A Beginner's Guide To Watching Takeshi Kitano Films

There are two legendary Takeshis in the world: Beat and Kitano. Beat Takeshi is known primarily in Japan as a goofball variety show entertainer, while Takeshi Kitano is hailed all over Europe and the US as one of Japan’s greatest auteur directors, screenwriters and actors. His works transcend genres and cultural barriers.

Technically, there’s a third Takeshi, this one mainly known to Western audiences as the psychopathic teacher from Battle Royale, but the point is that these are all the same person. For this article, we’ve prepared a guide to his filmography, in the hope of helping you discover one of the most fascinating Japanese filmmakers alive.

Kitano (left) with Kiyoshi Kaneko (right) as Two Beat

Starting at the Beginning

Takeshi Kitano first made a name for himself as an actor in the 1983 film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. However, his directorial debut was the 1989 Dirty Harry-inspired thriller Violent Cop. That being said, he only co-wrote it, working primarily off the work of Hisashi Nozawa.

His first writer-director work was Boiling Point, a yakuza-and-baseball movie — two genres that basically don’t interact on screen — released in 1990, which continues to confuse audiences but is crucial to understanding its creator. So, you should start at Boiling Point, right?

No. You need go back even further, all the way to the early 1970s, when Kitano formed a manzai act with Kiyoshi Kaneko called Two Beat. That was the origin of the name Beat Takeshi by which most Japanese audiences know him.

Manzai is a comedy routine performed on stage by two people, usually referred to using Western terminology as “the straight man” and “the funny man.” Beat Takeshi was the duo’s funny man (boke) but he wasn’t anything like, say, Lou Costello of Abbott and Costello.

His manzai persona was a disturbing psychopath who joked about abusing the elderly. His deadpan, mean-spirited punchlines came out of nowhere amid a rapid-fire delivery. If you familiarize yourself with his manzai career beforehand, you’ll start to notice traces of it in the vast majority of his movies.

Kitano in Violent Cop (1989)

Different Genres, Familiar Beats

The writer-director’s work can be broadly divided into three categories: gangster, poetic and experimental films, with maybe a fourth, smaller category labeled miscellaneous hiding between them because it feels wrong to pigeonhole a man like Takeshi Kitano.

That being said, there does seem to be a common thread running through a lot of these vastly different movies. Their structure, how they are edited, the framing and writing, can all be seen through the prism of manzai.

Violent Cop, for instance, features a series of juxtapositions of calming and explosively violent scenes. One moment, a man is eating a meal with a smile on his face when suddenly he’s attacked and viciously beaten. It’s a world of black-and-white where Kitano keeps providing manzai-like contrasting set-ups and violent, out-of-nowhere punchlines.

His comedy roots are even more evident in Boiling Point through the movie’s visual minimalism (manzai, after all, is just two guys talking on stage) and the startling dissimilarity — not unlike between the straight man and funny man — of the world of baseball and yakuza.

These motifs were perfected in Kitano’s 1993 masterpiece Sonatine, a subversion of the yakuza genre that’s full of conflicting themes, such as gangsters having a nice day at the beach before it suddenly turns dark and uncomfortably nihilistic, but with a deadpan facade reminiscent of manzai.

And if you start with his early criminal “trilogy” (Violent Cop, Boiling Point and Sonatine) to see how he came to masterfully incorporate the building-blocks of Japanese comedy in many of his movies, you may as well complete the journey and watch his other gangster movies like Brother (2000) and his three Outrage films.

Kitano in Boiling Point (1990)

More Than a Violent Clown

Another part of Kitano’s manzai-esque approach to filmmaking is to introduce something funny in the least likely of places. He’s been experimenting with transplanting his brand of dark humor onto the big screen for years, probably starting with the raunchy and totally bizarre sex comedy Getting Any? (1995).

Kitano also loves making himself the object of ridicule, as seen most prominently in his experimental, self-parodying, surreal autobiographies: Takeshis’ (2005), Glory to the Filmmaker! (2007) and Achilles and the Tortoise (2008). Those are all a great way to expand one’s definition of comedy or, at least, learn what it means to a professional who’s been in the business for half a century.

One of the most important things that Kitano has learned over the past 50 years, though, is when to turn it off and get serious. Movies like A Scene at the Sea (1991), Kids Return (1996), Kikujiro (1999) and Dolls (2002) are all what you might describe as tender.

They deal with everything from a yearning for human connection to a lyrical and heartfelt exploration of the complex feelings stemming from lost love. Some may have some humor in them, but it’s always balanced with melancholy and sentimentality.

These Poetic movies are also infused with a lot of self-reflection — even more than the actual autobiographies — especially Kids Return, which was filmed right after Kitano recovered from a scooter accident that almost killed him and left him partially paralyzed.

Kids Return deals with two high school dropouts finding their own way in the world. One becomes a gangster, the other a boxer. It all seems to reflect Kitano’s life. When he was young, all the kids in his neighborhood wanted to be one of two people: an athlete or a yakuza.

It’s fascinating to watch the movie and feel Kitano bare his soul in front of us. He may make jokes in Kids Return, but the humor never takes away from the heartfelt subject matter. He is a man who carries his comedy past with him wherever he goes, but knows exactly when to sprinkle it gently or leave it out completely when working on a project.