Yoichi Sai
Birth : 1949-07-06, Nagano, Japan
Death : 2022-11-27
History
Yoichi Sai (born 6 July 1949 in Nagano Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese film director. His mother is Japanese, His father is zainichi Korean.
His 2004 film Chi to hone won four Japanese Academy Awards, including two for Sai himself, for Best Director and Best Screenplay. He had previously received two nominations in the same categories for Tsuki wa dotchi ni dete iru. In 1999 he shot Buta no mukui (The Pig's Retribution), a film set in the lavish natural scenery of Okinawa, inspired by the 1996 Akutagawa Prize-winning eponymous novel by Eiki Matayoshi. The film won the Don Quixote prize at Locarno International Film Festival in 1999.
He won the award for Best Screenplay at the 11th Yokohama Film Festival for A Sign Days.
As an actor, he appeared in Nagisa Oshima's 1999 film Taboo. He is the current president of the Directors Guild of Japan.
Screenplay
A rebellious ninja in 17th century Japan takes refuge with a fisherman and his family.
Director
A rebellious ninja in 17th century Japan takes refuge with a fisherman and his family.
Writer
Tae-soo tries to steal from a gang. The gang catches Tae-Soo's brother, Tae-Jin, instead. The incident causes the brothers to separate. Tae-Soo becomes a mob fixer and an assassin. Tae-Jin becomes a police detective. When a call brings the brothers together, they get ready for brotherly bonding, but Tae-Jin gets killed. Tae-Soo decides to get revenge on his brother's killer.
Director
Tae-soo tries to steal from a gang. The gang catches Tae-Soo's brother, Tae-Jin, instead. The incident causes the brothers to separate. Tae-Soo becomes a mob fixer and an assassin. Tae-Jin becomes a police detective. When a call brings the brothers together, they get ready for brotherly bonding, but Tae-Jin gets killed. Tae-Soo decides to get revenge on his brother's killer.
Two kids, fourteen-year-old Eriko and her thirteen-year-old brother Daigo, suddenly find themselves trapped in a parallel universe. Most things are the same as in their own world, but their parents are missing from home and are only contactable when using one particular phonecard.
Director
In 1923, teenager Kim Shun-Pei moves from Cheju Island, in South Korea, to Osaka, in Japan. Along the years, he becomes a cruel, greedy and violent man and builds a factory of kamaboko, processed seafood products, in his poor Korean-Japanese community exploiting his employees.
Director
A Labrador retriever named Quill begins specialized training as a guide dog from an early age, then the canine is paired with a blind man who is initially reluctant to rely on his new partner.
Interviewee
Documentary about the making of Nagisa Oshima's 1976 film.
Writer
A man serving a sentence in a minimum-security prison. Life in the jail is rigid and organized, eventually leading all of the cell-mates to abandon their individuality.
Director
A man serving a sentence in a minimum-security prison. Life in the jail is rigid and organized, eventually leading all of the cell-mates to abandon their individuality.
Isami Kondo
Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering around a handsome young samurai named Sozaburo Kano. The school's stern master can choose to intervene, or to let Kano decide his own path.
Screenplay
A virginal boy travels with three hookers to a small island to collect his estranged father's washed up and sun-bleached bones.
Director
A virginal boy travels with three hookers to a small island to collect his estranged father's washed up and sun-bleached bones.
Writer
Ethnically Korean Japanese filmmaker Yoichi Sai directs this madcap crime comedy. Nakayama (Goro Kishitani) is a suave police detective who doesn't play by the rules. He busts a drug ring, but not before sampling a few of the wares, and he closes down an underaged prostitution ring after enjoying the company of a school girl hooker. One of duties is to shake down sniveling Korean gangster Hideyoshi (Ren Osugi) for information. In spite of their positions on opposite sides of the law, the two discover that they share a fair amount in common. A disregard for the law and the love of a comely prostitute from China named Momo-chan (Makoto Togashi). Though Hideyoshi is running an illegal alien smuggling ring with her and has lusted for her from a far for quite a while, Nakayama manages to bed her first. When she does finally appear in Hideyoshi's bed, she's unfortunately a corpse.
Director
Ethnically Korean Japanese filmmaker Yoichi Sai directs this madcap crime comedy. Nakayama (Goro Kishitani) is a suave police detective who doesn't play by the rules. He busts a drug ring, but not before sampling a few of the wares, and he closes down an underaged prostitution ring after enjoying the company of a school girl hooker. One of duties is to shake down sniveling Korean gangster Hideyoshi (Ren Osugi) for information. In spite of their positions on opposite sides of the law, the two discover that they share a fair amount in common. A disregard for the law and the love of a comely prostitute from China named Momo-chan (Makoto Togashi). Though Hideyoshi is running an illegal alien smuggling ring with her and has lusted for her from a far for quite a while, Nakayama manages to bed her first. When she does finally appear in Hideyoshi's bed, she's unfortunately a corpse.
Director
Assistant police inspector Aida is assigned to investigate the murder of a former gang member. When a justice ministry official is killed days later in a similar manner, he begins to suspect that something bigger is going on...
Screenplay
Assistant police inspector Aida is assigned to investigate the murder of a former gang member. When a justice ministry official is killed days later in a similar manner, he begins to suspect that something bigger is going on...
Chief of Police
Broke, his vintage Nash convertible repossessed, private eye Mike Hama is reduced to combing the mean streets of the Yokohama waterfront on a borrowed bicycle. But when Lily, a beautiful stripper from out of Hama's past, returns to town, the fuse is lit on a criminal powder keg set to blow the lid off the Yokohama underworld.
Screenplay
The members of the Ameya family are all scammers. After their election scheme goes bust in their hometown, they move from Shikoku to Tokyo and resume their fraudulent activities. Everything carries on smoothly until the eldest and the fourth sons' modus operandi go awry, the mother's lover runs off with another woman, and disasters strike one after another. This film is a collaboration between Yoichi Sai and Goro Kishitani following "All Under the Moon." The family business of the Ameya family is defrauding people. The matriarch, who keeps getting married and divorced, has five children with different fathers. The Ameya family chases after fortune and leaves a trail of trouble on their path.
Director
The members of the Ameya family are all scammers. After their election scheme goes bust in their hometown, they move from Shikoku to Tokyo and resume their fraudulent activities. Everything carries on smoothly until the eldest and the fourth sons' modus operandi go awry, the mother's lover runs off with another woman, and disasters strike one after another. This film is a collaboration between Yoichi Sai and Goro Kishitani following "All Under the Moon." The family business of the Ameya family is defrauding people. The matriarch, who keeps getting married and divorced, has five children with different fathers. The Ameya family chases after fortune and leaves a trail of trouble on their path.
Bearded man
Omnibus film, set in a fictional town at 45゜N latitude: Wonder Rubbish; Pao-san to no fukushu; Jonetsu no koya; Kaze wa, dotchi ni fuite iru
Section Chief
A Korean taxi-driver interacts both humorously and tragically with his customers and employers in '90s Tokyo.
Director
A Korean taxi-driver interacts both humorously and tragically with his customers and employers in '90s Tokyo.
Writer
A Korean taxi-driver interacts both humorously and tragically with his customers and employers in '90s Tokyo.
Chief
A series of short segments focusing on the relationship of a Zanichi Korean taxi driver and Filipina woman in Japan.
Screenplay
A series of short segments focusing on the relationship of a Zanichi Korean taxi driver and Filipina woman in Japan.
Director
A series of short segments focusing on the relationship of a Zanichi Korean taxi driver and Filipina woman in Japan.
Director
The ambition of a man and a woman who try to steal 20 million dollars in an American military vault
Director
During the Vietnam War era, the influx of American soldiers to Okinawa boosted the local economy and introduced many bars and nightclubs. With exhausting displays of energy, Sai presents a whirlwind romance between a local rocker and the daughter of a mixed American-Okinawan marriage.
Screenplay
In the year 199X, on the dark, shady streets of New Kabuki Town, the free-for-all between gangs of young delinquents and a corrupt police force is further complicated by the appearance of a mysterious girl named Asuka.
Director
In the year 199X, on the dark, shady streets of New Kabuki Town, the free-for-all between gangs of young delinquents and a corrupt police force is further complicated by the appearance of a mysterious girl named Asuka.
Director
A woman named Fujiki Asuka arrives as an acquaintance of a sister in law for a day under the bar master Tamura who had guided Yakuza's escaping as a shoji. Tamura who lives on the second floor of the store for the time being the son who wants to work here. A few days later, Tamura finds a handgun from Yuko's baggage and holds a suspicion ....
Director
A man returns to his seaside roots to confront a yakuza boss. Along the way, he charms young men, softens a hard woman and busts a few heads.
Director
While trying to search for her missing father, Atsuko Moriya (Noriko Watanabe) meets a group of outcasts that help her. Having only an encrypted disk in her possession and while being chased by unknown people, Atsuko tries to solve the mystery of her family origins...
Director
Based on crime fiction novel written by Seicho Matsumoto.
Director
Three people whose lives have taken a turn for the worse retreat into a world of erotic dreams made flesh in this drama from director Sai Yoichi. An executive with a large industrial corporation finds his job and his future is on the line when his firm is beset by labor troubles at the same time severe financial mismanagement has been discovered. As the executive looks for a way out of his situation, he becomes involved in a ménage à trois relationship with two fellow employees, a woman and another man. As real life becomes all the more unpleasant, the businessman and his lovers become deeply attached to one another as he explores sides of his sexual nature he's never been able to investigate in the past.
Director
A lower-middle-class policeman lives decadently, chasing cheap beer and girls at the same time he's running from loan sharks and his personal expectations.
Writer
A lower-middle-class policeman lives decadently, chasing cheap beer and girls at the same time he's running from loan sharks and his personal expectations.
Assistant Director
The second movie of Tôru Murakawa's "Game" trilogy. After making a sensational hit, a hitman has gone into hiding for five years. When he comes back he bumps into two women that he has spared five years ago. Two rival yakuza bosses hire Narumi to kill the other. Will Narumi's sense of chivalry entrap him again?
Assistant Director
The first movie of Tôru Murakawa’s “Game” trilogy, in which an assassin hired to recover a kidnap victim becomes embroiled in a vicious power struggle between two large corporations over a sizable government defence contract.
Assistant Director
A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.
