Masahiro Shinoda

Pale Flower made Shinoda's name: a yakuza just out of prison takes an interest in a young woman who has started gambling big at his card den. He came up at Shochiku in the same early-1960s cohort as Oshima and Yoshida, and later went back into Japanese history and theatre. Double Suicide stages a Chikamatsu puppet play with actors, and leaves the black-clad stagehands in shot. Silence follows two Portuguese priests into seventeenth-century Japan to find their mentor.

Signature

• Composed, stylised images, often scored by Toru Takemitsu.
• Bunraku and kabuki conventions brought onto the film set (Double Suicide).
• Swordsmen and spies in times of political upheaval (Assassination, Samurai Spy).
• Shima Iwashita, his wife, in many of the leads.