Shunya Itō

Who is Shunya Itō?

Shunya Itō is a Japanese film director famed for starting the Sasori series of 1970s exploitation films starring Meiko Kaji. Itō worked for Toei Company for most of his career. He won a Directors Guild of Japan New Directors Citation for his first film, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion, in 1972.

He won Best Picture at the Japanese Academy Awards in 1985 with his film Gray Sunset, a story of a man suffering from Alzheimer's disease. This thus became Japan's entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film instead of Akira Kurosawa's Ran, which caused a slight uproar in Western media as many critics thought Ran had a real chance of winning whereas Gray Sunset was not even shortlisted.

In 1995 he directed Lupin III: Farewell to Nostradamus. In 1998 he directed the World War II drama Pride: The Fateful Moment presenting a humane view of Hideki Tōjō on trial at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.