considered to be too posh in our neighborhood.
Therefore I rarely watched movies when I was a child. My older brother once
took me to watch an Italian film, The Railroad Man. I remember we spent
all our money on admissions and we had to walk for hours to go home. I also
remember when I was in high school I read somewhere that there was a Swedish
film called Virgin's Spring. I thought it was a Swedish porno flick because
of the title and went to see it, only to find out it was an art film, which
I couldn't understand at all!



As a comedian and an actor, you are a hugely popular figure in Japan. How
is this work related to your own movies?



I have to say my popularity as TV comedian has made it difficult for me to be
perceived as a serious actor or as a serious director. Mr. Nagisa Ohshima's
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence was the first genuine film that I appeared
in as an actor, although I had made sporadic appearances in comedy films before
then. When I watched the completed film, I thought it was pretty good and my
acting was not bad at all. And I expected that the public would be very impressed
with my performance because it was totally different from what I usually did
in TV comedy shows. So one day after the film was released, I snuck into the
cinema to see the reaction of the audience. At the moment my character appeared
on the screen, every single person in the cinema burst into laughter! Obviously
I was shocked and humiliated because my character in the film was not someone
to laugh at! I swore then that I would stick to the serious and dark roles in
any films or TV dramas thereafter, which I did. And it took me almost 10 years
of sticking to dark characters to be considered a "serious" actor.




And it was as difficult to be perceived as a serious director as well. With
hindsight, it was no surprise because the Japanese public can watch my shows
every night on TV FOR FREE! I guess, no one bothered to pay money, go to theaters
and watch my films on the big screen. Nevertheless, my first film, Violent
Cop was considerably a big hit in Japan. It was the directorial debut of
a hugely popular comedian, Beat Takeshi, (I wasn't using my real name Takeshi
Kitano as a directorial moniker yet then) and was very much a topical film and
there was a lot of buzz around it at the time. But since then, my films have
been notorious amongst the Japanese public for their constant commercial failures;
from my second one, Boiling Point (3-4x Ju-gatsu) up to Getting
Any?, which, by the way, was my least commercially successful film to date.
For instance, Sonatine is now considered to be some sort of a masterpiece
amongst many people but when it was released in Japan, it disappeared within
two weeks!

By the time of
Kids Return, which was my first film after the motorbike accident in
1995, I eventually had to let my own management/production company, Office Kitano,
distribute the film themselves. It was a decent long-run art-house smash. Then
came Hana-Bi, with which the situation changed completely. The moment
I won the Golden Lion in Venice, everything changed overnight. Untill then,
the Japanese public considered me "a comedian who occasionally makes films
as a hobby." But I turned into a "world-famous maestro of cinema"
almost overnight! It just proves how opportunistic the Japanese are and how
obsessively sensitive they are about the reaction of foreign countries.



What is your policy as an artist in dealing with public expectations?



My policy as an entertainer or as an artist is that I should always try to not
let the public pigeonhole me, otherwise the public loses interest. Suppose you
are taking a walk in the park and as you pass through a pond, you find something
glistening in the water. You would get pretty thrilled when you were still wondering
what it'd be. You might be trembling with joy when you're picking the thing
up. But the moment you found out it was just a piece of broken mirror, you'd
get disappointed and wished you'd never pick it up in the first place. That's
part of the reasons why I repeatedly try with films such as Kikujio,
A Scene at the Sea or Getting Any? to defy people's stereotype
toward my films like, 'gangster,' 'violence,' 'life and death' and etc. I want
to defy people's expectation of what my films would or should be in a positive
way and keep moving.



If you had to chose between films and TV, what would it be and why?



If you ask me, "which do you enjoy more?" I would definitely choose film. Because
for me, filmmaking is like the most luxurious toy that I've ever had. I think
film is the composite art, the medium into which you can adapt all kinds of
art form or form of entertainment, everything from drama or music or paintings
or comedy. So it's the most fulfilling and enjoyable thing I do now.



On the other hand, I still consider TV works to be my principal occupation.
Going to the TV Studios for the taping for me is like what going to the playground
is for kids. It's something I do everyday. So there's not much excitement involved
but every once in a while, I get to see interesting things and to meet interesting
people. Right now I have seven weekly shows varying from a serious program on
science, something like the Japanese equivalent of Discovery Channel, to a late
night slapstick comedy show where I run around half-naked in the studio wearing
only a pair of briefs. And through all those different kinds of TV shows, I
can acquire various things which I can incorporate into film.



It's really necessary for me to do both. I am like a pendulum swinging between
Takeshi Kitano, the serious film director, on one end and Beat Takeshi, the
crazy comedian on the other end. And the greater the width between the two ends
there is, the bigger momentum the amplitude of a swing gets.



Most of the Europeans I talked to know that I am a TV-host, a film director,
an actor and a writer. But very few of them know that I am also a singer! In
fact, I have released quite a few singles and more than 10 albums to date!



What are your personal experiences in being a stranger? Are there -- in your
personal point of view -- big differences in being a stranger in the USA, in
Europe and in Japan?



When I'm in Japan, working as a director or a performer, or watching TV at home,
every once in a while I find some people who feel that I am a complete 'stranger'
or an alien. These people on the other side, who take actions and say things
that I can't possibly begin to understand. And when I meet or watch these people,
I think to myself, "am I the one on the crazier side?" I used to feel that way
quite often right before I had a motorbike accident several years ago. "Is it
me or these people who's going crazy?" Then again, I always get to the same
conclusion, "It's not me but them. They are the ones from the different planet."




They would do just about anything for the sake of successful living. They would
do things, which I would rather die than have to do. It's mainly their lack
of dignity and pride. In the past, I tried to avoid having to be involved with
these people as much as possible but I've found that they would try to involve
me in whatever it is that they are doing anyway. On the other hand, an interesting
coincidence can happen to the people who live remotely from one another.



When I visited Cannes in '99 with my film Kikujiro
in the competition, quite a few critics and journalists asked me, "David Lynch
has made Straight
Story, which is a road movie. Almodovar has made All
about my mother, which is a film about a girl in search for her father.
And you made Kikujiro, which is a road movie about a boy in search of
his mother. Now is it a trend or just a coincidence?" My theory is that what
happened was sort of a cultural synchronicity, where the artists, who are far
away from one another physically, create something strikingly similar without
realizing what the other one is doing, let alone that what the other one is
doing is congenial to what you're doing. They do it subconsciously. This can
happen to people of different races, nationality and religion. Some people share
the same wavelength regardless of where they live.

Interview
Part 2