Kon Ichikawa Filmography

Ten Nights of Dreams

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Eleven Japanese filmmakers (including one duo) from all genres and backgrounds gather together under the Nikkatsu banner in order to realize the marvelous stories of novelist Soseki Natsume in this adaptation of the author's enduring episodic tome Ten Nights of Dreams. Each imaginative story takes Read More

The Kon Ichikawa Story

Actors: Kon Ichikawa

Synopsis: Produced to commemorate the release of acclaimed Japanese director Kon Ichikawa's 2006 mystery Inukamike no Ichizoku, All About Lily Chou-Chou director Shunji Iwai's lovingly detailed documentary traces his subject's eventful life all the way from early childhood through the production of his Read More

Kah-Chan

Crew: Director

Actors: Keiko Kishi, Ryuji Harada, Shoichi Ozawa, Kanae Katsuno, Tsuyoshi Ujiki

Kurosawa

Actors: Sam Shepard, Paul Scofield, James Coburn, Clint Eastwood, Shinobu Hashimoto

Synopsis: Akira Kurosawa was arguably the most important Japanese filmmaker who ever lived; he was certainly among the most revered and most influential. His award-winning feature Rashomon was one of the first major international successes in Japanese filmmaking, convincing many western cineastes for the Read More

Dora-Heita

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Koji Yakusho, Yuko Asano, Bunta Sugawara, Tsurutaro Kataoka

Synopsis: As the Japanese studios were declining in 1969, four legendary directors from that country's "golden age" of cinema -- Kon Ichikawa, Masaki Kobayashi, Keisuke Kinoshita, and of course Akira Kurosawa -- banded together to start their own production company. The financial and critical failure of the Read More

47 Ronin

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Ken Takakura, Ruriko Asaoka, Koji Ishizaka

Synopsis: In honor of the 100th anniversary of the invention of film, Toho studios produced this remake of Chushingura, a paean of feudal devotion and one of the most retold tales in all of Japanese cinema. Legendary filmmaker Kon Ichikawa reworks this old chestnut by trying find a psychological truth in Read More

Fusa

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Kiichi Nakai, Yuko Asano, Frankie Sakai, Hisashi Igawa, Kyoko Kishida

Synopsis: Plans have long been set to enable Seishiro to marry the daughter of the castle warden. He is from too humble a background to marry so exalted a personage, so the head of the Iwai family has formally adopted him in order to give him the necessary social standing. All is proceding in an orderly way Read More

Tenkawa Densetsu Satsujin Jiken

Crew: Director

Actors: Takaaki Enoki, Takeshi Kusaka, Keiko Kishi, Ittoku Kishibe

Synopsis: In this at times comic detective thriller, the head of a lineage of Noh performers is about to step down, and someone cares enough about who his successor will be to commit murder again and again in highly symbolic ways. Noh drama is the often mystifying ritualized classical drama of the Imperial Read More

Taketori Monogatari

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Ayako Wakao, Yasuka Sawaguchi, Koji Ishizaka, Kiichi Nakai

Synopsis: Princess From the Moon (Taketori Monogatari) is based on an ancient Japanese legend. Toshiro Mifune plays a 9th century bamboo cutter who comes across a curious glass capsule, housing a tiny baby girl who holds a crystal ball in her hand. Once released, the infant instantly becomes a Read More

Eiga Joyu

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Sayuri Yoshinaga, Bunta Sugawara, Koji Ishizaka, Kiichi Nakai

Synopsis: The Japanese actress and film director Kinuyo Tanaka had a career as significant to that country's movie industry as Lillian Gish's was in the U.S. -- it spanned the early days of silent movies and continued well into the 1970s. This biographical drama covers her career up to the point when she is Read More

Rokumeikan

Crew: Director

Biruma No Tatekoto

Crew: Director

Actors: Koji Ishizaka, Kiichi Nakai, Takuzo Kawatani, Atsushi Watanabe, Fujio Tokita

Synopsis: Burmese Harp (Biruma No Tategoto) is Japanese director Kon Ichikawa's color remake of his own classic 1956 film of the same name (aka Harp of Burma), retelling the story of a Japanese soldier whose horrible experiences in Burma during World War II pave the way to his becoming a monk. ~ Hal Read More

Ohan

Crew: Director

Actors: Sayuri Yoshinaga, Koji Ishizaka, Reiko Ohara

The Makioka Sisters

Crew: Director, Executive Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Keiko Kishi, Yoshiko Sakuma, Sayuri Yoshinaga, Yuko Kotegawa, Juzo Itami

Synopsis: The Makioka Sisters will probably best be appreciated by those with an intimate knowledge of 20th century Japanese culture. The film, set just before World War II, chronicles the experiences of four upper-class Osaka sisters, two of them married. We see the shifting political and social scene Read More

Happiness

Crew: Director

Kofuku

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Toshiyuki Nagashima, Kei Tani

Synopsis: Based on a novel, Lady, Lady, I Did It by Ed McBain, this story begins with three people murdered by a gunman while in a bookstore. It is soon revealed that one of the victims was the girlfriend of Kita (Toshiyuki Nagashima), a policeman sent there to help out with the incident. Kita asks to be Read More

Lonely Hearts

Crew: Director

Actors: Wendy Hughes, Norman Kaye, Jon Finlayson, Julia Blake, Jonathan Hardy

Synopsis: Effusive piano tuner Norman Kaye is on the less sunny side of forty and still unattached. Shy and self-effacing office worker Wendy Hughes is likewise getting on in years sans a lifetime companion. From the outset, we know that Kaye and Hughes will somehow come together. This, however, is the only Read More

The House of Hanging

Crew: Director

Queen Bee

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Keiko Kishi, Tatsuya Nakadai

Synopsis: In order to solve the mystery of a murder of an old governess which takes place at a wealthy Daidoji family's country estate, family secrets and lies dating back several generations must be sorted out once and for all. In the process, ancient wrongs are righted, and the innocent are cleared of Read More

Hi no tori

Crew: Director

Actors: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Masao Kusakari, Kaoru Yumi, Reiko Ohara, Mieko Takamine

Synopsis: The battle for good and against evil never ends in this long series of episodes about attempts to capture the phoenix, a mythic bird of immortality. Set in the second century A.D., this fantasy adventure yarn includes plenty of special effects and animation, yet that does not mean it is innocuous. Read More

Akuma No Temari-Uta

Crew: Director

Gokumon-To

Crew: Director

Inugamike No Ichizoku

Crew: Director

Tsuma to Onna No Aida

Crew: Director

Wagahai Wa Neko de Aru

Crew: Director, Executive Producer

Actors: Tatsuya Nakadai, Yoko Shimada, Mariko Okada, Juzo Itami

Synopsis: Kushami (Tatsuya Nakadai) is a teacher given to flights of philosophy as he mulls over life and its meanings, unaware that his gray cat is observing life at home with his own version of a philosopher's eye. Kushami's relatives dominate the action as they move in and out of romantic liaisons Read More

Matatabi

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Japanese society's labyrinthine complexity offers yet another surprise in Matatabi, a film that follows the adventures of a group of "toseinin." Toseinin are country boys who wander around offering their complete loyalty and service to anyone who gives them even the barest welcome. The story is Read More

Visions of Eight: The Olympics of Motion Picture Achievement

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This documentary of the 1972 Summer Olympics, held in Munich, is remarkable for bringing eight of the world's most notable film directors to work on it. They are: Milos Forman, Yuri Ozerov, Mai Zetterling, Arthur Penn, Michael Pfleghar, Kon Ichikawa, Claude Lelouch and John Schlesinger. Each Read More

To Love Again

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Director Kon Ichikawa (b. 1915) has been responsible for some extraordinary Japanese statements about our common humanity and the horrors of war. He began his filmmaking career as a cartooning art supervisor, and later, in collaboration with his scenarist and scriptwriter wife (Natto Wada), made Read More

Dodes'ka-Den

Crew: Producer

Actors: Yoshitaka Zushi, Kin Sugai, Toshiyuki Tonomura

Synopsis: Dodes'ka-Den (aka Dodesukaden) was Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's first project since Red Beard (1965), and his first ever in color. Kurosawa focuses this time on Tokyo slum life. We watch as a variety of unfortunates debase themselves to survive, yet, somehow, emerge with more innate dignity Read More

Nihon to Nihonjin

Crew: Director

Kyoto

Crew: Director

Seishun

Crew: Director

Topo Gigio I La Guerra Missile

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Noted director Kon Ichikawa combines animation with live action scenes in this spy comedy starring the beloved Italian mouse Topo Gigio. When Topo is knocked out of bed after a funny little man crashes his auto, the mouse is soon up to his ears in international intrigue. He gets mixed up with a Read More

The Tokyo Olympiad

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Natto Wada, Shuntaro Tanikawa, Kon Ichikawa

Synopsis: The 18th Olympiad was the first Games event held in Asia; Tokyo had been scheduled to host in 1940, but that Olympiad was canceled because of the war. Japan was determined not only to be a good host, but also to provide a record of the games to rival that of Leni Riefenstahl's legendary Olympia. Read More

Zeni no Odori

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this Yakuza spoof, Hapyaku (Shintaru Katsu), a put-upon taxi driver, wrecks his cab chasing down a hit-and-run driver and demolishes a restaurant in the process of defending the honor of a waitress. He soon finds himself being recruited against his will into a sinister criminal gang who are Read More

An Actor's Revenge

Crew: Director

Actors: Kazuo Hasegawa, Fujiko Yamamoto, Ayako Wakao, Raizo Ichikawa, Shintaro Katsu

Synopsis: In this renowned and classic Japanese film directed by Kon Ichikawa, the great Kabuki onnagata Kasuo Hasegawa celebrates his 300th film appearance in a role designed especially for him. One of the classic theater styles of Japan, Kabuki does not use women in female roles. Highly trained male Read More

Alone on the Pacific

Crew: Director

Actors: Yujiro Ishihara, Masayuki Mori

Synopsis: What might have been a banal TV "movie of the week" in American hands is transformed into a work of art by Japanese director Kon Ichikawa (Harp of Burma). Alone on the Pacific is based on the true story of Kenichi Horie, who as an adult fulfilled his childhood ambition of crossing the Pacific in a Read More

Watashi Wa Nisai

Crew: Director

Actors: Fujiko Yamamoto, Eiji Funakoshi

Synopsis: The world is seen through the eyes of a two year old Japanese child in this feature entered in the San Francisco Film Festival. The precocious child sees the crescent moon as a banana and has imaginative cartoon daydreams. He amazes, adores, and sometimes angers his parent, who appear as all Read More

The Outcast

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this fascinating Japanese social drama, a school teacher tries to hide the fact that he belongs to the outcast class. When a writer that he respects is murdered, he decides to reveal the truth. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Kuroi Junin No Onna

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This comedy of revenge relates the comeuppance of a television producer whose philandering ways come back to haunt him in a big way. Kaze (Eiki Funakoshi) has nine mistresses, all of whom work at the television studio with him, and a calmly long-suffering wife who runs a bar to keep her mind off Read More

Bonchi

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Raizo Ichikawa, Isuzu Yamada, Kikue Mori, Machiko Kyo, Ayako Wakao

Synopsis: Although shown at Japan House in 1981, Bonchi was first released in Japan in 1960 as an attack, with and without humor, on the beginnings of the feminist movement. The story centers around a family's merchant business that has been handed down from mother to daughter, but the daughter has an only Read More

Ototo

Crew: Director

Actors: Keiko Kishi, Hiroshi Kawaguchi, Kinuyo Tanaka, Masayuki Mori

Synopsis: Set in 1926 when Japanese tradition was much stronger, this standard drama looks at the inner workings of a small family, especially the relationship between a sister and brother. The father (Masayuki Mori) and stepmother (Kinuyo Tanaka) are not exactly an expressive, demonstrative couple, and so Read More

Sayonara, Konnichiwa

Crew: Director

Jokyo II: Mono o Takaku Uritsukeru Onna

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Best known for his award-winning Burmese Harp, Yasuzo Masumara is one of three men who shared directing honors in this three-part tale. The first story concerns an attractive young woman who works in a Tokyo nightclub. Her plan for a solid financial future has a double whammy. She is investing in Read More

Fires on the Plain

Crew: Director, Editor

Actors: Eiji Funakoshi, Mantaro Ushio, Yoshihiro Hamaguchi, Osamu Takizawa, Mickey Curtis

Synopsis: Kon Ichikawa's adaptation of Shohei Ooka's novel Nobi takes place in the Philippines at the end of World War II. The Japanese army is in hasty retreat from the incoming American forces. The soldiers have also been warned that the Americans will take no live prisoners, and so their flight is all Read More

Odd Obsession

Crew: Director, Editor, Screenwriter

Actors: Machiko Kyo, Ganjiro Nakamura, Junko Kano, Tatsuya Nakadai, Tanie Kitabayashi

Synopsis: Several cinematic variations on Junichiro Tanizaki's novel about jealousy, voyeurism, and sexual arousal began with this award-winning drama by director Kon Ichikawa. Kenji Kenmochi (Ganjiro Nakamura) is the older and increasingly impotent husband of young Ikuko (Machiko Kyo). He is desperate to Read More

Enjo

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Raizo Ichikawa, Tatsuya Nakadai, Ganjiro Nakamura, Michiyo Aratama

Synopsis: This docudrama by Kon Ichikawa is based on a real-life incident that took place in 1950. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (also the title of a novel on the subject by Yukio Mishima) rests in the northern hills of Kyoto. The original pavilion was a villa constructed by the Shogun Yoshimitsu Read More

Tohoku no Zummutachi

Crew: Director

Ana

Crew: Director

Manin Densha

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: A Full-Up Train follows a young "salary man" as he struggles to adjust to Japan's hectic postwar economy while his personal life becomes more and more chaotic. After graduating from college among a faceless throng of fellow students, he begins working in a brewery, living in a bland workers' Read More

Nihombashi

Crew: Director

Shokei No Heya

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Based on a popular "sun tribe" novel, Punishment Room hues close to the genre's traits in depicting the violent and sexually promiscuous adventures of Tokyo's decadent, wealthy teens. The plot follows Katsumi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), a precociously cruel and scheming college student, as he takes Read More

The Burmese Harp

Crew: Director

Actors: Shoji Yasui, Rentaro Mikuni, Tatsuya Mihashi, Tanie Kitabayashi, Yunosuke Ito

Synopsis: Set against the final days of World War II, The Burmese Harp portrays the experiences of a group of exhausted, war-scarred Japanese soldiers as they prepare to return to Japan. The film focuses on Shoji Yasui, a soldier known to his comrades for his harp playing, who fails to convince a resistant Read More

Seishun Kaidan

Crew: Director

Kokoro

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Kon Ichikawa's rich adaptation of Natsume Soseki's classic novel depicts a complex relationship between a student and an older man he calls "sensei." The older man's relations with his wife seems curiously strained to the student. When the boy goes to the country to tend to his dying father, he Read More

Watashi no Subete o

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Josei ni Kansuru Junisho

Crew: Director

Okuman Choja

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: In this fast-paced satire by master Kon Ichikawa, various comtemporary stereotypes descend on a hapless new income tax employee. Sketches include an embittered geisha, a corrupt politician, and an impoverished family of 18 who manfucture atomic bombs at night. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More

Aijin

Crew: Director

Puu-san

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: This biting comedy established Kon Ichikawa as one of Japan's premier post-war satirists. It centers on a luckless teacher who goes to Tokyo's trendy Ginza district only to get hit by a car. The student he asks to help him demands money. His girl dumps him, and the corrupt politician who hit the Read More

Aoiro Kakumei

Crew: Director

Seishun Zenigata Heiji

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Wakai Hito

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Rakkii-san

Crew: Director

Ano Te Kono Te

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Ashi ni Sawatta Onna

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Kekkon Koshinkyoku

Crew: Director

Mukokuseki Mono

Crew: Director

Ieraishan

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: In this melodrama, an ailing former army doctor discovers that the girl he loves is selling her body in Tokyo's post-war black market to paid for his medical treatment. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More

Koibito

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: The day before her wedding, a young woman goes out one last time with an old boyfriend. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More

Bungawan Solo

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: This romantic drama set in wartime Java depicts a doomed love story between a Japanese army deserter and a Javanese villager. Kon Ichikawa lost the final cut on this film and, as a result, left Shin Toho studios. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More

Nusumareta Koi

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: This light romance is about a love triangle among an unemployed dancer, a banker she tries to coax into marrying her, and an impoverished painter whom she dates to make the banker jealous. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More

Ginza Sanshiro

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this action melodrama, a young doctor who runs a clinic in the Ginza district of Tokyo promises a local gangster to hide the fact that he is a judo master -- that is, until the woman he loves is threatened. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More

Netsudeichi

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: In this action film, a man steals a million yen and flees to Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, with a bar girl. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More

Akatsuki no Tsuiseki

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This documentary-style police drama depicts life in the back alleys of Tokyo's Shimbashi district. The film's camera work shows the beginnings of Ichikawa's innovative style ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More

Ningen Moyo

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This early lost Kon Ichikawa film marks the first time that he and noted scenarist Natto Wada worked together. The film is about a love triangle among a girl, her poor boyfriend, and a rich company president. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More

Hateshinaki Jonetsu

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this melodrama, a composer discovers that his wife is married to another man. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More

Hana Hiraku

Crew: Director

Sambyaku-rokujugo Ya

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This melodrama is about a girl from Osaka and a girl from Tokyo who are in love with the same boy. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More

Musume Dojoji

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: This first film of Japanese master director Kon Ichikawa is a ghost story performed by puppets. Unfortunately, this work was confiscated and subsequently lost by the United States Army during its occupation of Japan. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide Read More