Is super producer Haruki Kadokawa nuts? You be the judge...

There aren’t many movie producers like Haruki Kadokawa anymore. After his father Genyoshi Kadokawa passed away in 1975 he took over the family business, Kadokawa Shoten, one of Japan’s largest publishing houses and soon made the decision that the real money was in movie versions of the company’s popular novels. Soon the book publisher transformed himself into a larger than life movie mogul churning out a string of high profile films like Kon Ichikawa’s “The Inugamis”, Kinji Fukasaku’s “The Fall Guy” and Junya Sato’s WW2 epic “Yamato”. He even tried his hand at directing, bringing us “Heaven and Earth” a historical epic set in feudal Japan filmed in Alberta using over 3,000 extras and 800 horses. At the time of its release in 1990 it was the most expensive Japanese film in history, its budget coming in at a whopping ¥5 billion; but the excesses, eccentricities and megalomania of the legendary Hollywood movie moguls pales in comparison to what Kadokawa has to say in his latest interview to promote his latest production, Takashi Miike’s “God’s Puzzle”.

The lenghty interview taken from Cyzo Magazine and posted in two parts by Don Brown at Ryuganji.net goes into how Kadokawa has taken up kendo and believes he will achieve perfect enlightenment in three years. “I’m at a stage where I’m shedding my human trappings and approaching the province of the immortals,” he tells the magazine, “In the mythical era, humans lived for two to three hundred years, so why have modern people become so short-lived? Some people call it the seal of ‘Brahma’, and the thinking goes that this Brahma created the universe and placed filters on the minds of human beings. In my case, those barriers are about to be broken. I think I’ll live to be 200.” He goes on to explain how his rigourous kendo training has manifested various deities who personally blessed him.

Oooookay then...

Oh, and did I mention that he did a four year prison term back in the late 90’s for embezzlement and smuggling cocaine into Japan? Yeah, well that last part may explain some things.