Daisuke Kamijo

Daisuke Kamijo (Japanese: 上條大輔) is a Japanese film director, screenwriter and playwright. He was born in Kofu, in Yamanashi Prefecture, went to school at Yamanashi Prefectural Kofu First High School and studied at Tama Art University.

He did not start behind his own camera. After a spell at a film and television production company he went freelance as an assistant director, and spent most of a decade on other people’s sets, working under Shinsuke Sato, Izuru Narushima, Keishi Otomo and Masaharu Take. The credit list from those years includes The Restaurant of Love Regained (2010), Bunny Drop (2011), the Rurouni Kenshin films from 2012 onward, Library Wars (2013), I Am a Hero and Sadako vs Kayako (2016). He returned to the Rurouni Kenshin series in 2021 in a directing-support role on both The Final and The Beginning.

His own directing began in 2015 with Hee & She, which he also wrote. In 2017 he directed Hidamari ga Kikoeru, the film adaptation of the Boys’ Love manga known in English as I Hear the Sunspot, and wrote for the second and third HiGH&LOW The Movie films the same year. He is signed to Angle Pictures.

Since then the bulk of his work has been short films that he writes, directs and often edits himself, and they travel. Boku Dake wa Shitteiru (2019) took an excellence award at the Kyoto International Film Festival and its lead won Best Actor at Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia. Sono 1/ (2021) won the grand prize at the Shibuya TANPEN Film Festival CLIMAX in Sasebo along with the directing award. Shirohanada (2024) won the grand prize at the Ibusuki Film Festival and the Funakoshi Eiichiro Prize at the Yamagata International Movie Festival. He has kept working on large productions in parallel, in directing-support roles on Galileo: Silent Parade (2023) and 52 Hertz Whales (2024).

He is credited as the director of the Japanese Boys’ Love series The Journey to Killing You.

Two adaptations from manga

Hidamari ga Kikoeru follows a hearing-impaired university student, Kohei Sugihara, played by Hideya Tawada, who has found it hard to connect with other people. An outgoing classmate, Taichi Sagawa, played by Kohryo Onodera, becomes his friend, and the warmth of that friendship slowly helps Kohei out of his isolation and self-doubt. Reiko Takashima plays Kohei’s mother. The manga behind it is by Yuki Fumino.

The Journey to Killing You moves to a very different setting, a yakuza organisation. Kataoka, a lieutenant played by Masanari Wada, does something drastic that brings pressure down on him, and his group sends him away. His trusted subordinate Odajima, played by Hiroto Takahashi, goes with him and looks after his every need, while also carrying a private task to kill him. The source is a manga by Sai Asai.