Mr. Nagisa Oshima, the filmmaker who, perhaps more than any other, challenged the conventional morality and sober certainties of Japan, died of pneumonia Tuesday at the age of 80. His films earned respect around the world and broke restraints on what could be shown and told within cinematic art. Japan could use more iconoclasts like him.
Mr. Oshima's films were provocative and bold, two attitudes that are rare in Japanese society. His films pushed the boundaries of acceptability and criticized the country's conformist tendencies with energy, passion and dark humor. They showed the other side of Japan, where outcasts and misfits were human beings with universal desires, plus the necessary truths that the rest of society still needed to learn.
In interviews, he said he wanted Japanese to look in the mirror, but he never said they would like what they saw. From his first film in 1959, "A Town of Love and Hope," to his last feature film in 1999, "Taboo," Mr. Oshima presented anti-heroes who challenged the status quo and wanted freedom from the forces of materialism, industrialization and escapist consumerism.