Born in Japan in 1946, Yasuaki Kurata confessed in a Japanese TV documentary that it was very difficult for a foreigner to make a career in Hong Kong, especially being Japanese. He succeeded: 75 films shot in the former British colony. But he also triumphed in Japan and obtained important roles under the direction of filmmakers such as Shohei Imamura (Eijanaika, 1981) or Paul Schrader (Mishima, 1985). Kurata is a true martial artist: 5th Donen of Karate, 3rd Donen of Judo and 2nd Donen of Aikido. His experience gave him a place in sixties Toei's tokusatsu specialist teams and his charisma attracted the attention of the Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong, who signed him for one of the main roles in The Angry Quest (Chang Cheh, 1971). What would come next is already legendary. His popularity led him to appear in almost twenty titles a year, including kung fu movie classics such as The Prodigal Boxer (1972) or Little Godfather of Hong Kong (1974), and in dozens of ninja movie titles during the eighties, such as Ninja in the Deadly Trap (1982) or Ninja Thunderbolt (1984).

His career changed again when he met the great Sammo Hung, starring in several films with him, which made his popularity grow even more, culminating, alongside Jet Li, with Fist of Legend (Gordon Chan, 1994), one of the best martial arts films of all time (whose restored version in 4K will be shown in this edition of the festival). In recent years we have been able to see him in films such as Shinjuku Incident (2009), with Jackie Chan, Legend of the Fist (2010), with Donnie Yen, or The Last Tycoon (2012), with Chow Yun-Fat, a film screened at the Asian Summer Film Fest. Yasuaki Kurata is still active at 77 years old, still appearing in films, TV series and short films such as the one screened this year at the festival, Yume Monogatari, with which he meets again his beloved ninjas.