While still in secondary school, Hara Masato (1950) won several prizes with his 16mm film A Sad Yet Funny Ballad. In 1970, he wrote the script for Oshima Nagasi's film The Man Who Left His Will on Film. In 1973, he completed The First Emperor, a film on which he worked for three years. The film was selected by the magazine Kinema Jumpo as one of the most important films