Japanese film director Masato Harada has been making and translating movies since the late 1970s, but that doesn’t stop comparisons to newer filmmakers.

“He’s one of the new-wave cinema directors in Japan - compared to (Quentin) Tarantino,” said Michael Lewis, director of the Asian Studies Center and an MSU professor of history. “He has a reputation of being an up-and-coming director and involved in a lot of international projects.”

Tuesday Harada will be coming to MSU, bringing his expertise and one of his most famous and revered films, 1994’s “Kamikaze Taxi.” This will be the film’s first showing in the area and the Asian Studies Center is sponsoring it.

“It’s a really good satire of the serious problems the Japanese people are facing today,” Lewis said. Starring Koji Yakusho, Kazuya Takahashi and Mickey Curtis, the film centers on a young foot soldier who seeks revenge when his prostitute girlfriend dies after a session with a Japanese politician.

He is aided along the way by a taxi driver who has recently returned to Japan after living in South America and is struggling to cope with poverty and the prejudices of the native Japanese.

“It hits you that all three of these groups are outsiders under the lead of someone who’s literally an outsider - the taxi driver,” said Les Adler, outreach coordinator for the Asian studies program. “He creates their outsidedness.”

Born in 1949, Harada has studied photography in Tokyo and written film criticism in the United States. He has worked on Japanese versions of “Star Wars” and “Full Metal Jacket.”

“I thought the direction is loose, relaxed - I’m not always sure where the plot’s taking me,” Adler said. “I felt like I was being asked to develop a photo - get a picture out of a latent image - the pieces of it are scattered around and you have to pull them together.”

“Kamikaze Taxi” will be showing on Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. in B-108 Wells Hall. A panel discussion with Harada will immediately follow.