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Before the Japanese New Wave, there was Yasuzô Masumura—a father of Japanese cinematic modernism, an early hero to Nagisa Ōshima, and a merciless observer of contemporary society. After learning his craft at Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and acting as assistant to canonical Japanese directors Kenji Mizoguchi and Kon Ichikawa, Masumura embarked on a furiously prolific career at Daiei studios, where his output included barbed, subversive corporate sabotage satires (Giants and Toys, Black Test Car), smoldering smorgasbords of perversity (Blind Beast), and fantasias of female vengeance (Irezumi). A voice of liberation in society he viewed as dangerously repressed, Masumura would say: “There is a secret song that lies unvoiced in the heart of every Japanese that I want to express in my films with a boisterous, even lunatic cry.”