Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Okay, today we
are going to try and solve a puzzle. I want you
to picture a man. On one screen, he's in this
ridiculous oversized costume running a slapstick
game show. You know the one... Contestants just
face planting into mud pits. Getting pummeled
by giant foam boulders. We all know it. Yeah,
you probably know him as Vic Romano from Most
Extreme Elimination Challenge. Or the Lord of
Takeshi's Castle if you're a purist. Exactly.
The loud, rude, just, the physical embodiment
of lowbrow comedy. But then you turn your head
to a second screen. And there, the exact same
man is being hailed as one of the world's greatest
arthouse film directors. He's winning the Golden
Lion in Venice. Critics are whispering his name
in the same breath as Akira Kurosawa. It is,
I think, one of the most jarring disconnects
in all of entertainment history. We are talking,
of course, about Takeshi Kitano. Also known by
his stage name, Beat Takeshi. Right. And he's,
what, 79 years old now, born back in 1947? And
still working, which is just incredible. So our
mission today is to really unpack this, this
duality. We've got a massive stack of sources
here. biographies film records critical analysis
from you know both japan and the west yeah we
need to figure out how a college dropout who
started as an elevator operator in a strip club,
ends up a commander of the Order of the Arts
and Letters of France. And the sources, they
point to a very specific and kind of a dark narrative
arc. We're going to look at how a near -fatal
accident didn't just injure him, but it actually
constructed his artistic voice. It's a fascinating
look at trauma and creativity. Let's start at
the very beginning, because you don't just wake
up one day as a dual -threat legend. You have
to look at where he came from. Adachi, Tokyo.
Late 1940s. Right. And context is absolutely
key here. Adachi in the post -war era. I mean,
this was not the high society district of Tokyo.
Right. It was working class. Rough and tumble.
And the sources highlight something really interesting
about Kitano's childhood. He said in his neighborhood,
you really only had two role models, which were
baseball players or the Yakuza. Wow. That is
a stark choice. You either play sports or you
join organized crime. It speaks to the limited
horizons of that time, that place. And Kitano's
own household, it kind of reflected that tension.
His father was a house painter, Kikujiro Kitano.
Okay. But Takeshi described him as a man who
lived like a Yakuza. Meaning what exactly? Like,
was he actually in a gang? Probably not officially,
but it means he was rough. Probably a heavy drinker,
a gambler. He lived on the edge. But his mother...
Saki was the complete opposite. A strict disciplinarian.
And an educator. She was pushing hard for education
as the way out. She did not want him ending up
a painter or a gangster. And for a while it worked,
right? He was smart. Oh, very smart. He gets
into Meiji University to study engineering. Which
is a huge deal. That's a prestigious path. He
was set. He was. But this is where the beat Takeshi
personality starts to, you know, bleed through.
The engineering life was just too rigid. At 19,
he drops out. Just walks away. Walks away from
engineering and moves to the Asakusa district
in 1972. Now, Asakusa at that time was the heart
of the entertainment underground. Comedy, theater,
strip clubs. The whole bohemian underbelly. And
this is where the legend starts. He gets a job
at the Francesa Strip Club. But not on stage,
right? Not yet. No, no. He's the elevator operator.
The elevator boy. He's literally pressing buttons.
But he's in the environment. And that's where
he becomes an apprentice to this comedian, Senzaburo
Fukami. He's just soaking it all in. A timing,
the rhythm of it all. Exactly. And eventually
he moves from the elevator to being the theater's
emcee. And that leads to the formation of Two
Beat. This is where the name comes from, Beat
Takeshi. Precisely. In the 70s, he teams up with
a friend, Kiyoshi Kaneko. They become 2Beat,
Beat Takeshi, and Beat Kiyoshi. And they performed
a style called manzai. Okay, let's pause on manzai
because for anyone who hasn't fallen down that
YouTube rabbit hole, it's not stand -up like
we think of it in the West. Not at all. It's
very different. Manzai is this traditional style
with a duo performing incredibly high -speed
banter. It's almost rhythmic. Like jazz. Yeah,
that's a good way to put it. You have two archetypes.
There's the tsukomi, the straight man. That was
Kiyoshi. And then you have the book, the funny
man, the fool. And that was Takeshi. That was
Takeshi. Think Abbott and Costello, but on Fast
Forward. And with a lot more aggression, from
what I've read. A lot more. And this is why they
blew up. It wasn't just the speed, it was the
content. The sources all emphasize that his material
was way more risque than traditional man's eye.
How so? Was he just, like, swearing more? It
was more about who he was targeting. He was going
after the socially vulnerable. Like who? The
elderly, children, the arrogant, the poor. It
was punching down in a way that was shocking
for the time. But you have to remember the context.
This is the comedy boom of the 70s and 80s. Japan
is modernizing. There's a lot of pressure to
be polite, conform. And Kitano was the release
valve. He was saying the things you just were
not supposed to say. He was the bad boy, a punk
rock comedian. And the broadcasters must have
loved that. They were flooded with complaints.
They were censoring him constantly. He actually
mentions in an interview. He was banned from
NHK Studios, the national public broadcaster,
for five years. Five years? What do you have
to do to get a five -year ban? He exposed his
body during a show when it was, you know, strictly
forbidden. Okay, so he's physically crossing
the line now, not just verbally. He was completely
unpredictable. And because of this controversy,
or maybe in spite of it, he becomes one of the
big three television comedians in Japan. He is
a superstar. But the sources are clear. This
volatility wasn't just an act. Right. The Friday
magazine incident in 1986. This sounds like something
out of one of his movies. It really does. So
Shridey, a tabloid, accuses him of an affair.
Normally, a celebrity denies it, maybe sues.
Not Kitano. Kitano gathers his crew, his entourage.
and physically storms the editorial office of
the magazine. He attacked the journalists. It
was a physical confrontation. Right. An assault.
It became a huge legal incident. He was arrested.
It just shows that the anger, the violence, it
was simmering right under the surface. This was
not just a character. And yet while all this
chaos is happening, he's hosting Takeshi's castle.
The most slapstick thing imaginable, it's that
jarring duality again. By the late 80s, if you're
in Japan, Geet Takeshi is the clown. The loud,
rude, violent, hilarious clown. So here's the
central core of this whole deep dive. How on
earth does the clown become the auteur? The leap
from Takeshi's castle to serious contemplative
cinema just seems impossible. Well, it wasn't
a planned transition. The sources suggest it
was a series of accidents and pivots. It started
with acting. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, 1983.
Directed by the legendary Nagisa Oshima, a very
heavy film. With David Bowie, no less. Exactly.
Kitano played a tough POW camp sergeant, and
he took the role very, very seriously. He thought
he gave this gripping, dramatic performance.
But there's this really heartbreaking anecdote
about what happened when the movie came out.
It's the movie theater story. I read this, and
it's just painful. It is. Kitano sneaks into
a theater to see the film. Right. He wants to
see the audience accept him as a serious actor.
He's sitting there in the dark. And when his
face first appears on screen. The audience burst
out laughing. The entire theater. It just shatters
the suspension of disbelief. They couldn't separate
the face from the clown. They saw a beat Takeshi,
not the character. Devastating. So how did he
react to that? He was crushed. But that trauma
motivated him. He vowed that if he was going
to act again, he had to go for serious, dark
characters to just forcefully break that mold.
But the real shift, the one to directing, that
happened almost by accident. 1989, a movie called
Violent Cop. Great title. Does what it says on
the tin. Originally, the veteran director, Kenji
Fukasaku, was supposed to direct it. And Kitano
was just starring. Right. But Fukasaku had a
scheduling conflict, specifically with Kitano's
crazy TV schedule. So the distributor basically
shrugged and said, why don't you direct it? Just
like that. Hey, funny man, here's a camera. That
sounds like a recipe for disaster. It should
have been. But Kitano completely rewrote the
script. And this is where we see the birth of
his style. Because he didn't know the rules of
filmmaking. He just ignored them. And what was
so different? What was the style? It was the
pacing. He used these long, long takes where
almost nothing happens. Minimal camera movement.
Most action movies back then were all about fast
cuts creating excitement. Kitano would just let
the camera stare. It's that deadpan thing. It
creates this uncomfortable tension. Exactly.
Near stasis. And then, out of nowhere, boom.
Explosive violence. Then an immediate cut to
the aftermath. It was bleak, unique, and had
this strange, dry humor. He's stumbling into
brilliance. But then we hit 1994, and the sources
all frame this as the absolute turning point.
August 1994. The scooter accident. And this wasn't
just a minor crash. No, it was catastrophic.
He was riding a motor scooter, drunk, crashed,
suffered severe head injuries. It caused partial
paralysis on the right side of his face. And
the most chilling part is how he described it
later. He called it an unconscious suicide attempt.
Which connects right back to that volatility,
the anger we talked about. It does. It suggests
he was pushing himself to the absolute brink.
But here's where the artist adapts. That paralysis.
It became his greatest acting asset. It froze
his expression into this unreadable, crooked
mask. So the deadpan style became a physical
reality. Literally. In his future gangster roles,
you could not tell what he was thinking because
half his face wasn't moving. It made him terrifying.
It adds this layer of nihilism you just can't
fake. You look at him and you see someone who's
looked death in the face. So he survives the
crash. He's in recovery. And this is when he
picks up the paintbrush. Yeah. During his recovery,
he takes a painting. And he's painting these
strange chimeras heads of flowers on the bodies
of animals. And these paintings aren't just therapy.
They become the visual soul of his comeback film.
Hanabi, Fireworks in 1997. Right. And those paintings
are in the movie. The main character visits a
paralyzed friend who has taken up painting. It's
deeply autobiographical, and Hanabi is a masterpiece.
It's violent, sad, beautiful. And it wins the
Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Which
is a huge deal. That's the top prize. He's only
the third Japanese director to win it, after
Kurosawa and Inagaki. And Kitano said that was
the moment. That was when he felt Japan finally
accepted him as a serious director, not just
a celebrity with a hobby. Amazing that he had
to go to Italy to get respect at home. But that's
often the way, isn't it? The Japanese audience
had too much baggage with Takeshi's Castle. The
international audience just saw the film for
what it was. So now he's a renaissance man. And
in the 2000s, he starts bending genres even more.
Right. In 2000, we get Battle Royale. A classic.
I feel like everyone watched a bootleg of this
in college. It was a cultural phenomenon. Teenagers
forced to kill each other. Kitano plays the teacher,
the facilitator. And he brought that menacing,
bored gravity to the role. He's the adult who
has just completely given up on kids. And then,
just to keep everyone guessing, he pulls a pivot
in 2003 with Zachichi. The Blind Swordsman. This
was a massive risk. Zachichi was a sacred character
in Japan. It's like remaking James Bond but changing
his whole vibe. Kitano did it, but he dyed his
hair blonde. A blonde samurai. unheard of. It
broke historical accuracy completely. But Kitano
said he made Zachichi to plaz others, to prove
he could make a pure entertainment blockbuster
if he wanted to. Basically saying, I can do what
Hollywood does, I just choose not to. And it
worked. It was his biggest box office success.
And he won the Silver Lion at Venice for directing
it, just to keep the trophy shelf full. So, uh,
but speaking of not pleasing others, we have
to talk about the video games. This is where
his troll persona really comes out. Oh, yeah.
Back in 1986, he designed a game called Takeshi's
Challenge. And this game is legendary for being
terrible. It's famously awful. It was ranked
number one in a magazine's Kusoji ranking, which
literally means shit game. The mechanics were
confusing. The difficulty was unfair. How unfair
are we talking? There's a part where you have
to hold a button down for an hour. 60 minutes.
Or use the controller microphone to sing karaoke.
Mess up, you start over. It's considered one
of the worst games ever made. But knowing him
now, that feels intentional. Oh, it absolutely
feels like performance art. He was testing the
audience. But then, 30 years later... He returns
to games in Yakuza 6. A huge, serious franchise.
He provided his voice and likeness for a serious
role, the full circle moment. It shows he never
really leaves a medium behind. He just re -engages
on his own terms. And we see that with Hollywood
too. Johnny Mnemonic, Ghost in the Shell. Which
is funny because he's gone on record saying he
hates anime and manga. Wait, really? He dislikes
the medium but takes a role in one of the biggest
anime adaptations ever? He said he took the role
in Ghost in the Shell. Because he liked the character's
peculiar vibe. He's not driven by fandom. He's
driven by what interests him. If he likes the
vibe, he does it. He just does whatever he wants.
Pretty much. In recent years, he returned to
Yakuza films with the Outrage trilogy. But even
there, he said he added way more dialogue, describing
it as feeling like a nature documentary where
you're just watching creatures kill each other.
A nature documentary of gangsters. I love that.
It strips away the morality. It fits his worldview.
Bleak. but fascinating so let's bring this all
together we have a man who started as an elevator
boy becomes the funniest rudest man in japan
gets banned from tv crashes a motorcycle in a
near suicidal incident reinvents himself as a
silent violent film director and ends up a commander
of the order of the arts and letters of france
it's a trajectory that shouldn't be possible
What's amazing is that he still maintains the
Beat Takeshi persona for TV. He's still doing
variety shows. But Takeshi Kitano, the director,
is this completely separate entity. It's not
a transition. It's a coexistence. Exactly. He
didn't stop being the clown to become the artist.
He is both at the same time. So here's the final
thought I want to leave you with. We live in
an era of, you know, hyper curated personal brands.
Everyone tries to be one consistent thing. Kitano
just destroys that idea. He refuses to be categorized.
So the question is, is his ability to be two
completely contradictory things, the fool and
the philosopher, the ultimate act of artistic
freedom, or is the violent silence of his films
just the other side of the same coin as his manic
comedy? Is the silence just the noise turned
inside out? That's the question. Something to
chew on. That's it for this deep dive into the
two faces of Takeshi Kitano. Thanks for listening.
Thank you.