We can see loss as something missing, but that missing space can be filled with something else, and that creates healing.Collection: Space
My mother loved films! She adored Ingrid Bergman, Joan Fontaine, Vivien Leigh. We couldn't afford to go together to the cinema, but she was always watching their movies on TV.Collection: Movies
A film is not a vehicle to accuse, or to relay a specific message. If we reduce a film to this, we lose all hope for cinema to ignite a richer conversation.Collection: Hope
We used to have prawn tempura: that was my mother's favourite dish. But she had to go out to work instead of my father, so she couldn't find the time to cook nice meals. So we ate more modern food: a lot of frozen and instant food. But I never complained about it to my mother.Collection: Food
I would say that 'After the Storm' is much more informed by my personal life than my other movies.
My mother used to work in a bank in Tokyo. It was a busy district, and after work, she used to go and watch films.
When making documentaries, the most important thing I learned was to listen, observe gestures and facial expressions.
With 'Nobody Knows,' I consciously set out to make a fiction film, which is a different approach from 'Distance,' but I still applied a lot of the things I learned from making 'Distance': for example, how to use the camera in relation to the children and how to create the right atmosphere on set.
The children in 'Nobody Knows' had a resonance with me. The children are projections of myself.
'Like Father, Like Son' gave me the opportunity to show when it is not good with a father.
When I am 60 or 70, I am sure I can still continue to make films on families.
I wanted to make 'Nobody Knows,' a kind of summation of the experiences I gained from making my first three films, the good ones as well as the bad ones.
If my films did better at the box office in Japan, it would be easier to get them made.
When I make films, I don't think of any other directors or their work in terms of the rhythm of the editing or the tenor of the performances.
When I have been told that my films remind people of Ozu, I have never been too convinced.
When I was 27, I won an honorable mention in a scriptwriting contest and got a television job as an assistant director.
I have never made a film to praise or to criticize something. That kind of filmmaking is nothing but propaganda.
Directing while overcoming differences of language and culture is a stimulating challenge.
My mother was really against it when I said I wanted to make films. She said that I should be a civil servant because that was safe, and it had security. But my mother was always very proud of my movies and would give videocassettes of them to all the neighbours.
My father did not have a lot of security in his life. He did odd jobs. He had a real struggle to make money. He lost a lot of time in his 20s, after the war, because he was sent to a forced-labour camp in Siberia.
I am hopeful that films can connect people who are in conflict in a separated world.
As a son and as a father, there are still various things that I haven't done as well as I should have - that's my dilemma and regret.
Hardly anyone says anything real in the courtroom. Almost everything is decided ahead of time, and the truth is found behind the scenes.
When I choose child actors, I chose them for their personalities. And then I work with their own vocabulary, so I'm not imposing text or dialogue on them: I'm just receiving.
Tokyo is wonderful for distribution of international films, a lot of Iranian films, Taiwanese films. But most of the art films are from Europe and Asia.
In the eighties, there was a huge shift in the humor of Japanese television. Up until then, the humor was garnered by people who said humorous things, but in the '80s, it was garnered by people who were being laughed at while the audience watches and watches.
I watch 'Electronic Boy' faithfully every week - not because I like the show but because I'm interested in where the smartest T.V. producers and directors are going, what direction they are headed in.
Privacy is not really a concept in Japan.
It is righteous to receive state subsidies to make films that criticise the state - I want Japanese people to accept such European values.
Fast cutting, loud music, blood spewing everywhere, and gunshots permeating the scenes does not necessarily make for a shocking movie.
A lot of people, especially Japanese, come to the theater to have a good cry.
I'm less interested in death itself than in people whose lives are touched by it.
All my mother ever wanted to talk about was what she hated about my father and the times he cheated on her when he was younger. It really irritated me, and I told them they had to sort things out between themselves. Looking back on that, I see that it was really cold of me as a son.
The vividness of children is easier to see when they're completely left to their own devices.
As the Japanese family gets more and more atomized, grandparents don't live with the nuclear family, so parents of children can't consult with their own parents about how to raise their children and rely on that to help raise them.
I'm so entranced by what unfolds in front of the camera. It seems wonderfully out of my control.
I believe that any auteur categorised in terms of an -ist or an -ism wouldn't be able to capture the complex essence of human nature.
I never want to be the all-knowing god of the story, manipulating what's to happen or the action.
I've been a fan of Yoshida Akimi's manga for a long time; she's one of a few women's manga writers that I always read.
It's definitely good to have a hit from time to time, though not too often. If you have a few hits in a row, people start to think every film you make will be a hit, which is a big mistake.
I have been told that... time doesn't flow in a straight line in my films. It goes round in a circle. Sometimes people comment that the films remind them of Ozu. Maybe that's right. But in Japan, nobody comments on how time passes in my films. So perhaps that is a different way of thinking.
You only get back what you are prepared to put in.
I am very happy that Japanese film can cross borders.
Japanese society doesn't have a god - no absolute presence.
The Japanese don't have a specific religion, but a spirituality. A cap, shoes, and a table have a spirituality. When you eat an apple, you don't say you eat it: you say, 'I am receiving it.' Kind of like you are thanking the food.
There was a time when I thought Kim Novak was the sexiest woman in the world.
My grandfather had Alzheimer's. He would eat everything and anything that was around; then he wouldn't remember that he ate it and would demand to be fed again.
Reflecting on the past, where the film industry became united with 'national interest' and 'national policy,' I tend to think that keeping a clear distance from government authority is the right thing to do.
When I watch an actress say a line, I watch how they deliver the lines with gestures.
There's a difference between people being free and the atmosphere of 'freedom.'