Film lead: Koji Wakamatsu a rebel to the end

If the sudden death of Koji Wakamatsu earlier this month wasn't shocking enough, it was a loss to the film world tinged with even greater poignancy. For this had been an impressive year for the Japanese director, who tragically died from injuries sustained after he was hit by a taxi in Tokyo.

Wakamatsu had already presented three films this year: Petrel Hotel Blue, 11/25 The Day Mishima Chose His Fate and - in what turned out to be his final film - The Millennial Rapture, an adaptation of Kenji Nakagami's book A Thousand Years of Happiness. This frenzied output led South Korea's Busan International Film Festival to award him the accolade of Asian filmmaker of the year.

When we met earlier this year at Cannes, where Mishima had just played in the festival's Un Certain Regard section, the 76-year-old filmmaker was in a spirited mood. Dressed in a beige striped jacket and a green cap, he spent his time explaining how he didn't trust Japanese media or film critics. Why? "Because they're stupid. Most Japanese films now … the main characters are dogs or cats. Or some tearjerkers - like 'I only have a few days left to live', etcetera. So they are seeing all of those kinds of films. With that state of mind, I do not think they can correctly understand films like Mishima," he said.

With more than 100 films to his name, Wakamatsu had fallen out of critical favour in his time - notably from the 1970s to '90s, when he worked in virtual obscurity. But as he entered his eighth decade, his re-emergence came with the blistering United Red Army (2007), an epic study of the rise and fall of the Japanese ultra-leftist organisation. He followed this with Caterpillar (2010), with its star Shinobu Terajima winning the Silver Bear for best actress at the Berlin Film Festival. Set in post-second world war Japan, the film tells of a war hero returning with no arms or legs only to torment his long-suffering wife.