Yoichi Higashi has made everything from commercial hits to festival favorites in his five-plus decades as a director, while taking up politically sensitive subjects and unpopular issues. His 1992 smash "The Bridge with No River" ("Hashi no Nai Kawa") depicted the raw prejudice endured by burakumin outcasts in early 20th-century rural Japan. Also, in 2009 he joined the "barrier free" movement, dubbing and subtitling his films for the hearing-impaired, an audience the industry at the time virtually ignored.