Koji Wakamatsu passed away at 11 p.m. on Wednesday 17th October 2012. He was 76 years old. He died due to injuries sustained after being hit by a taxi in Tokyo on 12th October. Wakamatsu lead one of the most interesting lives of any director you are likely to come across. He came to Tokyo as a young man from his hometown of Miyagi. He had no money and no job and soon fell in with gangsters. His life of crime lead to a 6 month prison sentence, and due to the way he was treated on the inside he became an anti-authoritarian. Once released he used his connections in the crime world to help him fund his movies. His career started with softcore Pinku films, which are a genre of softcore pornography in Japan. Even then he was instilling social commentary into his films. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in the last interview before his death, Wakamatsu said:
When I got out, I really wanted to get back against the authorities, but I thought if I used violence, I’d end up in prison again. So I decided to use another weapon: films. If you use violence in your films, it’s only in the world of imagination, so at least you can’t get charged with anything criminal.
At the age of 50 he decided he wanted to make films that would be remembered as a realistic portrayal of their era. He became highly respected and was recently awarded Asian Filmmaker of the Year at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea.
Once I got to 50, I decided I wanted to make films that people can look back at in 50 or 100 hundred years and think, “That’s what it was like in those times.” That’s the kind of films I’m trying to make…I’ve always made films according to my own agenda and it’s good to have them recognized recently.
Wakamatsu made over 100 films in his career, with some of his standouts being his recent release 11.25: THE DAY HE CHOSE HIS OWN FATE, CATERPILLAR (2010), and UNITED RED ARMY (2007).
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
