Yoju Matsubayashi

Born 1979 in Fukuoka, Japan. After a period of traveling solo across Asia, he enrolled in the Japan Academy of Moving Images. In 2004, he completed his graduation film Dear Respectful Humans (Haikei ningen sama), a documentary about a homeless man, and started his career as assistant director at a TV production company.

In November 2006, he started a documentary project on the former Japanese soldiers in Thai-Burmese border area. It was completed in 2009 as the film Flowers and Troops (Hana to heitai) and released theatrically in Tokyo and across Japan. The film was acclaimed and received the "Yamaji Fumiko Film Prize" and "Tahara Soichiro Non-fiction Prize".

His first feature documentary after the 311 tsunami and nuclear disaster Fukushima – Memories of the Lost Landscape (Soma Kanka, 2011) was invited to Yamagata, Hong Kong, Edinburgh, and other film festivals. It won the anthropology and sustainable development prize at Festival Jean Rouch. It was theatrically released in May 2012 across Japan.

Tofoo Films