Tsukamoto began making films at age 14, when his father gave him a
Super 8 camera. He made a number of films, ranging from 10-minute shorts to 2-hour features, until his first year at college when he temporarily lost interest in filmmaking. Tsukamoto then started up a theatre group, which soon included
Kei Fujiwara, Nobu Kanaoka and
Tomorowo Taguchi, all of whom would continue to work with Tsukamoto up through the filming of
Tetsuo: The Iron Man. One of their theatre productions at this time was
The Adventures of Electric Rod Boy. At the end of production, Tsukamoto did not want to waste all the effort they had put into building the set, so he decided to shoot a film version. Tsukamoto's early films,
The Phantom of Regular Size (1986) and
The Adventures Of Electric Rod Boy (1987), were short subject science fiction films shot on colour
8 mm film that led to his black & white 16 mm feature
Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Tsukamoto has stated he has a love-hate relationship with Tokyo, and in the end the characters (Tsukamoto and Taguchi) set out to destroy it. Tetsuo is considered one of the prime examples of
Japanese cyberpunk. Tsukamoto's next film,
Hiruko the Goblin, was a more conventional
horror film, about demons being unleashed from the gates of hell. He then created a follow-up to
Tetsuo,
Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992), which revisited many of the same themes as the first but with a bigger budget and shot in colour on 35 mm film. As a result, the film is often interpreted more as a companion piece than a true sequel. In
Body Hammer, the son of a
salaryman (Taguchi) is kidnapped by a group of thugs, who then force the man's nascent rage to make him mutate into a gigantic human weapon.
Tokyo Fist (1995) again dealt with the idea of rage as a transformative force (similar to
David Cronenberg's
The Brood [1979]). Here, a meek insurance salesman (Tsukamoto) discovers that an old friend of his, now a semi-professional
boxer, may be having an affair with his fiancée. The salesman then enters into a rigorous and self-destructive boxing training program to get even. In
Bullet Ballet (1998), a man (Tsukamoto) discovers that his longtime girlfriend committed suicide with a gun, and becomes obsessed with getting a gun just like that one. His single minded behaviour causes him to run afoul of a gang of thugs, especially when he shows interest in the young girl who is one of their compatriots.
Gemini (1999) was an adaptation of an
Edogawa Rampo story, in which a country doctor with pretensions of superiority has his life torn apart when another man who appears to be his exact duplicate enters his life. Things are complicated further by the twin taking control of his wife, an amnesiac with a criminal background.
A Snake of June (2002) once again found Tsukamoto employing the formula of two men in competition for one woman, as a young lady is blackmailed into perverse sexual behaviour against her husband's will—until her husband finds that he enjoys the blackmail more than the blackmailer does.
Vital
(2004) again features a love triangle, this time consisting of two women and one man. The story concerns a young man whose girlfriend is killed in a car crash whilst being driven by him. He is a medical student and is given her body to dissect in class (whether by coincidence or intentionally is not clear). Tsukamoto also acted in and directed the short film
Haze in 2005. In 2006, Tsukamoto directed the horror thriller
Nightmare Detective (2006). The film centres around a vagrant with the supernatural ability to enter the dreams of others and a police officer who pleads with him to help her solve a series of bizarre murders committed by a serial killer (Tsukamoto) with a similar ability. Tsukamoto acts in nearly all of his films, with the exception of those that he worked on as a "director for hire" (namely
Hiruko the Goblin and
Gemini). Tsukamoto has appeared in many other directors' films as well, such as
Takashi Miike's
Dead or Alive 2: Birds (2000) and
Ichi the Killer (2001), as well as
Teruo Ishii's
Blind Beast vs. Dwarf (2001). He was the lead actor in
Takashi Shimizu's
Marebito
(2004), and appeared more recently in
Welcome to the Quiet Room (2007),
Martin Scorsese's
Silence (2016), and
Hideaki Anno's
Shin Godzilla (2016) and
Shin Kamen Rider (2023). He is also a successful voiceover artist for TV advertising in Japan. He also provided the Japanese voice of Vamp in the 2008
PlayStation 3 game
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Tsukamoto was originally set to play the character in
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (after
Hideo Kojima's first choice,
Kaneto Shiozawa, died before casting began) but was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts, so
Ryōtarō Okiayu was assigned the role instead. Tsukamoto was a member of the jury at the
Venice International Film Festival in
1997 and
2019. == Awards ==