[KineJapan] Harada Masato RIP

Mon Dec 15 06:07:49 EST 2025

Harada visited Helsinki International Film Festival in 1998, with Kamikaze
Taxi and Bounce Kogals. I have since run onto him at TIFF and FCCJ events.
He is always very friendly and gentlemanly. Kamikaze Taxi was I think one
of the films that showcased Yakusho Koji as an upcoming actor for audiences.

Eija

On Sat, Dec 13, 2025 at 4:40 PM Peter Larson via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

> Oh my. This is devastating news. Meeting and spending time with Harada
> earlier this year was one of the highlights of 2025 for me.
>
> Before we were to met, I went back and watched as many of his films as
> possible, including Bad Lands, which was filmed in and around Nishinari in
> Osaka, an area I am intensely familiar with. Harada welcomed my light
> criticisms of his liberal approach to Osaka's geography, and even explained
> some of it away. I learned that I wasn't crazy, that the buildings in the
> background were in fact all wrong because Harada had decided that it was
> too difficult to shoot in Nishinari's Kamagasaki Triangle Park (a park
> where Nishinari's elderly "homeless" people congregate). Incredibly, he
> reproduced the area in a parking lot in Hikone and even bussed in some
> local Nishinari superstars, who are recognizable to anyone who has spent
> any extended time in the area.
>
> He was curious about everything, asking questions about Osaka, Detroit or
> wherever, you got the sense that Harada's superpower was listening and
> figuring out what special things people have to say. When I was with him,
> he would just engage anybody withing speaking distance even the waitstaff
> or people shooting wedding pictures in the Fisher Building or people
> selling coffee in Eastern Market.
>
> We spent the afternoon scouting potential locations throughout Detroit. I
> was really hoping that he'd make a movie here and give it the same
> treatment he gave Osaka with Bad Lands.
>
> I'll never forget spending time with him and am saddened that I won't be
> able to have that chance again.
>
> RIP.
>
> Pete
>
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2025 at 8:01 PM Markus Nornes via KineJapan <
> kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
>
>> 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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-- 
Eija Niskanen
Programming director
Helsinki Cine Aasia, March 14.-17.2024
www.helsinkicineaasia.fi
+358-50-355 3189
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