Yakusho, 63, has appeared in high-profile international productions – Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) and Babel (2006) – and a litany of modern Japanese cinema classics. His most acclaimed films in recent years include 13 Assassins (2010), Chronicle of My Mother (2011) and The Third Murder (2017).

One of his most remarkable spells as an actor, in 1996 and ’97, saw him appear in the national phenomenon Shall We Dance?, controversial blockbuster Lost Paradise, cult crime mystery Cure and Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or Winner The Eel in quick succession.

“I have different memories about each film, so it’s hard to pick my favourite,” he says. “But among the films I’ve done, Shall We Dance? may be the most memorable one. When I travel overseas, including to some smaller cities in Europe, there are still people who recognise me and recall that they’ve seen me dance before.”

Compared to the glory days of the 1990s when he made his name internationally, Yakusho believes that Japanese cinema has been in a slump in recent times.

“Overall, the Japanese film business is sustained by the revenues of its animated productions. But there have been fewer and fewer low-budget films being made, and I think that’s a pity. These are films that tend to receive acclaim overseas,” says Yakusho, who recently showed support for a new director when he took a small part in the low-budget comedy Oh Lucy! (2017).

It was partly as an effort to bring the excitement back to Japanese filmmaking that Yakusho decided to star in his most recent film, The Blood of Wolves.

Japan’s Shoplifters named best picture at Asian Film Awards 2019

“When director Kazuya Shiraishi and I set out to make this film, which recalls director Kinji Fukasaku’s five-part yakuza film series Battles Without Honour and Humanity from 1973 and ’74, our intention was to bring back the energy and Japanese flavour of those films,” he explains.

“In the original story, my police detective character was supposed to be a very cool and heroic one. But after discussing with Shiraishi, we decided to make him more of a flawed human and give him an extra dimension of humanity.”

In recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in Chinese-Japanese collaborations: there are Japanese films being remade into Chinese-language films, and there are quite a few Japanese filmmakers who take up projects in China. Yakusho’s next film, Wings Over Everest, is also a Chinese production.

“The Chinese film industry is growing remarkably and their scale of production is much larger than that in Japan,” he says.

“While there have always been Japanese films that are produced in China, I think these opportunities now represent one way for Japanese filmmakers to work on larger projects.”

Even for a veteran performer as experienced as Yakusho, making the leap into an overseas production can still occasionally bring surprises.

Asked about the background of the mountaineering team leader he plays in Wings Over Everest, who is credited with a Chinese name (Jiang Yuesheng) on the Internet Movie Database, the actor sounds curiously uncertain.

“At the beginning, my character was supposed to have mixed Chinese-Japanese parentage and I did have some lines of dialogue in Japanese,” he says. “But then I heard that those lines had been cut, so the character may be a Chinese in the final version. I’m not really sure.”

Yakusho was also surprised by how long the shooting of Wings Over Everest took. “It was a memorable experience because we seldom spend such a long time on one film in Japan. There was a lot of waiting involved. It’s a luxury to be able to spend so much time on a project.”

Yet time is what Yakusho has put into his craft and his illustrious career is there for all to see. “Over the past 40 years, acting is the one thing that I’ve spent the most time on,” he says. “I’m very lucky to be given so many opportunities by so many different filmmakers. I would really like to return my gratitude to cinema.”