Yoji Yamada had just finished greeting the audience at the premiere of "Kaabee (Kabei: Our Mother)" at Tokyo's Marunouchi Piccadilly Theater when he sat down with The Japan Times.
At 77, he was slower of step and whiter of hair than when this interviewer first met him on the set of a "Tora-san" movie in 1991, but one thing had not changed: his distinctive, pleasantly nasal voice, obscured only slightly by a cold.
Yamada was in a mood to celebrate: "Kaabee," his 80th film as a director (his first was released in 1961), had been selected for the Competition section of the 58th Berlin International Film Festival (Feb. 7-17).