Masato Harada

Masato Harada was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, critic and occasional actor, born in Numazu, Shizuoka Prefecture, on 3 July 1949 and died in a Tokyo hospital on 8 December 2025. After time in London and studies at Tokyo Visual Arts College and Pepperdine University, he lived in Los Angeles in the late 1970s as a US correspondent for the magazines Kinema Junpo and Takarajima, writing criticism and news about the American film industry. He made his directorial debut in 1979 with Farewell, Movie Friend: Indian Summer and also worked as an English-to-Japanese subtitle and dubbing translator. His films as director include Gunhed (1989), Kamikaze Taxi (1995), Bounce Ko Gals (1997), The Emperor in August (2015) and Sekigahara (2017). He was nominated five times for the Japan Academy Film Prize for Best Director, and his 2001 film Inugami was nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Foreign audiences also knew him for his acting roles in The Last Samurai and Fearless.