Furuhata Yasuo

Other Name: 降旗康男

Age: 90

Birthday: August 19, 1934

Nationality: Japanese

Gender: Male

Yasuo Furuhata is a Japanese film director, who won the 2000 Japan Academy Prize for Director of the Year for 'Poppoya'. A proficient commercial director, Furuhata made his debut with the youth film Bad Girl Yoko (Hikō shōjo Yōko, 1966), about a girl who, along with her boyfriend, escapes Japan by boarding a boat to San Tropez. He truly cut his teeth, however, on two popular series of Toei action pictures: Modern Yakuza (Gendai yakuza), of which he directed two episodes, and Abashiri Prison (Abashiri bangaichi), to which he contributed six. The latter series cemented a productive working relationship with tough-guy star Ken Takakura, and, with its Hokkaido settings, established the director’s penchant for snowbound locations. Furuhata worked again with Taka­kura on WinterFlower (Fuyunohana, 1978), about a former yakuza looking after the teenage daughter of a fellow gangster for whose death he was responsible. The film’s mood earned comparisons with French crime pictures. Takakura also starred in Station (Eki, 1981), following twelve years in the life and career of a policeman who also competes as an Olympic sharpshooter, and Demon (Yasha, 1985), about an ex-criminal who has left the gangster life to marry and work as a fisherman in a coastal village. Both films centered more on personal drama than on action: Demon was a mature character study, rich in local color and commenting intelligently on the reaction of small communities to such ostensibly urban phenomena as alcohol abuse, gambling, and crime. Though this film included action scenes more typical of a crime thriller, Furuhata also made more straightforwardly dramatic films, often with romantic themes. Love (IzakayaChōji, 1983) charted the enduring passion between former lovers. Buddies (Aun, 1989) was an account of a friendship destroyed by the unspoken love of one friend for the wife of the other; it was set against the backdrop of prewar society and politics, as was WinterCamellia (Kantsubaki, 1992), a story about rival politicians and the yakuza who work for them competing for the favor of a geisha in the provincial city of Kōchi.TimeofWickedness (Manotoki, 1985), considered by Japanese critics to be Furuhata’s masterpiece, was a study of an incestuous relationship between mother and son. Furuhata’s biggest hit, however, was The Railroad Man (Poppoya, 1999), a sentimental melodrama again starring Takakura as the ageing stationmaster of a declining former mining town in Hokkaido. While expertly made, the film was, in Raymond Durgnat’s phrase, a “male weepie,” idolizing a hero who puts work before family even when his wife and child are dying. Another hit was The Firefly (Hotaru, 2001), a film about the survivors of the kamikaze corps, which examined the role of servicemen from colonized Korea in the war effort. The melodramatic Red Moon (Akai tsuki, 2004) also evoked the war, dramatizing the loves and sufferings of colonists in Manchuria at the time of the Soviet invasion. It was criticized in some quarters for ignoring the cruelties the Japanese inflicted on the local population; Mark Schilling hinted that Furuhata’s implicitly nationalist attitudes have denied him an international reputation. Nevertheless, his consistent commercial and intermittent critical success within Japan suggest that his oeuvre might merit further exploration. (Source: A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors).