Yoji Yamada. Photo: CFP

Having won Best Picture at the equivalent of the Japanese Oscars on four occasions, director Yoji Yamada knows all about critical acclaim. And for the last of these awards, 2002's The Twilight Samurai, he was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. 

The Global Times recently got a chance to speak with the famed auteur, whose film Kabei: Our Mother (2008) will be screened on June 19 at the Japanese Film Week during the Shanghai International Film Festival.

Family values

Born in Osaka, the 79-year-old master has directed over 70 films, many focusing on family relations, such as Family, My Sons (1991) and Her Younger Brother (2010). Yamada said that he chooses family themes because of his own childhood experiences. "At university I saw an Italian film about a family escaping from a war," he said. "The parents and three children were helping each other through their hardship; I was very touched and even asked myself whether I would have handled the situation as well."

Yamada spent his own childhood in northeast China where his father worked on the South Manchuria Railway. "As refugees after World War II my family also went through hardship before finally making it back to Japan, so my childhood experience also made a big impact on me."

Art and business

Yamada has strong opinions about conflicts in filmmaking. "The artistic and commercial sides of filmmaking are like conjoined twins," he said. "They both depend on each other, and would die if they were forced to separate. Ideally a high-quality film is made and a large number of viewers see it, such as Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film The Seven Samurai. But today many moviegoers are satisfied with a cheap and easy culture, and as filmmakers we should still seeking to create touching and great films," he said.

Now in his twilight years Yamada is still active and energetic. He is planning a remake of Tokyo Family, Yasujiro Ozu's 1953 masterpiece. Yamada said that he admires Ozu's genius and wants to make this version as a tribute to Ozu. The production has been put on hold, however, due to the recent earthquake.  

And because of his father's career during the family's time in Dalian, Yamada is also making a documentary about steam trains of that time. The project, he says, will bring to the screen the process of repairing a vintage steam train.

"These trains are a rare thing now, so it makes us very nostalgic for the old days. At the time, we thought the more technology and science developed, the better our lives would be. But after the recent disaster in Japan, maybe we need to rethink this point of view," Yamada said.