Japanese filmmakers will almost always tell you that they make films for the domestic market first and foremost. If foreigners happen to like them too, that's a nice little bonus, like an after-dinner mint.
Yoshihiro Nishimura, a makeup and special effects maestro whose credits include the international cult hits "Suicide Club," "Meatball Machine" and "L Change the World," thumbed his nose at this Japan-first orthodoxy with his first theatrical feature as a director, "Tokyo Gore Police" (2008). Made with a C-list cast, this hyperviolent splatter-fest, set in a dystopian future Tokyo, referenced everyone from Paul Verhoeven ("Robocop") to Takashi Miike ("Dead or Alive" and several dozen more).
Local theatergoers gave it a pass, but abroad "Tokyo Gore Police" found an appreciative fan-boy audience, who lavishly praised it as "crazed" and "depraved," while hailing Nishimura as the latest Japanese bad-boy cult sensation — a Miike for the noughties.