Shaun Fernando, for JAPAN Forward

“Asakusa Kid,” a Netflix original biographical drama directed by Gekidan Hitori, spotlights the early career of legendary Japanese performer and television personality Takeshi Kitano.

The Netflix film was broadcast worldwide on December 9, when it topped Japan’s rankings of the Netflix popular movies of the week.

Who Is Takeshi Kitano?

Takeshi Kitano, better known by his professional name Beat Takeshi, is a Japanese comedian, actor, writer, director, and television personality who has become internationally known.

Born into a working-class family in 1947, he dropped out of engineering college to enter show business. Initially, he worked as a lift boy at Asakusa France-za (currently Toyokan), a famous strip and comedy performance theater.

Takeshi became an apprentice to a legendary entertainer, Senzaburo Fukami, who taught Takeshi tap dancing and comedy.

Later, the young entertainer and his friend Kiyoshi Kaneko formed a famous comedy (manzai) duo called The Two Beats. Takeshi also became the owner of a production company, Office Kitano, which among other projects, launched the TOKYO FILMeX international film festival in 2000.

Behind the Movie’s Story

Actor and director Gekidan Hitori, who had been planning on visualizing Takeshi’s story for the previous seven years, wrote the script by himself based on Beat Takeshi’s autobiography, Asakusa Kid (Shinchosha, 1992).

Gekidan Hitori, a comedian himself, focuses more on Takeshi’s journey than his subject’s creative process and comedic approach.

Yo Oizumi, a popular Japanese actor, plays the legendary entertainer Senzaburo Fukami, who was called the “phantom Asakusa entertainer,” and Yuya Yagira plays the young Takeshi.

Yagira was the youngest actor in history to win the Best Actor Award at the Cannes International Film Festival for Hirokazu Koreeda’s Nobody Knows (2004). Yagira deserves massive credit for the physical transformation. It’s an achievement for Yagira to make us believe that he is indeed Takeshi Kitano.

The other supporting cast brings a humane approach to the movie. Mugi Kadowaki, who plays Chiharu, a strip-dancer who dreams of becoming a singer, gives charm to the movie.