You might assume that the “tough guy” trope is a little passé in 2021 – and certainly when it comes to style. After all, nobody in their right mind is looking to Mr Chuck Norris for wardrobe inspiration right now. But if there’s one figure whose enduring sartorial portrayal of the quintessential tough guy has aged particularly well, it’s Mr Takeshi Kitano’s.

By turns a TV host, comedian, actor, director and writer, Mr Kitano is as known for his bizarre 1980s gameshow Takeshi’s Castle (think Total Wipeout on psychedelics) as he is for being an auteur in the film world. Indeed, Mr Kitano is heralded by some as Japan’s greatest living filmmaker, and is a polymathic talent known for his sardonic wit and flair for creating quintessential Japanese gangster movies. He is less noted, however, for his exceptional sense of style.

To MR PORTER, this seems like a big oversight. And because it’s his birthday today, we thought we’d take a moment to appreciate Mr Kitano’s style. Throughout his career, Mr Kitano – also known by the stage name Beat Takeshi – has created a particular aesthetic that sits somewhere between yakuza warlord and cheery television comedian.

From the loud aloha shirt he wore in his 1999 film Kikujiro, to the mafioso tailoring he’s more often associated with, his clothes – both on and off screen – make for a mood board of incredible tough-guy style. If anyone has a gift for managing to make a white shirt look chic even while it’s splattered with the blood of his on-screen enemies, it’s Mr Kitano.

Born in 1947 in Adachi, Tokyo, Mr Kitano grew up in a working-class environment where the people he and his peers looked up to were either baseball players or yakuza gangsters. “The yakuza were always very good to us kids,” he said in a 2008 interview. “They would give us allowance money, buy us candy, and things like that. At the same time, they played an education role. If they found us having a smoke, or drinking, they would scold us. They would say things like, ‘Always be very kind to your parents and stay in school, otherwise you’ll end up like me,’ which was very weird, right? But it also got through to me.”

Mr Kitano’s films have been outfitted by plenty of Japanese designers over the years (Mr Issey Miyake, for instance, and Ms Rei Kawakubo of Commes des Garçons), but there’s one in particular who he has hit it off with. Mr Yohji Yamamoto, the godfather of avant-garde Japanese fashion design, is a friend and self-confessed fan of Mr Kitano. One of the most notable of their collaborations is Brother, a fish-out-of-water story about an outcast Tokyo yakuza member who finds himself working with a band of downbeat drug dealers in the LA underworld. It’s Mr Kitano’s first (and only) film set outside of Japan, and the boldly colourful, B-boy style of the West Coast gangs creates a brilliant dissonance with the understated and sleek Japanese suits that Mr Kitano and his yakuza brethren wear. The actor’s pitch-black oval sunglasses are the finishing touch, and allow him to appear characteristically impassive as the gang war unfolds around him and the bodies of his comrades pile up.

Then, of course, there’s the iconic, faded tracksuit he donned in Battle Royale. A departure from the louche Yohji Yamamoto suits and dark sunglasses, it cast Mr Kitano in an older, even slightly softer light that was somewhere between off-duty gang lord and suburban PE teacher. This particular mix of ruthless sadist in the movie (throwing a knife into an unruly student’s forehead) and misunderstood softie (comforting a student who’s struggling with her family and eating ice cream on the riverbank together), is testament to Mr Kitano’s knack for creating depth in his characters.

Those who appreciate Beat Takeshi’s work and style and want to know more about his career will be pleased to learn that a Netflix biopic is in the works. Set to detail the early days of Mr Kitano’s career, when he went to Tokyo’s Asakusa district in his early twenties in order to become a comedian, it’s titled Asakusa Kid in reference to his memoir of the same name, and is currently slated for release in winter 2021.