Actors - Takeshi Kitano

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	Actors - Takeshi Kitano

Takeshi Kitano (北野武, Kitano Takeshi, b. January 18,1947) is a Japanese comedian, actor, author, poet, painter, one-time video game designer and film director who has received critical acclaim, both in his native Japan and abroad, for his highly idiosyncratic cinematic work. With the exception of his works as a film director, he is known almost exclusively by the name Beat Takeshi (ビートたけし, Bīto Takeshi). Since April 2005 he is a professor at the Graduate School of Visual Arts, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.

Kitano's films are usually dramas about Yakuza gangsters or the police, characterized as being highly deadpan to the point of near-stasis. He often uses long takes where nothing appears to be happening, or with edits that cut immediately to the aftermath of an event. Many of his films express a bleak or nihilistic philosophy, but they are also filled with a great deal of humor and remarkable affection for their characters. Kitano's films paradoxically seem to leave controversial impressions. While formally disguised as dark comedies or gangster movies, his films raise moral questions and provide food for thought. While Kitano's international fame continues to rise sharply, the Japanese public knows him primarily as a TV host and comedian. His portrayal of Zatoichi in the 2003 movie by the same name is said to be his biggest domestic commercial success. During interviews, Kitano is careful to hide his enigmatic personality behind the mask of being a comedian and regular guy. He hosts a weekly television program called Beat Takeshi's TV Tackle (ビートたけしのTVタックル), a kind of panel discussion among entertainers and politicians regarding controversial current events. But Kitano's primary role is to provide comic relief and he rarely shares his true feelings regarding controversial social issues. Although he interviewed Shōkō Asahara, founder of the controversial Japanese religious cult Aum Shinrikyo, on at least two occasions (a fact little known outside Japan), his attitude towards religion is unknown. However, he displayed strong public feelings on one occasion, severely vandalizing an office of the Japanese tabloid "Focus" after it printed a story about Kitano that he didn't like.

Early life

Born in Adachi, Tokyo in 1947. After dropping out of Meiji University, where he studied engineering for four years, he found work as an elevator operator in a nightclub and learned a great deal about the business from the comedian Senzaburo Fukami. When one of the club's regular performers fell ill, Kitano took his place on stage, and a new career was born.

In the 1970s he formed a comic duo with his friend Kiyoshi Kaneko. They took on the stage names Beat Takeshi and Beat Kiyoshi; together referring to themselves as Two Beat (sometimes romanized as The Two Beats). This sort of duo stand-up comedy, known as manzai in Japan, usually features a great deal of high-speed back-and-forth banter between the two performers. In 1976 they performed on television for the first time and became an instant success, propelling their act onto the national stage. The reason for their popularity had much to do with Kitano's material, which was much more risqué than traditional manzai. The targets of his jokes were often the socially vulnerable, including the elderly, the handicapped, the poor, children, women, the ugly and the stupid. Complaints to the broadcaster led to censorship of some of Kitano's jokes and the editing of offensive dialogue. Although Two Beat was one of the most successful acts of its kind during the late '70s and '80s, Kitano decided to go solo and the duo was dissolved. Some autobiographical elements relating to his manzai career can be found in his film Kids Return
(1996).

Many of Kitano's routines involved him portraying a gangster or other harsh character, and his first major film role, Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
(where he starred opposite Tom Conti, Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Bowie) featured him cast as a sadistic POW camp sergeant during WWII.

Film career

After several other roles, mostly comedic, in 1989 he was cast in the lead for Violent Cop
(Sono Otoko, Kyōbō ni Tsuki) as a sociopathic detective who responds to every situation with violence. When the original director (Kinji Fukasaku) fell ill, Kitano offered to step in, and rewrote the script heavily. The result was a financial and critical success in Japan, and the beginning of Kitano's career as a filmmaker.

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Actors - Takeshi Kitano

Early life

Film career

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