You don’t want to stumble upon Sukiyaki Western Django unarmed. A substantial amount of background is necessary to fully appreciate Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike’s vision, for which he teams with American master of mayhem Quentin Tarantino in an attempt to redefine the spaghetti Western.

“There weren’t many macaroni westerns in the theaters when I was growing up but they used to broadcast two to three of them every week on television,” said Miike. “I can’t tell you how many times they aired One Silver Dollar. My mother used to tell me to go to bed, but I usually stayed up and watched them with my parents. My father loved macaroni westerns and he used to buy me toy guns and pistols. My grandfather was a hunter and used to shoot birds with rifles. So the macaroni western was certainly very familiar to me. But having worked in the movie industry for a long time, I never thought that I would be making something like this as a Japanese film.”

Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 cult masterpiece Django popularized the subgenre of spaghetti westerns. Takashi Miike means to pay homage to the spaghetti western, or “macaroni western,” as they are known in Japan. Strongly disliked by the Italian censors, the grotesquely violent Django has been made infamous for the graphic imagery of the Mexican leader cutting off the ear of one of Major Jackson’s men and through the highly iconic act of a gunrunner concealing a machine gun in a coffin. You’ll see nods to that in Sukiyaki, as you did in Tarantino’s notoriously violent ‘ear cutting’ scene in Reservoir Dogs (1992) and in Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi (1992), in which weapons were carried in guitar cases.  In Sukiyaki, Takashi Miike incorporates his own auteur techniques while striving for an authentic adaptation of Corbucci’s masterpiece.

Set during the Genpei clan wars of the 12th century, Miike uses an updated version of the original Django score with newly written Japanese lyrics. It was filmed on a specially built outdoor set in Ishikura, Yamagata, deep in the mountains of Tsukiyama in Japan. A surreal set combining both a western theme and “Jidai-geki” (Japanese period dramas) was built for the production.

Since the film was shot entirely in English, the actors went through a month-long intensive language training under Nadia Venesse, the dialogue coach who has worked on many notable films such as Chocolat and North Country, and with Christian Storms, who translated the Japanese script into English. “Their English is not an imitation of native speakers,” says Miike. “Their accent is unique to the Japanese people. It would be interesting if English-language speakers think their Japanese English is cool and start imitating them, then I think we might change something! Japanese actors would be able to expand the scope of their careers. And for Japanese movies, surprising possibilities might result.”

Miike has hight hopes for his film. “If possible, I want to make this into a trilogy with “Sukiyaki Amazons” and “Sukiyaki Emmanuelle.” I think it would be pretty cool. Quentin said he will invest in it if I would cast him as a sex slave who’s beaten up by Chiaki Kuriyama.” (The young Japanese actress in Kill Bill).