The self-confessed 'chauvinist' director breaks new Japanese taboos in a
DIRECTOR Masato Harada is the first to admit he has many things in common with the yakuza. He has a macho, chauvinistic streak, for instance, and in any disagreement, he has the loudest yell. But this behaviour does not mean he is part of any crime syndicate, he says. All it reveals is his gender and his Japanese background.
'Every Japanese man possesses a certain degree of the 'yakuza mentality',' he declares, explaining his fascination for gangsters and frequent portrayal of yakuza types in his movies. 'So when I create a character for a screenplay, it comes from within or is based on someone next door.' Harada also borrows from strangers who have influenced him in different ways.
As in Bounce Ko Gals, the recent smash-hit expose on high-school prostitution in Japan, he enters an alien world in Kamikaze Taxi, a feature film that is slowly gaining worldwide recognition four years after its release in Japan.
In a bid to draw audiences into this realm, he opens the movie by stating: 'Japan now has 150,000 foreign labourers of Japanese origin, 90,000 yakuza gangsters and a few politicians who distort historical facts. Rare though it may be, people from each group sometimes become acquainted.' This sets the scene for a heavy dose of socio-political commentary on everything from war-time sex slaves to returnees (the protagonist is a Japanese-born Peruvian taxi driver, Kantake, whose father - having lost face by surviving suicide missions as a kamikaze pilot - left Japan after the war, family in tow).
'I'd always wanted to make a story about war crimes and a story about comfort women,' Harada says, adding that he had also been fascinated by the social standing accorded the young pilots driven to die for their country.
'But those are taboos in Japanese cinema. If the social issues are combined with entertainment, however, you can do it.' The tale begins with Tatsuo, a yakuza punk who tries to prove himself to a powerful politician, Domon, by providing him with prostitutes.
