Masato Harada, Director of 'GUNHED,' Passes Away at 76

Masato Harada. Source: Nikkei.

The Japanese media are reporting that Masato Harada, who directed the futuristic Toho actioner GUNHED (1989), passed away on December 8. He was 76.

While tokusatsu fans may know him best as the director of GUNHED, international audiences are most likely to remember him from his turn as an actor, playing Omura, in the Tom Cruise vehicle The Last Samurai (2003).

In 2008, Japanese film scholar Kenju Shimomura wrote an exhaustive article on Toho SFX director Koichi Kawakita's career, which I helped edit. Included below are two excerpts from the article, focusing on the making of GUNHED and director Harada's involvement:

The preproduction of GUNHED started without a story. Sunrise Production only had a vague idea and image. Although they did not have a solid story, Sunrise Production already made huge amounts of image boards for the design of the giant robot which was named “Gun-Head.” [Koichi] Kawakita’s first work was to check whether it was possible to film these designs. From a realistic point of view (including the budget and technical limit), Kawakita concluded that it was only possible to film with only one giant robot in the movie. Based on Kawakita’s decision, director Masato Harada made a story about one giant robot breaking through enemy territory. Harada’s intention was to make a science fiction remake of classic Hollywood war movies such as Zoltan Korda’s Sahara in 1943.

In 1973, Harada moved to Los Angeles after failing his university entrance exams three times. But there he gained some connections in the film industry that would, many years later, have an impact on Toho tokusatsu:

He [Masato Harada] decided that the movie should have an international taste and started to consult his friends in Hollywood. At this stage, his friends in Hollywood pointed out a problem with the title. They told Harada that the word “Gun-Head” sounds like “blockhead” and gives the impression of a comedy movie. This problem was cleared when Harada asked for the opinion of Todd McCarthy, the chief movie critic for Variety. McCarthy proposed that the title should be “GUNHED,” which stands for “GUN unit of Heavy Elimination Device.”  Thus, the GUNHED story was completed and its filming started.

Rest in peace, Director.