[KineJapan] Harada Masato RIP

[Markus Nornes]

I just got word that Harada Masato passed away. No cause has been announced so far, which is concerning. Masato came to University of Michigan just last February and he was as youthful as ever, despite being 76 years old. 

I brought him to Michigan at the end of my career, because I brought to Michigan at the beginning of my career. It was around the turn of the century. We had some Ford money, as I recall, that was earmarked for events built around the question of borders. I built an event around Harada’s wonderful Kamikaze Taxi, still one of Yakusho Koji’s best films. Yakusho plays a Brazilian in Japan, and the centerpiece of the event was not the film but a discussion between he and scholars of both Japan and Latin American studies. Masato held his own with the scholars. His English was that good, and so was his intellect. He was in command of the complexities of his own work (he was a writer-director from start to finish). 

Masato started out as a critic for Kinejun based in LA in the 1970s. However, his first powerful encounter with cinema was back at age 5, in his hometown in Shizuoka. His mother told him there was a film crew shooting something nearby, and they went to check it out. It turned out to be Seven Samurai. (His Chronicle of My Mother is semi-autobiographical and lovely; my own mother had just died from Alzheimer’s so we had a lot to talk about…)

 He had learned English by studying in London, and did a stint at Pepperdine. I’d compare him to Bodganovich for being a filmmaker that was deeply interested in film history (especially American film history) AND having the gumption to go out and meet older filmmakers that were no longer receiving the attention they once enjoyed. This included the likes of Hitchcock and Wilder, and most importantly Howard Hawks. The two took a shine to each other and Hawks took him under his wing and mentored him. 

In the 1980s, he did some subtitling, including Empire Strikes Back. I wrote about him in my Cinema Babel, because he was tapped to do the subtitles for  Full Metal Jacket after Kubrick fired Toda Natsuko. She had really fumbled all the military jargon and erased all the swearing; imagine the bootcamp scene without the nasty language! Masato put it all back in; check out the book for the whole story. 

He started making films after that, making an unsuccessful go of Hollywood. After fits and starts, he finally established a practice in Japan while going back and forth between the two film cities (although he’d been based in Japan for quite a while now). He really established himself with Kamikaze Taxi, and then Bounce Ko-gals. After that, he moved between studios and managed to make films quite regularly, increasing his budgets along the way. The best measure of his power in the studio system, such as it is, was Baragaki; it’s a revisionist Shinsengumi tale from Shiba Ryobaragaki
taro shot on actual Kyoto locations which are now Bunkazai. 

Harada was often criticized for being too entertainment oriented. But I respect him for his commitment to socially engaged cinema in the mainstream industry. 

I’ll end with a precious memory. Last spring on his last day in Michigan, I took him out for a Mexican dinner in Detroit’s Mexicantown. He had that craving, which I often feel in Japan. I invited Pete Larson to tag along. Pete, for those who have not met him, has been on KineJapan since the early days. But he’s mostly a lurker, being a musician / epidemiologist and all. In an earlier life, Pete lived in Osaka and picked up Japanese in music clubs there around Nishinari, where his kid went to kindergarten. The first thing Pete said when introductions were over was, “Let me tell you all the things you got wrong about Nishinari.” Harada, rather than being insulted or off-put, loved it. The two traded tall tales of the district and its history for much of the night. I showed once again that Harada Masato got to know his subjects inside and out in the process of writing and shooting and it comes out in every film. 

RIP. 

Markus







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