Nagisa Oshima
Nagisa Oshima (大島渚, born March 31, 1932 in Kyoto, Japan) is a famous Japanese director. After graduating from Kyoto University he was hired by Shochiku Ltd. and quickly progressed to directing his own movies, making his debut feature A Street of Love and Hope (愛と希望の街; Ai to kibo no machi) in 1959.Oshima is most famed for his provocative 1976 film Ai no corrida (愛のコリーダ; Realm of the Senses), a film based on a true story of fatal sexual obsession in 1930s Japan. Oshima, a prolific critic of censorship and his contemporary Akira Kurosawa's humanism, was determined that the film should feature hardcore pornography and thus the film's undeveloped film cans had to be transported to France to be developed and an uncensored version of the movie is still unavailable in Japan.
In his 1978 companion film to Ai no corrida, Ai no borei (愛の亡霊; Empire of Passion), Oshima took a more restrained approach to depicting the sexual passions of the two lovers driven to murder, and the film won the 1978 Cannes Film Festival award for best director.
In 1996 Oshima suffered a stroke, but he returned to directing in 1999 with the period piece Taboo (御法度; Gohatto).