|
Kinzō Shin
was a Japanese stage and film actor. Between the early 1930s and late 1980s, he appeared in over 80 films by directors such as Masaki Kobayashi, Kon Ichikawa, Kaneto Shindō, Tadashi Imai and Yasuzō Masumura. Biography Kinzō Shin was born in Tokyo. After graduating from Tokyo Prefectural First Commercial School (now Tokyo Metropolitan Daiichi Commercial High School), he first joined the Toho Sayoku Gekijo before becoming a co-founder of the Shinkyo Gekidan, both left-wing theatre groups. Following the forced dissolution of the Shinkyo Gekidan by the authorities, he formed the Mizuho Gekidan company together with Jūkichi Uno and others. After World War II, he was active in the Mingei Theatre Company and the Haiyuza Theatre Company. After sporadic film appearances in the 1930s, he frequently acted in films since the late 1940s and on television starting in the mid-1950s. Filmography (selected) * 1950: ''Listen to the Voices of the Sea'', dir. Hideo Sekigawa * 1953: ''Hiro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Listen To The Voices Of The Sea
''Listen to the Voices of the Sea'' () is a 1950 Japanese anti-war film directed by Hideo Sekigawa. It is based on the 1949 best-selling book ''Listen to the Voices from the Sea'' (), a collection of letters by Japanese student soldiers killed in World War II. The first post-war Japanese film to feature battle scenes, it was also a big success with domestic cinema audiences. Plot Burma during the last weeks of World War II: The remnants of a Japanese infantry unit are joined by Private Oki, whose own unit has been destroyed. Oki turns out to be the former University professor of some of the soldiers, many of which are drafted students. He is bullied by the sadistic adjutant of the commanding Lieutenant Kishino, himself an uneducated man who dislikes students and academics. Close to the edge of starvation, a group of soldiers, led by squad leader Aoji, steal and slaughter the Lieutenant's horse. Upon discovery, Aoji is beaten, while the adjutant uses the incident as a pretence to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolf (1955 Film)
is a 1955 Japanese crime drama film written and directed by Kaneto Shindō. Plot After an opening sequence showing a group of people hijacking a post office truck, a montage of press coverage and police investigations, and the arrest of Akiko, one of the gang members, the film switches to a flashback narration covering the preceding events: A group of 5 insurance salesmen and -women are facing dismissal for not accomplishing the company's sales plan, with all of them already living under precarious social conditions. War widows Akika and Fujibayashi have to raise their children on their own, Yoshikawa and Mikawa, one a hapless screenwriter, one a former car factory worker who lost his job after an accident, can hardly feed their families, and Harashima, a bank clerk fired for his union activities, lives in an unhappy marriage with a wife who refuses to divorce him without severance. Desperate, they decide to rob a post office money transport on its daily route. The coup was s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Castle Of Sand
is a 1974 Japanese police procedural film directed by Yoshitarō Nomura, based on the novel '' Suna no Utsuwa'' by Seicho Matsumoto. Plot The film tells the tale of two detectives, Imanishi (Tetsuro Tamba) and Yoshimura (Kensaku Morita), tasked with tracking down the murderer of an old man, found bludgeoned to death in a rail yard. When the identity of the old man can't be determined, the investigation focuses on the only other clue: a scrap of conversation overheard at a bar between the old man and a younger one. A witness recalls the cryptic phrases "Kameda did this" and "Kameda doesn't change." This sets off a wide-ranging investigation that covers vast swaths of geography, changing social mores, and time. The investigation ends with an emotional and heartbreaking conclusion, all the more shattering because the reason for the crime no longer exists in the world. Cast * Tetsuro Tamba – Detective Eitaro Imanishi * Go Kato – Eiryo Waga/Hideo Motoura * Kensaku Morita – D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hiroshi Teshigahara
was a Japanese avant-garde filmmaker and artist from the Japanese New Wave era. He is best known for the 1964 film ''Woman in the Dunes''. He is also known for directing other titles such as '' The Face of Another'' (1966), ''Natsu no Heitai'' (''Summer Soldiers'', 1972), and '' Pitfall'' (1962), which was Teshigahara's directorial debut. He has been called "one of the most acclaimed Japanese directors of all time". Teshigahara is the first person of Asian descent to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, accomplishing this in 1964 for his work on ''Woman in the Dunes''. Apart from being a filmmaker, Teshigahara also practiced other arts, such as calligraphy, pottery, painting, opera and ikebana. Biography Teshigahara was born in Tokyo, the son of Sōfu Teshigahara, founder and grand master of the Sōgetsu-ryū school of ''ikebana''. He graduated in 1950 from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and began working in documentary film. He dire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Man Without A Map
is a 1968 Japanese film directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara and starring Shintaro Katsu. The screenplay was adapted by Kōbō Abe from his novel '' The Ruined Map''. This was the fifth and final film collaboration between Teshigahara and Abe.Berra, John (2012). Directory of World Cinema: Japan 2'. Intellect Books. p. 276. Cast * Shintaro Katsu – detective * Etsuko Ichihara – wife * Osamu Okawa – wife's brother * Kiyoshi Atsumi – Tashiro * Tamao Nakamura (born July 12, 1939 in Kyoto, Japan) is a Japanese actress. Her father is kabuki is a classical form of Theatre of Japan, Japanese theatre, mixing dramatic performance with Japanese traditional dance, traditional dance. Kabuki theatre is k ... – detective's wife * Kinzō Shin – coffee shop owner References External links * 1968 films 1960s Japanese films Films directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara 1960s Japanese-language films Toho films {{1960s-Japan-film-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Masahiro Shinoda
was a Japanese film director, whose career spanned over four decades and covered a wide range of genres and styles. He was one of the central figures of the Japanese New Wave during the 1960s and 1970s. He directed films for Shochiku Studio from 1960 to 1965, before turning to Independent film, independent cinema from 1966 onward. His film style was characterized by Social exclusion, socially marginalized characters, many of whom turn to crime or suicide, and meticulous attention to pictorial beauty. He drew on traditional Japanese fiction and theater and some of his films bear the influence of Kenji Mizoguchi, whom he admired. Early life Shinoda was born on March 9, 1931, in Gifu Prefecture and attended Waseda University, where he studied theater and also participated in the Hakone Ekiden long-distance race. Career Shinoda joined the Shōchiku Studio in 1953 as an assistant director, where he worked on films by such directors as Yasujirō Ozu. He debuted as a director in 1960 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Captive's Island
, also known as ''Punishment Island,'' is a 1966 Japanese drama film directed by Masahiro Shinoda. The screenplay by Shintarō Ishihara was based on the novel ''Ryujinjima ni nite'' by Taijun Takeda. The film probes deep into the damaging effects of the Japanese Imperial system on individuals. It concerns the story of a young man who travels to an island to punish the man who had murdered his family and brutalized him twenty years prior, but he develops feelings for the man's daughter which tests his resolve to carry out his revenge. The film makes extensive use of flashbacks, cutting forward and backwards in a free-form multilayered structure, to illustrate how the past casts a shadow over the present. Plot A young man in the guise of a salesman travels to an island and asks the ship’s captain, Nomoto, for lodging. This man's name is Saburo, and he was on the island 20 years prior. Saburo's father, Genichiro Nishihara, had been an anarchist, and as a result, Saburo's parent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sadamichi Hirasawa
was a Japanese tempera painter. He was convicted of mass poisoning and sentenced to death. Due to strong suspicions that he was innocent, no justice minister ever signed his death warrant. Teigin case On January 26, 1948, a man calling himself an epidemiologist arrived at a branch of the Imperial Bank (Teikoku Ginkō, aka Teigin) in Shiinamachi, a suburb of Toshima, Tokyo, shortly before closing time. He explained that he was a public health official sent by US occupation authorities who had orders to inoculate the staff against a sudden outbreak of dysentery. He gave each of the sixteen people present a pill and a few drops of liquid. Those present drank the liquid he gave, which was later thought to be "nitrile hydrocyanide" (青酸ニトリール), an assassination toxicant originally developed at the Noborito Laboratory. When all were incapacitated, the robber took some money lying on the desks, which amounted to 160,000 yen (about $2,000 US at the time), but left the maj ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kei Kumai
was a Japanese film director. After his studies in literature at Shinshu University, he began work as a director's assistant. He won the Directors Guild of Japan New Directors Award for his first film, '' Nihon rettō'', in 1965. His 1972 film '' Shinobu Kawa'' was entered into the 8th Moscow International Film Festival. His 1973 film '' Rise, Fair Sun'' was entered into the 24th Berlin International Film Festival. '' Sandakan No. 8'' received widespread acclaim for tackling the issue of a woman forced into prostitution in Borneo before the outbreak of World War II. Kinuyo Tanaka won the Best Actress Award at the 25th Berlin International Film Festival for her performance. The film was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 48th Academy Awards. Kumai's follow-up film was 1976's '' Cape of North'', starring French actress Claude Jade as a Swiss nun who falls in love with a Japanese engineer on a trip from Marseilles to Yokohama. His 1986 film '' The Sea and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seijun Suzuki
, born (24 May 1923 – 13 February 2017), was a Japanese filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter. His films are known for their florid visual style, absurd humour, and a playful rejection of traditional film grammar. He made 40 predominately B-movies for the Nikkatsu Company between 1956 and 1967, working most prolifically in the yakuza genre. His increasingly surreal style began to draw the ire of the studio in 1963 and culminated in his ultimate dismissal for what is now regarded as his magnum opus, '' Branded to Kill'' (1967), starring notable collaborator Joe Shishido. Suzuki successfully sued the studio for wrongful dismissal, but he was blacklisted for 10 years after that. As an independent filmmaker, he won critical acclaim and a Japanese Academy Award for his ''Taishō'' trilogy, '' Zigeunerweisen'' (1980), '' Kagero-za'' (1981) and '' Yumeji'' (1991). His films remained widely unknown outside Japan until a series of theatrical retrospectives beginning in the mid- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Youth Of The Beast
is a 1963 Japanese yakuza film directed by Seijun Suzuki. Much of the film is set in Tokyo, Japan. Synopsis Joji Mizuno ( Joe Shishido), a former Kobe Metropolitan Police Department detective fired after being convicted of embezzlement, is released from prison. During his incarceration, his partner, Detective Takeshita, died in an apparent lovers' suicide with a call girl. However, Mizuno believes that the adultery and the suicide were staged by Nomoto Enterprises, a yakuza group whose prostitution operations Takeshita was investigating. Posing as a gangster, Mizuno infiltrates the Nomoto organization in order to find out the truth. At Takeshita's memorial service, Mizuno promises his dead partner's wife, Kumiko ( Misako Watanabe), that he will find her husband's killers. Mizuno is partnered with a young soldier named Goro Minami (Eimei Esumi) and quickly earns the respect of both Minami and the eccentric head of the Nomoto group, Tetsuo Nomoto ( Akiji Kobayashi), by re-securin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conflagration (film)
is a 1958 Japanese drama film directed by Kon Ichikawa. It is based on the Yukio Mishima novel ''The Temple of the Golden Pavilion''. Ichikawa named ''Conflagration'' as the favourite among his own films. Plot Set during and shortly after World War II, Goichi, a young Buddhist acolyte, is interrogated after burning down the Shukaku Pavilion in Kyoto. He remains silent throughout the questioning. A flashback occurs with Goichi arriving at the Soen Temple, with a letter of introduction from his deceased father, a monk at the Kan'ei-ji Temple and trusted friend of the high priest, Tayama Dosen. His father had expressed a sentiment that the Golden Pavilion is the most beautiful thing in the world. While preparing rice, Goichi remembers a past incident in which he is mocked for his stuttering. He also recalls witnessing his mother's adultery as a child. During a visit, Goichi's mother states the wish that he might one day become the head priest at the temple. He doubts her ambitio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
