Shunya Itō

Shunya Itō (伊藤 俊也, Itō Shun'ya, born February 17, 1937) is a Japanese film director known for starting the Sasori / Female Prisoner Scorpion series of 1970s exploitation films starring Meiko Kaji. Itō worked for Toei Company for most of his career. In 1972, he won a Directors Guild of Japan New Directors Citation for his first film, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion.^[1]

He won Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards in 1985 with his film Gray Sunset,^[2] a story of a man suffering from Alzheimer's disease. This thus became Japan's entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film instead of Akira Kurosawa's Ran, which caused a slight uproar in Western media as many critics thought Ran had a real chance of winning whereas Gray Sunset was not even shortlisted. (Galbraith)

In 1995, he directed Lupin III: Farewell to Nostradamus. In 1998, he directed the World War II drama Pride: The Fateful Moment, presenting a sympathetic view of Hideki Tōjō on trial at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, attracting accusations of revisionism.