By Mark Schilling Japan Correspondent Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi died Friday in Tokyo of lung cancer. He was 82.
Born in Onomichi, a port on Japan’s Inland Sea, in 1938, Obayashi began making films as a child, using a projector and film owned by his physician father.
A pioneering experimental filmmaker in the 1960s, Obayashi went on direct nearly 3,000 TV commercials in a long career, many with international talent including Charles Bronson and Catherine Deneuve.
In 1977 he made his feature debut with “House,” a free-spirited, wildly imaginative horror-fantasy that was a hit on its release in Japan and later became a cult favorite abroad.
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