28th Far East Film Festival: In Conversation with Koji Yakusho

In a darkened cinema in Udine, Italy, the audience watches the screen with rapt attention, it is a celebration of the life and career of Japanese actor Koji Yakusho. As they watch in awe, a figure steps out onto the stage, looking up at the medley of film scenes and the audience in front of him, a quiet smile on his face. When the audience realises where he’s stood, there is a pause, a breath, and then uproarious applause for the man himself.

From heartfelt dramas like Perfect Days and Tampopo to gritty thrillers like The Blood of Wolves and Cure, Yakushohas had a remarkable tenure in the Japanese film industry. So, it should come as no surprise then that he is receiving the Golden Mulberry award for lifetime achievement at the Udine Far East Film Festival. Except it did come as a surprise to Yakusho himself, he admits to View of the Arts and other publications.

“To be receiving the Golden Mulberry award is a joy,” he explains. “If you think about it, I have not yet received a lifetime achievement award in Japan, so of all places to receive this in Italy, in this city of Udine, I’m honoured.

“For this celebration of all the things that I’ve done in the past, well, to me it was just a big, beautiful surprise. And having my Perfect Days director Mr Wim Wenders come all the way from Germany to give me this prize, that was very touching. It was a very moving moment for me.”

Yakusho, like his Tampopo co-star Ken Watanabe, is a Japanese actor who has enjoyed success both in his home country and abroad. His decades-long collaboration with Kiyoshi Kurosawa is celebrated worldwide, with their first project together, Cure, deemed a masterpiece by film fans everywhere. He has starred in Oscar-winning films like Babel and earned a best actor award in Cannes for his performance in Perfect Days; he’s starred in several of Japan’s year-long period dramas, known as Taika, and voiced characters in several hit anime films, including The Boy and the Beast. Even his rom-com Shall We Dance? about a salaryman finding joy in learning the art form, created a dance craze in Japan back in 1996.

In a way, he’s done it all, but Yakusho is humble in the face of his achievements, sharing that it was not something he anticipated: “My career was not planned at all. Actually, every now and then, I receive a request to play a particular role, and it would occur to me,’ oh, they’re asking me to play this kind of role?’ And when I had this kind of surprise, I would take it and try to do my best, to try all the things that I can do to achieve the performance that I’m expected to do.

“This has helped me, guided me as an actor and as a human being, because of all these roles that I was given, I was able to grow both as an actor and as a human being. So, while it wasn’t planned, what I can tell you is just that acting is a beautiful job.”

Several of Yakusho’s films are being celebrated at the festival, including Tampopo, 13 Assassins, The Woodsman and the Rain, and Perfect Days. Tampopo is another film that has become revered by the film community since its release in 1985. The film, by Juzo Itami, is a celebration of food and the joy it can bring, which is explored through characters like single mother Tampopo, who tries to perfect her ramen-making skills to make her restaurant a success, and the truck drivers who help her. Yakusho appears in the film as the Man in the White Suit, a suave gangster whose love of food is unlike any other and takes the film into some surprisingly erotic directions.

After sharing I have only seen the film very recently, and loved it, Yakusho jokes that he’s glad it took me time to find it, and that I “watched the movie now as an adult and not as a kid, because there were a few scenes that might have been disturbing if you were a child!” It’s true, I will never look at egg yolk in quite the same way again (if you know, you know).

Tampopo is a film that Yakusho feels “goes beyond borders” because of the way it looks at food and its meaning in all our lives. Referencing the final shot of the film showing a mother breastfeeding her baby, he explains: “That was something that struck me, because it gives you the importance of what food is because everything starts from the mother’s milk. Everything starts with the mother’s milk, and that metaphor really struck me when I watched that movie, even though, of course, I was part of the movie itself.

“It gave me the idea of how important food is, because it’s not just about nourishment, it’s also about the kind of drama that you can get from it – like in one scene, a mother who is about to die makes her children Chinese-style rice. So, I think that director Itami was able to create a movie that goes beyond borders by doing that, and that was just amazing.”

Of course, it is Yakusho’s many collaborations with Kiyoshi Kurosawa that he is likely to be most fondly remembered for. The pair have worked together eight times, and it has been a great source of joy for the actor, but when asked about it he says: “First, let me tell you that lately Mr. Kurosawa is no longer calling me for his movies, and I’m a tad disappointed. So, if you ever happen to have an interview with Mr. Kurosawa, you can tell him that I said that I was a bit disappointed.”

Going on to reflect on their collaboration, he adds: “In terms of his movies, those are movies that give you a certain freedom in terms of how you want to interpret them. There’s a connection between scenes, a connection that is a connection of feelings and emotions, and it all depends on how you want to fill the gap that is present between them. Filling the gap between the two scenes is interesting because what happens is that after a while, you just see that there is a thread, a thick line, that is characterising a particular person, and after a while, you can find it if you go along with the movie.

“Mr. Kurosawa is not the kind of person who imposes you with any plan in terms of performance; he’s not extremely talkative about what you’re supposed to do. He gives you the freedom, it’s like he’s saying, ‘okay, this is the recipe, show me how you’re able to cook it’, so he’s like an observer. Of course, he wants to see what is going to be prepared, but he gives us the possibility to make the choices for the human beings that we are depicting. And I think I was able to give my own contribution to his work with the way I created my characters for him.”

That is certainly true; Yakusho’s work with Kurosawa is second to none. But the same can also be applied to the actor’s entire filmography. This is an actor who has brought his own flavour and style to Japanese cinema and has rightly become one of its titans as a result. He may not yet have received a lifetime achievement award in Japan, but he is more than deserving of one. So, it is a joy to be here to see him receive his first award of this kind; it will by no means be his last.

Written and interviewed by Team View of the Arts

_{View of the Arts is an online publication dedicated to film, music, and the arts, with a strong focus on the Asian entertainment industry. As we continue to grow, we aim to deepen our coverage of Asian music while remaining committed to exploring and celebrating creativity across the global arts landscape.}