Shinya Tsukamoto is a filmmaker and actor. Perhaps best known for his influential cyberpunk explosion Tetsuo: The Iron Man, his fluid work explores the limits of the human body. While this interview focuses on the Tetsuo trilogy, Shinya Tsukamoto has remained boundary pushing throughout his career as his films utilize a distinctive style of editing to investigate intense emotions. An influence on both David Lynch and the Wachowski Sisters, he followed Tetsuo with the horror film Hiruko The Goblin and the obsessive Bullet Ballet, continuing to meditate on masculinity in films such as Tokyo Fist. As an actor, he has appeared in his own work alongside the films of directors such as Takashi Miike, Takashi Shimizu and Martin Scorsese. His English language debut, Mr Nelson, Did You Kill People? will premiere in the main competition at the 83rd Venice Film Festival.
Molly Miles: My first question is about where the concept of Tetsuo first arose, I know it was a short film before it was a feature, and I was wondering if you could talk about the process of going from short to feature?
Shinya Tsukamoto: When I was a teenager I made human drama films, where one scene was made in one shot. Then, I got a job at a TV advertising agency and from there I learnt editing techniques. I started thinking, next time I make a film I want to make a film that feels like a roller coaster, I want to put an audience in a roller coaster experience, like a thrilling film like a comic book. I made the short film Phantom Of Regular Size and then I made The Adventures Of Denchu-Kozo on 8mm. I wanted to turn Phantom Of Regular Size into a proper feature, a theatrically released film, and then that’s how I shot the film on 16mm.
MM: From there, did you always envision Tetsuo becoming a trilogy?
ST: So back then when I was working on Tetsuo I didn’t think about the second or third one at all. There was no trilogy idea from the beginning. As a child I dreamed of becoming a filmmaker who would make a lot of theatrical feature films but at the same time I was aware that achieving that dream could be really challenging. So, when I was working on Tetsuo I didn’t really think about that kind of ambition. I was just passionate about Tetsuo and I poured everything, all the passion I had, into Tetsuo.
MM: Thinking a little bit about the second Tetsuo film, Tetsuo II: Body Hammer, I find it to be different from the first in a lot of really interesting ways. I wondered why you were drawn to these images of exercise as extreme body transformation alongside images of metal?
ST: When I made the first Tetsuo the concept was ‘cult entertainment sci-fi horror’, but when I made the second I had a different concept which was ‘urban sci-fi action’ set in Tokyo. I still liked the design of human transformation into metal. The broad picture I wanted to depict in Tetsuo II was urban hard metal versus fragile humans who become as strong as the urban, becoming a hard metal lump to the extent the human destroys the city. That ties into the reason why I depicted human physical strength and human physicality.
MM: As everybody does, I wanted to ask about the music in Tetsuo. It was your first collaboration with the late Chu Ishikawa, and I was hoping you could talk a little about the score and its importance to the film?
ST: The concept of Tetsuo is really simple, it’s about a man who turns into iron. In terms of aesthetics, it’s black, white and silver so I wanted to make music as simple as that. Basically, I wanted to make an iron sound. Back then I didn’t know that there was a machine called a sampling machine and you can make music by inputting iron sounds. I looked for a musician who made that kind of music, and I was introduced to Chu Ishikawa who made industrial music. That’s how we collaborated on it. I wanted to make the film into a big lump of iron, and the music reflects this idea.
MM: I think the soundtrack is amazing, it sounds like a big metal hurricane.
MM: I know you have worked in theatre, and I wondered if any of your theatre practice bleeds through into Tetsuo?
ST: I see film and theatre separately, they are quite different, but when it comes to Phantom Of Regular Size, The Adventures Of Denchu-Kozo and Tetsuo I made these three films with people I knew through my theatre activities. I did kaiju theatre Sea Monster, which was a theatre group. We put up a tent that looked like a metal fish and did plays with cyberpunk themes, what was to be called cyberpunk later on. In that sense there is a link, but basically I see that films are films and plays are plays.
MM: Finally, when I first saw Tetsuo it had a really big impact on me, and I’m really looking forward to putting it on. Why do you think Tetsuo still resonates with audiences today?
ST: When the film won the Grand Prix at the Rome International Fantastic Film Festival (1998) I was probably the person who was the most surprised because that was a film where I let my frustration explode. I didn’t know who would like it, but I was thinking, since I knew not everyone would like it, it was fine because if a few people like it fanatically, that would be really nice. I think the reason why it still resonates today is because I just followed my honest feelings when I made the film, and it was really unique. I wasn’t bound by any preconceived ideas of what a film is supposed to be like, I just followed my instincts.
MM: Thank you for your time, this has been really interesting and I’m sure people will be excited to read the interview. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
ST: For Tetsuo one and two, the loudness of the sound is really important. I want the screenings to be like a gig venue, so please play them as loudly as possible.
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Molly Miles is an independent film curator and popcorn salesman.
Japanese translation by Yuriko Hamaguchi.
This interview originally appeared in the zine ‘Tetsuo And Beyond’ which accompanied a program of the same name running at the Prince Charles Cinema from October to November 2025.