Film Show 068: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Kiyoshi Kurosawa (b. 1955) is a Japanese director who has spent his career crafting beguiling films that both work within the bounds of genre and transcend them. While largely known for making horror films like Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001) and Sweet Home (1989), the latter of which directly inspired the Resident Evil video games, his filmography runs deep. He made a fascinating pink film for his debut feature, Kandagawa Pervert Wars (1983), V-cinema works like the Suit Yourself or Shoot Yourself series (1995/1996) and Eyes of the Spider (1998), and has dabbled in science-fiction (2017’s Before We Vanish and Foreboding) and domestic dramas (2008’s Tokyo Sonata). His newest film, The Samurai and the Prisoner (2026), is another reinvention. A jidaigeki film based on the Honobu Yonezawa novel of the same name, the film chronicles a samurai warlord named Murashige Araki (Masahiro Motoki) who rebels against Nobunaga Oda (Shingo Bando) and, after encountering mysterious deaths, ends up forging an alliance with Kanbei Kuroda (Masaki Suda), a war strategist of a rival clan who he imprisons instead of kills. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Kurosawa on August 1st, 2026 via Zoom to discuss growing up in Kobe, what he learned from jidaigeki films of old, and how he directed his actors for The Samurai and the Prisoner. Special thanks to Monika Uchiyama for interpreting.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: I know you were born in Kobe, Japan. What was it like growing up there?
Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Indeed I was born in Kobe. I will say that among Japanese cities, Kobe is one where Western culture came quite early and quite strong. There were many homes built in the Western style with masonry, so that felt quite normal in terms of the architecture I grew up with. When I made my film Wife of a Spy (2020), I actually had to film in Kobe because I needed that specific kind of architecture. So, looking back, it was a very particular kind of environment I grew up in.
Given that Kobe was more exposed to Western culture early on, what sort of art did you engage with when you were younger? Were there films or music or visual art that made an impact on you as a kid?
I wouldn’t say that this is specific to growing up in Kobe, but I remember being excited to go to the movie theater and seeing films like Godzilla, so these very early kaiju films. In my memory, a Godzilla film would’ve had very scary music and you’d watch cities be destroyed and people killed en masse. It’d be a very scary experience for a child to watch. Later on, I realized that the directors and staff who made those films were those who experienced war, and specifically the destruction of their own cities due to firebombings. Looking back, I see them now as educational films. That’s a very impactful early memory for me.
Similar to how these directors made kaiju films as a reflection of their own experiences, do you feel like this is true of your own films at all? Do you think any speak to what you’ve experienced?
I wouldn’t say that there’s a single, total work that reflects my life, but there are certain scenes that are influenced by things I’ve experienced myself. Not all of my films, but some of my films occasionally feature schools. These scenes include teachers and students, and if the protagonist is a student, they’re often isolated. They have shallow relationships with their classmates and they never reveal their true selves. Even their relationship with their teacher is not one where they’re confronting them in any way—they’re actually not even communicating with them at all, and there’s a distant presence. Tokyo Sonata (2008) is one example of that, as the scenes involving schools are definitely influenced by my own experiences.
You’ve said in the past that you’re neither a writer nor artist but more so a craftsman, and are interested in imitating what your predecessors did. The Samurai and the Prisoner (2026) is your first jidaigeki. What sort of things were you trying to imitate from older Japanese filmmakers and what were you doing to keep things fresh?
So yes, this is my first time filming a jidaigeki, but it’s one that is filmed in a castle and mostly involves conversations among the people there. I was trying to reflect on what jidaigeki may have similarly taken place within a castle or mansion and also centered around conversation. I’ve seen a lot of jidaigeki, but this became an opportunity to research more to find inspiration. The films I looked at most closely were Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957) and Kenji Mizoguchi’s The47 Ronin (1941/1942), though this latter film was not exactly the same time period as the one in The Samurai and the Prisoner.
Classically in the rules among samurai, those who are hierarchically above or in power are standing while those who are hierarchically below must kneel in front of them. There are also rules that you cannot look into the eyes of those who are speaking. Although these types of rules existed, they were disrupted by directors like Kurosawa and Mizoguchi in specific scenes, and you’d see the hierarchy broken—those in the lower class might stand up or look into the eyes of those in the upper class. I found that these disruptions led to the most dramatic scenes, and it was these considerations that most impacted my film.
Can you speak to how you directed the actors about line readings? You’ve talked in the past about how any sort of “authenticity” we see in film finds a balance between how people actually talk in real life and some sort of theatricality. How did you approach that with this film?
It’s really difficult to strike a balance with jidaigeki and period films in general. In a typical contemporary drama, there is dialogue that’s perhaps more realistic, that reflects how people ordinarily talk in our day to day, or there is dialogue that exists in the world of fiction that feels much more constructed. When I’m making films, it’s easier to calculate at which level the dialogue should exist—whether more naturalistic or theatrical. But with jidaigeki, it’s really hard because we have no idea what ordinary speech actually sounded like, so in a sense, the entirety of the dialogue has to be constructed; I have to create what’s considered “normal” in the world of the film. Strangely, as the actors were acting with each other, they started off at different levels of theatricality, but they soon found an equilibrium. I tried to match the tone of the film with what organically emerged.
Can you speak to what it was like working with Masaki Suda again? He was in Cloud (2024) and he plays the prisoner, Kanbei, in this film.
When we work together, I’m struck by what a talented and multifaceted actor he is. He’s able to freely move through different styles of acting. When I received the novel [by Honobu Yonezawa] that this film is based on, I remember immediately thinking that the only person who could play Kanbei Kuroda was Masaki Suda. If I were to describe his abilities, it’s that he’s able to deliver lines as if these are the character’s true feelings, but he can also deliver the same line as if he’s trying to tell a lie. He can also manage to say a line in which we could interpret it either way—is he telling the truth or is he telling a lie? The way he’s able to move through these different modes of delivery is incredibly shocking. He’s not only able to manipulate the character of Murashige, he’s able to manipulate Masahiro, who’s playing him. And he’s also able to manipulate us as a viewer.
I wanted to ask about Murashige in general. You’ve mentioned in the past about the terror of someone staying the same forever, how this essentially embodies death. I’m curious how you approached capturing Murashige as this figure who recognizes that staying the same is bad, but that change is its own form of suffering?
When I’m creating narratives and thinking about the drama of certain films, if there’s a protagonist, they must experience some kind of event where they cannot go back to their previous self. I want the protagonist to experience something so strong that it changes them, and when we watch the film, we know that they can’t go back to how they were when we first encountered them. This event causes them to move towards something new, and this could be happiness or destruction, but it can certainly never be the peace that they had beforehand. That’s a dramatic arc I build a lot of my films around.
With The Samurai and the Prisoner, it’s not a single event that changes the protagonist but a succession of small incidents that change Murashige. He can no longer return to a prior form of stability, and he’s headed towards something unknown—that’s the structure of the film. I’m not sure if it was that extreme in the novel, but when I wrote this character, I highlighted this drastic change in the character, so much so that throughout filming, Masahiro would say things like, “Is it okay for me to change so much?” Even as an actor, he felt hesitant because he didn’t know where he was headed. I told him, “This is the right way to work. You’re headed towards something unknown, so if you knew what was going to happen or what to do, that’d be wrong.” I was encouraging him to embrace the unknown.
Speaking about change, do you feel like you’ve learned something about yourself in having made this film? You talked about who you were as a schoolchild just a bit ago, and I’m curious if you feel like you’ve changed as a result of this film.
I want to believe that there has been a change in me, but I myself can’t change in the world in the same way that people change in the world of fiction, so it’s really hard to say. I will say, though, that I learned about the possibilities within the genre of jidaigeki. Even though it’s a period film, it can also represent and reflect contemporary themes and contemporary realities. The fact that these things can coexist in a period piece is something I’ve learned. I hope that other directors challenge themselves to make jidaigeki films in the same manner; it’s not something I could’ve known unless I tried it myself.
I end all my interviews with the same question and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?
What do I like about myself? This is a cruel question (laughter). In thinking about what I like about myself, I have to think about what I don’t like about myself. For instance, as a filmmaker, I pride myself in being very punctual. I can work very efficiently and things are always on time and I’m really good at that, but it’s also the only way I know how to work. That’s a great quality to have when you have a limited budget and limited timeframes, so I do think that’s a good quality, but it’s also one of my greatest weaknesses. In a way, I’m only able to work in this very compact and impoverished manner (laughter). When I have a budget or the ability to work in extravagant ways, I can’t seem to indulge in that.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s The Samurai and the Prisoner (2026) is in theaters now. Find more information at the film’s website here.
Thank you for reading the 68th issue of Film Show. Cruel.
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