Kinji Fukasaku, Japanese actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1930)
Kinji Fukasaku (深作 欣二, Fukasaku Kinji, 3 July 1930 – 12 January 2003) was a Japanese film director and screenwriter who rose to prominence with a series of yakuza films. He directed the Japanese portion of the Hollywood war film Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), yakuza films including Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973), samurai period pieces such as Shogun's Samurai (1978), the space opera Message from Space (1978), the fantasy film Samurai Reincarnation (1981), and his final film Battle Royale (2000). He used a cinema verite-inspired shaky camera technique in many of his films from the early 1970s.In 1997, he received the Purple Medal of Honor from the Japanese government for his work in film. Fukasaku's films inspired American film director Quentin Tarantino, most notably the inclusion of the Battles Without Honor and Humanity theme in Kill Bill. He was also an inspiration for director William Friedkin.