When you are completely satisfied with what you have made, you're pretty much done as a director. So when that happens, that'll sort of be the end.

If you're trying to be realistic and bring real life to the screen, you are going to have different elements. That's what I'm trying to do. As I make the movie, different elements come in naturally.

I don't think about the audience, I don't think about what makes them happy, because there's no way for me to know. To try to think of what makes for entertainment is a very Japanese thing. The people who think like this are old-fashioned. They think of the audience as a mass, but in fact every person in the audience is different. So entertainment for everyone doesn't exist

I believe that every director's films reflect their lifestyle.

I've been making movies for a long time. The Japanese way of making movies has become second nature to me. To get away from that, I really try to surround myself with younger staff and approach making movies not like a veteran of the industry but always as a beginner and a rookie.

It's not really important to make skillful movies. I think expressing yourself really well, skill-wise, is not as important. I want it to be sort of raw and rough but new and fun to watch.

On the times when I used to make movies that were with a lower budget, nobody was expecting it to be a hit, and nobody was paying attention to what I was doing, and it was a free type of creative process. So, one way to reset myself is to go back to that kind of moviemaking.