[KineJapan] Hasegawa Kazuhiko

[Zahlten, Alexander]

What news… Hasegawa was a huge, somewhat idiosyncratic talent. He wasn’t just a member of Director’s Company (a great gift to 1980s film culture), he was the initial organizing force and managed it for a long time, though in the middle of its founding he received a conviction for a drunk driving accident and served time in prison. I met him a couple of times and he was quite a force of nature in person - and always planning new films that never materialized.
Thanks to Third Window Films many of the Director's Company films are finally available (for a long time the rights were rumored to have been with a yakuza the company had been in debt with, and basically impossible to screen or release, but that supposedly changed a few years ago). If you can, do seek them out!

Alex


From: KineJapan <kinejapan-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> on behalf of Aaron Gerow via KineJapan <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu>
Date: Sunday, February 1, 2026 at 09:45
To: Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu>
Cc: Aaron Gerow <aaron.gerow at yale.edu>
Subject: [KineJapan] Hasegawa Kazuhiko


News reports say that the legendary Japanese filmmaker Hasegawa Kazuhiko died on January 31 at age 80.

Hasegawa was a student at Todai, but left to train as an assistant director in Imamura Shohei’s production company. When work dried up there, he moved to Nikkatsu and served as AD or scriptwriter for a number of films. In the end, he only directed 2 films—The Youth Killer (1976) and The Man Who Stole the Sun (1979)—but both are celebrated masterpieces that influenced a generation. The former is a Nakagami Kenji adaptation, and the latter is known not only for its wild atomic bomb story, but also for a script co-written by Leonard Schrader and for having both Somai Shinji and Kurosawa Kiyoshi in the crew. Hasegawa was also a member of Director's Company, a production team made up of film directors, but he himself never directed another theatrical film, even though there were many planned projects. His many fans were always waiting for the next movie.

https://hochi.news/articles/20260201-OHT1T51414.html?page=1


Aaron Gerow
Alfred W. Griswold Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures and Film and Media Studies
Yale University
On leave AY 2025-2026
320 York Street, Room 108
PO Box 208201
New Haven, CT 06520-8201
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Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6729
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
website: www.aarongerow.com

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