Film director Nagisa Oshima passed away Tuesday. He was 80.
While at London's Heathrow Airport in February 1996, he suffered a stroke. Rehabilitation in the succeeding years brought him sufficiently back to health to make what would become his last film, "Gohatto," in 1999. He also appeared frequently on television variety shows, unashamedly displaying his acerbic take on Japanese culture.
Some criticized him for becoming a popular figure, claiming that this diminished his artistic legacy. But Oshima immensely enjoyed these forays into the world of the commercial hoi polloi. Back in the bubble years of the early 1980s, he marched in step dressed in a primary school uniform in a commercial for "Cockroach S," a product that warded off and killed cockroaches.
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