He'll be remembered for his movie Caterpillar, a look at nationalism through the eyes of a Japanese soldier with no arms and no legs.
Film director Koji Wakamatsu was reported to have died on Wednesday after finally succumbing to injuries suffered in a traffic accident.
Wakamatsu was apparently hit by a taxi whilst crossing the road in Tokyo earlier this month.
Caterpillar competed for the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2010, winning the best actress award.
Speaking at the festival, Wakamatsu said Caterpillar was supposed to show war for what it really was.
SOUNDBITE: Caterpillar Director, Koji Wakamatsu, saying (Japanese):
"All wars are unjust, there are no just wars or good wars. In Japan, there are a few members of parliament who say Japan needs the atomic bomb. I want to turn against such idiocy. The atomic bomb killed more than 37,000 people in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Be it the past or the present: We have to fight for this never to be forgotten. Especially the Japanese tend to forget about the past, they are in the process of re-arming. But something like this must never happen again."
Wakamatsu was also considered to have been one of the more influential directors in the Japanese softcore pornography genre.
In total the Internet Movie Database credits him with 105 titles as a director.
Koji Wakamatsu, dead at 76.
