Masahiro Shinoda Filmography

Fukuro No Shiro

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Shohei Hino, Shima Iwashita

Synopsis: This satirical spin on the ninja genre from veteran director Masahiro Shinoda opens in 1581 with the invasion of Iga, a "hidden land," by Oda, a rampaging warlord. 50,000 troops sweep through Iga -- a province already developing as a center for ninja arts -- slaughtering everyone and everything in Read More

Moonlight Serenade

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Continuing the Setouchi trilogy -- which began with 1984's MacArthur's Children -- this film looks at Japan just after World War II. The film opens with documentary footage of the 1995 Hanshin earthquake that flattened Kobe. The devastation reminds an elderly Keita Onda of the ruined landscape of Read More

Sharaku

Crew: Director, Editor

Synopsis: The ukiyo-e (woodblock print) artist Sharaku is an enigmatic puzzle in the world of Japanese art. Working at an age when such masters of the trade as Hokusai and Utamaro were at their zenith, Sharaku suddenly emerged out of obscurity and produced roughly 140 strikingly brilliant portraits Read More

Music for the Movies: Toru Takemitsu

Actors: Toru Takemitsu, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Nagisa Oshima, Masahiro Shinoda

Synopsis: This documentary profiles the creative aspects of innovative Japanese film music composer Toru Takemitsu. Takemitsu has been composing film scores since the 1960's. Included are clips from 16 movies he scored, interviews with the composer and his friends, and movie directors. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Read More

Shonen Jidai

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Veteran director Masahiro Shinoda spins this childhood drama reminiscent of Yasujiro Ozu's masterpiece I Was Born But.... Set in the summer of 1944, the film centers on Shinji (Tetsuya Fujita), a ten-year-old Tokyoite evacuated from the ruins of Tokyo to rural Toyama prefecture. Compared to the Read More

Die Tanzerin

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Brigitte Grothum, Haruko Kato, Mareike Carriere

Synopsis: After Commodore Perry forcibly opened Japan to trade in 1853, the Japanese responded as if they had been waiting for this event, and sent sons from prominent families to study abroad and learn how, for instance, a navy, an army, or an international trading company might be set up. European models Read More

Takeshi

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Takeshi (Yuji Horioka) is the son of a fisherman, and is the undisputed king of his grammar school class. Despite his great intelligence and intellectual interests, because of his father's station in life, Takeshi will probably not be able to continue his schooling. Perhaps it is this which makes Read More

Gonza the Spearman

Crew: Director

Actors: Hiromi Goh, Shima Iwashita, Shohei Hino, Misako Tanaka, Haruko Kalo

Synopsis: This drama of love and tragedy is based on a story by the early 18th-century writer Chikamatsu Monzaemon and hinges on an ingrained sense of honor above all else. When the retainer Gonza Sasano (Hiromi Goh) is suddenly offered the hand of his lord's daughter in marriage, he cannot say no. Even Read More

MacArthur's Children

Crew: Director

Actors: Takaya Yamauchi, Yoshiyuki Omori, Shiori Sakura, Masako Natsume

Synopsis: The title of MacArthur's Children refers to the generation growing up in Japan since the end of World War II. A tiny Japanese island serves as a microcosm for the events in the mainland during the time of VE Day. Young Takaya Yamauchi is a war orphan whose best friend, Yoshikuri Omori, refuses to Read More

Island of the Evil Spirits

Crew: Director

Actors: Takeshi Kaga

Demon Pond

Crew: Director

Actors: Tamasaburo Bando, Go Kato, Tsutomi Yamasaki, Koji Nanbara

Synopsis: In the 1930s, a schoolteacher named Gakuen (Tsutomo Yamazaki), while searching for his missing friend Akira (Go Kato), comes upon a mysterious, drought-stricken village beside a pond. After asking for food from a beautiful young woman named Yuri (played by the noted onnagata performer Tamasaburo Read More

Banished

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Shima Iwashita, Yoshio Harada, Tomoko Naraoka, Taiji Tonoyama, Toru Abe

Synopsis: This unsentimental Japanese tragedy chronicles the lonely life and quiet death of a blind Geisha girl whose desire for sexual freedom causes her to become an outcast. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Shima Iwashita

Himiko

Crew: Director

Actors: Masao Kusakari

Synopsis: Using modern scientific biases to strip away the mystery behind ancient legends is an activity not confined to Europe or the Americas. In this Japanese film, the mythological foundations of Japanese society are explained away, albeit poetically. Here, the Sun Goddess responsible for the founding Read More

Kaseki no Mori

Crew: Director

Actors: Kenichi Hagiwara

Sapporo Winter Olympics

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This well-received Japanese documentary covers the 11th Winter Olympics held in Sapporo Japan in February of 1972. The film is beautifully photographed in a straightforward manner, covering ski-jumping, downhill racing, ice-skating and hockey. The excitement of the hockey match between the Read More

Chinmoku

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Chinmoku or Silence is a story about the suppression of Christianity in Japan, as seen from the point of view of a fugitive priest. The film is critical of both Christianity's expansionism and Japanese society at the time. When the priest is finally captured, he is disturbed at seeing many of his Read More

Buraikan

Crew: Director

Actors: Tatsuya Nakadai, Tetsuro Tamba, Shoichi Ozawa, Kiwako Taichi, Fumio Watanabe

Synopsis: Masahiro Shinoda directed this sexy, darkly humorous look at Tokyo's red-light Edo district in 1842, focusing on three characters whose lives intersect. Soshun (Tetsuro Tamba) is the infamous fugitive Buraikan in disguise, Naojiro (Tatsuya Nakadai) is a shiftless lout who dreams of being a Kabuki Read More

Double Suicide

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Kichiemon Nakamura, Shima Iwashita, Hosei Komatsu, Yusuke Takita, Kamatari Fujiwara

Synopsis: A masterpiece of Japanese New Wave cinema, renowned filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda directs this brilliant modernist reworking of a famous 1720 bunraku (puppet theater) play written by Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Set in Osaka in the 18th century, the film centers on the doomed romance between Jihei (Kichiemon Nakamura Read More

Akanegumo

Crew: Director

Actors: Shima Iwashita, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Mayumi Ogawa

Synopsis: A Japanese soldier Tsutomu Yamazki deserts his position and travels to a small town on the Sea of Japan to start over in this melodrama from director Shinoda Masahiro. When a young maid falls for him, he talks her into sleeping with an older man for money. The woman is told by a Geisha Mayumi Ogawa Read More

Shokei No Shima

Crew: Director

Actors: Rentaro Mikuni, Akira Nitta, Shima Iwashita

Synopsis: A young man returns to the island where he was held prisoner as a child in this action thriller from Japanese director Masahiro Shinoda. He was sent to the island as a boy so he could not reveal the identities of the military police who killed his family. For 20 years he has planned to seek Read More

With Beauty and Sorrow

Crew: Director

Actors: So Yamamura, Mariko Kaga, Kaoru Yachigusa

Sarutobi

Crew: Director

Actors: Koji Takahashi, Mutsuhiro Toura

Synopsis: A seemingly simple assignment sends a warrior for hire into a labyrinth of danger and intrigue in this intelligent and expressive action vehicle from filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda. In Japan in the year 1614, Sasuke Sarutobi (Koji Takahashi) is a retainer of the Sanada Clan who has grown weary of the Read More

Ansatsu

Crew: Director

Actors: Tetsuro Tamba, Shima Iwashita, Ko (Isao) Kimura

Synopsis: Based on a story by Ryotaro Shiba, this samurai classic from director Masahiro Shinoda follows a mysterious samurai leader who continuously shifts his allegiance from one political faction to another. All involved are under the constant threat of assassination. Ansatsu's screenplay was written by Nobuo Yamada Read More

Pale Flower

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Ryo Ikebe, Mariko Kaga, Takashi Fujiki, Chisako Hara, Koji Nakahara

Synopsis: Masahiro Shinoda's brilliant film opens with mobster Murakami just getting released from prison for murdering a member of a rival clan, only to learn that during his internment, the two syndicates arranged a truce. Not unlike the protagonist in Albert Camus' The Stranger, Murakami's motives for Read More

Namida o Shishi no Tategami

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Takashi Fujiki, Kyoko Kishida, Mariko Kaga, So Yamamura

Synopsis: Takashi Fujiki stars as a rebel in this drama about life on the Yokohama waterfront by New Wave director Masahiro Shinoda. The rebel works as an errand boy for a shipping company and vents his frustrations by plucking on the guitar. His interpretations of popular trends in music are sometimes Read More

Yama no Sanka: Moyuru Wakamono-tachi

Crew: Director

Actors: So Yamamura, Isuzu Yamada

Watakushitachi no Kekkon

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Chieko Baisho

My Face Red in the Sunset

Crew: Director

Actors: Yasuke Kawazu, Shima Iwashita

Epitaph to My Love

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Yasuke Kawazu, Shima Iwashita

Shamisen to Otobai

Crew: Director

Actors: Miyuki Kuwano

Youth in Fury

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this Japanese drama, Mikami, a radical student, idolizes several of Western civilization's most nefarious modern dictators including, Hitler, Trotsky, and Castro, and aspires to be like them. But as the long, complex story of his life unfolds, his illusions and ideals are slowly stripped away Read More

One Way Ticket for Love

Crew: Director