, born (24 May 1923 – 13 February 2017), was a Japanese filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter. His films are known for their florid visual style, absurd humour, and a playful rejection of traditional film grammar. He made 40 predominately B-movies for the Nikkatsu Company between 1956 and 1967, working most prolifically in the yakuza genre. His increasingly surreal style began to draw the ire of the studio in 1963 and culminated in his ultimate dismissal for what is now regarded as his magnum opus, Branded to Kill (1967), starring notable collaborator Joe Shishido. Suzuki successfully sued the studio for wrongful dismissal, but he was blacklisted for 10 years after that. As an independent filmmaker, he won critical acclaim and a Japanese Academy Award for his Taishō trilogy, Zigeunerweisen (1980), Kagero-za (1981) and Yumeji (1991).
His films remained widely unknown outside Japan until a series of theatrical retrospectives beginning in the mid-1980s, home video releases of key films such as Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter in the late 1990s and tributes by such acclaimed filmmakers as Jim Jarmusch, Takeshi Kitano, Wong Kar-wai and Quentin Tarantino signaled his international discovery. Suzuki continued making films, albeit sporadically, until the early 2000s.
Early life and career
Suzuki was born during the Taishō period, and three months before the Great Kantō earthquake, in the Nihonbashi Ward (now the Chūō Special Ward) in Tokyo. His younger brother, Kenji Suzuki (now a retired NHK television announcer), was born six years his junior. His family was in the textile trade. After earning a degree at a Tokyo Trade School in 1941, Suzuki applied to the college of the Ministry of Agriculture, but failed the entrance exam due to poor marks in chemistry and physics. A year later he successfully enrolled in a Hirosaki college.
In 1943, he was recruited by the Imperial Japanese Army during the national student mobilization to serve in World War II. Sent to East Abiko, Chiba, he was assigned the rank of Private Second Class. He was shipwrecked twice throughout his military service; first the cargo ship that was to take him to the front was destroyed by an American submarine and he fled to the Philippines. Later, the freighter that took him to Taiwan sank after an attack by the American air force, and he spent 7 or 8 hours in the ocean before being rescued. In 1946, having attained the rank of Second Lieutenant in the Meteorological Corps, he returned to Hirosaki and completed his studies.
He has also said that he often found the horrors of war comical, such as men being hoisted on board his ship with ropes and being battered black and blue against the hull, or the bugler blasting his trumpet every time a coffin was thrown into the sea. Ian Buruma writes, "The humour <!-- [sic] --> of these situations might escape one who was not there. But Suzuki assures us that it was funny."
Next he applied to the prestigious University of Tokyo, but again failed the entrance exam. At the invitation of a friend, who had also failed the exam, Suzuki enrolled into the film department of the Kamakura Academy. In October 1948, he passed the Shochiku Company's entrance exam and was hired as an assistant director in the company's Ōfuna Studio. There he worked under directors Minora Shibuya, Yasushi Sasaki, Noboru Nakamura and Hideo Oniwa before joining the regular crew of Tsuruo Iwama. He worked under directors Hidesuke Takizawa, Kiyoshi Saeki, So Yamamura and Hiroshi Noguchi. His first screenplay to be filmed was Duel at Sunset (落日の決闘 Rakujitsu no ketto, 1955). It was directed by Hiroshi Noguchi. In 1956, he became a full-fledged director. Impressed by the film's quality Nikkatsu signed him to a longterm contract. Nearly all of the films that he made for Nikkatsu were program pictures, or B-movies, production-line genre films made on a tight schedule and shoestring budget that were meant to fill out the second half of a double feature. B-directors were expected to work fast, taking any and every script that was assigned to them, and they refused scripts only at the risk of being dismissed. Suzuki maintained an impressive pace, averaging 3½ films per year, and claims to have turned down only 2 or 3 scripts during his years at the studio. He later said of his work schedule (and wrongful dismissal):
His third film and first yakuza action movie, Satan's Town, linked him inexorably to the genre. Underworld Beauty (1958) marked his first CinemaScope film and was also the first to be credited to his pseudonym Seijun Suzuki.
Having enjoyed moderate success, his work began to draw more attention, especially among student audiences,
This development was furthered with the assistance of like-minded collaborators. Suzuki considered the production designer to be among the most important:
His fan base grew rapidly, but did not extend to studio president Kyusaku Hori. Beginning with Tattooed Life, the studio issued Suzuki his first warning for "going too far". He responded with Carmen from Kawachi after which he was ordered to "play it straight" and had his budget slashed for his next film. Further reduced to filming in black-and-white Suzuki made his 40th film in his 12 years with the company, Branded to Kill (1967), considered an avant-garde masterpiece by critics, for which Hori promptly fired him. Two friends of Suzuki met with Hori the next day and were informed that "Suzuki's films were incomprehensible, that they did not make any money and that Suzuki might as well give up his career as a director as he would not be making films for any other companies." It was scheduled to begin on 10 May, but Hori withdrew all of his films from distribution and refused to release them to the Cine Club. The students were told that "Nikkatsu could not afford to cultivate a reputation for making films understood only by an exclusive audience and that showing incomprehensible and thus bad films would disgrace the company," adding that, "Suzuki's films would not be shown for some time in theaters or by the Cine Club."
Shochiku, the company that started him as an assistant director, produced his return to film direction in 1977, A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness, a golf expose cum psychological thriller penned by sports-oriented manga illustrator Ikki Kajiwara. Joe Shishido appears in a brief cameo. The film was met poorly critically and popularly. It won Honourable Mention at the 31st Berlin International Film Festival, was nominated for 9 Japanese Academy Awards and won four, including best director and best film, and was voted the no. 1 Japanese film of the 1980s by Japanese critics. He would return to the Lupin III franchise twice more, scripting the thirteenth episode of Lupin the 3rd Part III: The Pink Jacket Adventures and co-directing (with Shigetsugu Yoshida) its associated film, Legend of the Gold of Babylon, in 1985.
Italy hosted the first partial retrospective of his films outside Japan at the 1984 Pesaro International Film Festival. He had been diagnosed with pulmonary emphysema and was permanently hooked up to a portable respirator. However, he attended the 2008 Tokyo Project Gathering, a venue serving film financing and international co-productions, and pitched a film titled A Goldfish of the Flame.
Death
Seijun Suzuki died on 13 February 2017 at a Tokyo hospital. His death was announced by Nikkatsu.
Filmmaking technique
As a contract B director at Nikkatsu, Suzuki's films were made following a rigid structure. He was assigned a film and script, and could only refuse it at the risk of losing his job. He claims to have turned down only 2 or 3 scripts in his time with Nikkatsu but always modified the scripts both in preproduction and during shooting. Within this framework he had a greater degree of control than the A directors as the cheaper B productions drew a less watchful eye from the head office.