Kyoko Kagawa Filmography

Madadayo

Actors: Tatsuo Matsumara, Kyoko Kagawa, Hisashi Igawa

Synopsis: Akira Kurosawa's swansong is a delicate, sentimental portrait of his long avowed hero, educator and literary figure Hyakken Uchida. At the film's opening, Uchida -- a professor of German literature at a military school where he is beloved for his wisdom and his impish humor -- is delivering his Read More

Shikibu Monogatari

Actors: Eiji Okuda, Keiko Kishi, Mieko Harada, Kyoko Kagawa

Synopsis: Veteran director Kei Kumai spins this tale about Toyoichi Otomo (Eiji Okuda) who suffers from psychological and spiritual troubles after a horrific industrial accident. He lives with his elderly mother (Kyoko Kagawa) and wife (Mieko Harada) near Mt. Aso in rural Kyushu. He seeks solace in a small Read More

Harukoma No Uta

The Man in the Storm

Synopsis: In this Japanese film, the Shimoda police station gets a new judo instructor who soon finds himself in love with the previous instructor's daughter. This makes another student so jealous that he challenges the new sensei to a duel. The young upstart is quickly put into his place. Later the Read More

Secret Scrolls (Part 2)

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Koji Tsuruta, Nobuke Otawa, Jotaro Togami, Senjaku Nakamura

Synopsis: In this sequel to the Japanese epic, Secret Scrolls, Part 1 (1957), the Samurai wizard and his brother finally find one of the three scrolls their evil employer needs to overthrow the Japanese government. Unfortunately, the two fight over it and tear it in half. Ashamed, the two separate, but find Read More

Secret Scrolls (Part 1)

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Koji Tsuruta, Yoshiko Kuga, Kyoko Kagawa, Mariko Okada

Synopsis: In this Japanese costumer set in the 17th century, three powerful families endeavor to keep three sacred scrolls from ever being pieced together in one place, as they contain the necessary information to overthrow the government. These scrolls are coveted by several greedy, power-mad clans who Read More

Red Beard

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Yuzo Kayama, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kyoko Kagawa, Miyuki Kuwano

Synopsis: In 1820, young Noboru Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama) completes his medical education in Nagasaki and returns to his native Edo hoping both to marry the daughter of a wealthy man and to achieve affluence himself through his medical practice. He happens to visit the famed Koishikawa clinic for the indigent Read More

The Prodigal Son

Synopsis: In this Japanese moral tale set in the 18th-century, a man becomes obsessed with winning the love a geisha girl. His fixation loses face for his family and culminates in the murder of a shop owner's wife. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

High and Low

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Kyoko Kagawa, Tatsuya Nakadai

Synopsis: Based on King's Ransom, an "87th Precinct" novel by Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter), High and Low stars Toshiro Mifune as Gondo, a wealthy industrialist. Gondo is contacted by a gang of kidnappers, who inform him that they've kidnapped his son. The crooks demand a huge ransom for the boy's return Read More

Till Tomorrow Comes

Synopsis: In this Japanese melodrama set in 1941, a baby girl is born blind just as her father is sent off to fight for his country. Wanting to cure her child, the mother convinces a local medico to do the surgery, but before he can, he too goes to war. Years pass and the doctor finally performs the Read More

Death on the Mountain

Synopsis: Rugged Japanese mountains provide the setting for this grim drama that begins as three young men embark upon a climb. Tragedy follows when one of the fellows gets confused in the fog and walks off a cliff. A year passes and the cousin of the deceased goes up the mountain accompanied by one of the Read More

Osaka Jo Monogatari

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Kyoko Kagawa, Isuzu Yamada, Yuriko Hoshi, Yoshiko Kuga

Synopsis: Mohei (Toshiro Mifune) is the samurai warrior who battles against the Portuguese arsenal of guns and cannons. With these newly introduced weapons, two families battle for control of a valuable land parcel in 17th-century Japan. This feature was made in 1961 but obviously introduced in America to Read More

Mothra

Actors: Jerry Ito, Ken Uehara, Yumi Ito

Synopsis: Mothra was the third major addition to the Toho Studios' giant-monster stable after Godzilla and Rodan, and the first female beast in the series. The creature begins Ishiro Honda's entertaining film as a giant larva worshipped by island tribesmen and guarded by twin sisters (Emi and Yumi Ito) who Read More

The Bad Sleep Well

Actors: Toshiro Mifune

Synopsis: In this engaging drama, acclaimed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa deftly splices together the nuances of hypocrisy, old feudal misconceptions lingering in modern corruption, and Shakespeare's Hamlet. The rotten corporate world is taken on by Koichi Nishi (Toshiro Mifune), who is looking for Read More

Nippon Tanjo

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Yoko Tsukasa, Kyoko Kagawa, Koji Tsuruta, Takashi Shimura

Synopsis: This well-wrought, visually stunning tale from Japanese mythology is directed by Hiroshi Inagaki and relates the adventures of a legendary Prince Yamato Takeru (Toshiro Mifune). The reason for those adventures is linked to the creation and/or discovery of the "three treasures" basic to the Shinto Read More

The Lower Depths

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Kyoko Kagawa, Bokuzen Hidari, Ganjiro Nakamura

Synopsis: Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa transferred the setting of Maxim Gorky's play The Lower Depths from Imperial Russia to his own country's Edo Period--which, like Gorky's 19th-century setting, was an era of great cultural advances, offset by the miseries of those who weren't in the aristocracy. Read More

Women in Prison

Synopsis: Women in Prison is a Japanese spin on the traditional Hollywood "babes behind bars" opus. Filmed in semi-documentary fashion, the narrative focuses on several particularly troubled and troublesome female inmates. Tying the various plot strands together is a chief guard known as "The Angel," who Read More

Christ in Bronze

Actors: Eiji Okada, Osamu Takizawa, Kyoko Kagawa

Synopsis: Set in Japan during the 17th century, this conventional costume drama tells of the persecution of Christian converts in the feudal society of the time. Christianity alone was not the target, it was only one part of the perceived threat of Western civilization. Christofa Ferrera (Osamu Takizawa) is Read More

Shin Heike Monogatari: Shizuka To Yoshitsune

Actors: Raizo Ichikawa, Yoshiko Kuga, Chikage Awashima, Kyoko Kagawa

Synopsis: One of a series of Japanese films shown at Japan House in New York in 1981, the Dancer and the Warrior, filmed in 1956, is another of cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa's successes. The story is set in a popular and well-known historical period in Japan: the end of the 12th century when the cultured Read More

Chikamatsu Monogatari

Actors: Kazuo Hasegawa, Kyoko Kagawa, Eitaro Shindo

Synopsis: Master filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi directs this tale of star-crossed lovers, based on a puppet play by Monzaemon Chikamatsu. Set in 1693 during a period of rigid feudal hierarchy and strict social customs, the film unfolds in the estate of a miserly scroll maker named Ishun (Eitaro Shindo). While Read More

Sansho the Bailiff

Actors: Kinuyo Tanaka, Kyoko Kagawa, Eitaro Shindo, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Ichiro Sugai

Synopsis: Kenji Mizoguchi's masterpiece opens in 11th-century Japan with an aristocratic woman Tamaki traveling through the woods with her daughter Anju, son Zushio, and maid. Through flashbacks, we learn that her husband, Taira no Masauji, was a local governor who was exiled because of his honesty and Read More

Tokyo Story

Actors: Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, So Yamamura, Setsuko Hara, Kyoko Kagawa

Synopsis: As with much of director Yasujiro Ozu's work, a plot summary of this film does not do justice to the emotional power that Ozu lends to this sad, understated tale. An elderly couple, Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) and Tomi Hirayama (Chieko Higashiyama), leaves their small coastal village in southern Japan Read More

Inazuma

Okasan

Actors: Kinuyo Tanaka, Masao Mishima, Akihiko Katayama, Kyoko Kagawa, Eiji Okada

Synopsis: Mother is a story of contemporary Japan. The film is predicated on an annual nationwide contest at Tokyo schools, wherein the students are invited to write about their mothers. One of the students is Kyoto Kagawa, whose relationship with her mother Kinuyo Tanaka is strained at best. Through Read More