With his win of the Palme d¡¯Or at Cannes for the family drama ¡°Shoplifters,¡± Hirokazu Kore-eda has joined the short list of Japanese directors acknowledged as masters by the outside world. Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa head that list, with Kore-eda¡¯s own favorite, Mikio Naruse, a rank below.
Along with ¡°master¡± status usually comes influence on younger filmmakers. Kurosawa¡¯s impact has arguably been the greatest, with movies such as ¡°Seven Samurai¡± (1954) and ¡°Yojimbo¡± (1961) inspiring not only remakes but entire subgenres: the ¡°men (or more rarely, women) on a mission¡± movie from the former and the ¡°dirty hero¡± action movie from the latter.
Kore-eda has long been a mentor to younger directors, most prominently Miwa Nishikawa (¡°The Long Excuse,¡± 2016) and documentarian Mami Sunada (¡°The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness,¡± 2013).
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