Born in Aichi Prefecture in 1976.
His graduation project “Donten Seikatsu” (1999) at Osaka University of Arts won a good reputation, and he established his offbeat style with “No One's Ark” (2003) and “Riarizumu no yado” (2004), a “bad guy trilogy” with screenwriter Kosuke Mukai, which led to the smash hit “Linda Linda Linda” (2005). “A Gentle Breeze in the Village” (2007) won the Hochi Film Award for Best Director, the Mainichi Film Awards for Outstanding performance award in Japanese film and other accolades. Since then, he has steadily built up his career with “Mai bakku pêji” (2011), “The Drudgery Train” (2012), “Moratoriamu Tamako” (2013), “Misono Universe” (2015), and “Over the Fence” (2016), and has shifted to a style that combines aesthetics with entertainment value. His “Hard-Core” (18) won the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's Art Encouragement Prize for New Talent.
He has also worked on dramas and distributed works such as the drama series “Kotaki Kyodai to Shikuhakku” (20), written by Akiko Nogi, and the Amazon Studio's Modern Love Tokyo short “Saiaku no dēto ga saikō ni natta wake” (22), and has also directed “One Second Ahead of Him” (23), written by Kankuro Kudo, and the hit “Let's Go Karaoke! (24), and the rotoscoped animation “Ghost Cat Anzu” (co-directed with Haruko Kuno), which is also a co-production with France.
