Masuda is a Japanese director and screenwriter who, during his four decade long career, directed more than eighty feature films, mostly for the Nikkatsu Studio. He studied Russian literature at the Osaka University but after seeing some French films decided to work in the film industry. In 1949, he went to Tokyo to study at the screenplay academy of the Shintōhō film studio. The following year, he got a job at the same studio as a screenwriter and assistant director. After a few years he went to the Nikkatsu studio, and in 1957 directed his feature film debut. With his third film, Sabita naifu (Rusty Knife, 1958), he achieved his first commercial success. The film starred Yujiro Ishihara, at the time Nikkatsu’s biggest star, with whom Masuda made twenty five films. Until 1968, he continued to make many successful action films, such as Hana to ryu (1962) and Akai hankachi (Red Handkerchief, 1964). In 1968, he left Nikkatsu and became an independent director and worked for other studios as well as his own production house. With Kinji Fukasaku he directed the Japanese part of the American-Japanese co-production Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), which turned out to be a great commercial hit in Japan. Then he made several big-budget projects: the sci-fi Nosutoradamusu no daiyogen (Catastrophe 1999: The Prophecies of Nostradamus, 1974) and war drama 203 kochi (The Battle of Port Arthur, 1980), Dai Nippon teikoku (The Imperial Japanese Empire, 1982), and Nihonkai daikaisen: Umi yukaba (Big Battle of the Japan Sea: So Goes the Sea, 1983). He directed animated films as well, and from 1977 to 1983 co-directed five parts of the sci-fi animated series about a space warship, Yamatoimated (Uchû senkan Yamato). He also directed the feature films Haithîn bugi (High Teen Boogie, 1982), Shaso (1989) and Tengoku no Taizai (Heavenly Sin, 1992).