‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ director Toshio Masuda dies at 98; ‘Space Battleship Yamato’ earns 2.1 billion yen in 1977

Box-office titan of his era leaves behind a genre-spanning legacy

Toshio Masuda, a director who helped lead Japan’s film industry through its golden age and worked across action, romance and animation, has died. Japanese media outlets reported on the 25th that Masuda died of old age at a hospital in Tokyo on the 26th of last month. He was 98.

Born in Kobe in October 1927, Masuda studied Russian at Osaka University of Foreign Studies, now Osaka University, before making his directorial debut with the 1958 film ‘Journey of the Heart and Body’. He developed a remarkable rapport with Yujiro Ishihara, one of the era’s biggest stars, and together they produced 25 box-office hits, including ‘The Red Handkerchief’ and ‘Rusty Knife’.

His assured direction earned acclaim beyond Japan, including in Hollywood. In 1970, he was named the Japanese director on ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’, a major Japanese-American production about the attack on Pearl Harbor, earning him international recognition. The job initially belonged to master director Akira Kurosawa, but after Kurosawa left the project midway, Toshio Masuda stepped in and brought it to completion. Richard Fleischer directed the American segments.

The work most deeply etched in the public’s memory was undoubtedly ‘Space Battleship Yamato’. After joining the project as a supervisor for the 1974 television series, Masuda brought the ill-fated show back in spectacular fashion as a 1977 theatrical film after poor ratings led to its early cancellation. The film generated a remarkable 2.1 billion yen at the box office, a figure extraordinary for its time, and established a major milestone in the history of Japanese animation. The series also aired domestically under the title ‘Space Battleship V’, building a devoted following among longtime fans.