A Japanese film director of Korean descent renowned for his work capturing stories of Koreans residing in Japan has died.

According to Japanese media outlets, including Kyodo News, Yoichi Sai, whose Korean name is Choi Yang-il, succumbed to bladder cancer at his Tokyo residence Sunday at the age of 73.

Born in Nagano Prefecture to a Korean father and a Japanese mother, Choi worked with director Nagisa Oshima in the 1978 film, "In the Realm of the Senses."

He successfully debuted as director with "Mosquito on the Tenth Floor" in 1983, which was screened at the Venice International Film Festival the following year.

Choi is most acclaimed for his 1993 film "All Under the Moon," an adapted screenplay of the novel "Taxi Crazy Rhapsody" by a Japanese writer of Korean descent, Yang Sok-il, about an ethnic Korean taxi driver in Tokyo who falls in love with a Filipina working as a bar hostess.

In 2004, Choi directed "Blood and Bones," also based on a book by Yang about a Korean man who moved to Japan's Osaka in the 1920s during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.