Actor and director Shinya Tsukamoto often takes violence to strange extremes. In his first film, the 1989 horror "Tetsuo" ("Tetsuo: The Iron Man"), a businessman accidentally kills a crazed metal fetishist (played by Tsukamoto himself) with his car and, becoming "infected" by his victim, horrifically transforms into an ambulant pile of death-dealing scrap metal. The follow-ups "Tetsuo II: Body Hammer" (1992) and "Tetsuo: The Bullet Man" (2010) were made in a similarly hyperviolent style.
So his new film "Nobi" ("Fires on the Plain"), based on Shohei Ooka's semi-autobiographical novel about Japanese soldiers in the Philippines during the closing days of World War II, may seem like an uncharacteristic departure from much of his work to date — until you see Tsukamoto speak in person.
Following a screening of "Fires on the Plain" at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan on July 14, 55-year-old Tsukamoto was the soul of politeness as he answered the audience's occasionally awkward questions, and passionate when the subject of Japan's current drift toward nationalism and militarism was raised.