| Sabu | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 18, 1964 Wakayama, Wakayama, Japan |
| Occupation | Film director and actor. |
Sabu (サブ Sabu, born November 18, 1964) is the pseudonym of Japanese actor and director Hiroyuki Tanaka (田中博行[1] Tanaka Hiroyuki).
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Born in Wakayama Prefecture, Sabu studied at an Osaka fashion school before deciding to go to Tokyo to become a professional musician.[2] It was suggested he try acting and in 1986 he made his film debut in Sorobanzuku. He earned his first starring role in the 1991 World Apartment Horror, a live-action film directed by Katsuhiro Ōtomo of Akira fame. Working from a script he wrote himself, he made his directorial debut with the 1996 Dangan Runner, a film that set his early style of "quirky action-comedies propelled by characters who hurtle headlong though squirming narratives steered more by the forces of incidence and coincidence than the actions of the protagonists themselves."[3] Shin'ichi Tsutsumi played the lead in Sabu's first five films. Blessing Bell, starring Susumu Terajima (who has played minor roles in nearly all of Sabu's films), was a turn away from his kinetic, parodic, and black comedy narratives, and earned the NETPAC Award at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival.[4] Later films featured the J-pop band V6. In 2009, he directed The Crab Cannery Ship, a modern adaptation of a classic of Japanese proletarian literature written by Takiji Kobayashi.
He has continued to work as an actor, such as in Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer (2001).