The Tokyo International Film Festival’s Tokyo Talk program presented a masterclass with Zeze Takahisa, director of the festival’s opening film, “Sukiyaki.” Held before a full-house crowd at Tokyo Midtown Hibiya, the talk focused on Zeze’s early “pink” (softcore porn) and indie films, followed by questions about his more recent work. Born in 1960 in Oita Prefecture, Zeze joined a pink film production company in 1986 and worked as an assistant director. He made his directorial debut in 1989 with “Extracurricular Activity: Rape,” for which he won the Pink Grand Prix Award for Best New Director.
Together with Sano Kazuhiro, Sato Toshiki and Sato Hisayasu, Zeze was hailed as one of the “Four Heavenly Kings of Pink.” Pink films screened in specialized theaters for an exclusively male audience, and directors had to insert a bed scene every 10 minutes or so. That kind of thing was important to me.” At the time, Zeze was interested in stories about female criminals. I found it fascinating.” Scripted by Zeze, “Extracurricular Activity: Rape” was about delinquent high school girls who hang out at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and battle the yakuza.
Zeze gave it the “private” title “Go to Haneda and You Will See Kids Dressed Like Pirates Ready to Attack.” Asked about a 1994 pink, “Genuine Lesbians: Embarrassing Positions” (Zeze’s own title: “Fallen Angels in September”), Zeze said the film, which was about female soulmates, reflected the interest he described as “this whole mysticism thing” shared by many young people then. Meanwhile, in Japan, the “kings” and other pink film directors still had to incorporate a certain amount of eros. We’d get together either because we’d met by chance or because we wanted to create something interesting.” In 1997 Zeze made his mainstream debut with the teen horror “Kokkuri-san” but continued to alternate between pink and mainstream films for the next decade.
In 2010 he released his most ambitious film to date, “Heaven’s Story,” a 278-minute revenge drama that screened in the Forum section of the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize. Personally, I felt a sense of urgency – or maybe a sense of crisis – that things weren’t going well, and that’s what pushed me to take on this challenge.” There’s a lot of talk, Zeze said, about how difficult it is to make a film unless it’s adapted from source material.
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