Takashi Shimura Filmography

Kagemusha

Actors: Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kenichi Hagiwara, Kota Yui, Shuji Otake

Synopsis: Just as many American studio-era directors found acclaim abroad that was denied them in their home country, by 1980 Akira Kurosawa's reputation outside Japan exceeded his esteem at home. As uncompromising as ever, he found considerable difficulty securing backing for his ambitious projects. Unsure Read More

Oginsaga

Actors: Takashi Shimura, Ryoko Nakano, Toshiro Mifune, Daijiro Harada, Atsuo Nakamura

Synopsis: For a brief period during the 16th century, the Portuguese and Dutch were permitted influence in Japan, with the result that a considerable number of Japanese converted to Christianity. By the late 16th century, a reaction against these outside influences was in full sway. In this story, Lady Ogin Read More

The Last Days of Planet Earth

Synopsis: This speculative drama's original name, Prophecies of Nostradamus is perhaps more descriptive of the subject. Set in the year 1999, this feature dramatizes the events predicted by the great French seer. Disasters depicted included severely polluted air and water, crazed adults, war, and natural Read More

Zatoichi's Conspiracy

Actors: Shintaro Katsu

Synopsis: In this Japanese actioner, the brave blind swordsman Zatoichi runs across a childhood comrade who has grown up to be a cruel and powerful yakuza who mercilessly steals everything the peasants have. Fortunately, the super-perceptive Zatoichi soon takes care of him and his gang. ~ Sandra Brennan Read More

Prophecies of Nostradamus

Synopsis: In this Japanese sci-fi film based on the prophesies of the French seer Nostradamus, the story begins in 1999, the year the prophet predicted the world would end. The future world is horribly polluted, and one scientist is assigned to deal with the giant blood-sucking slugs that have been spawned Read More

The Day the Sun Rose

Synopsis: This Japanese action movie is set in Kyoto during the 16th-century. At that time the town was in turmoil over a hefty food tax. The farmers and the wealthy townfolk were battling it out. To assist them, the townspeople hired samurai. That does not stop the determined farmers from defeating them Read More

Satogashi ga Kawareru Toki

Actors: Ayako Wakao, Eiji Funakoshi, Takashi Shimura, Masahiko Tsugawa, Jun Fujimaki

Synopsis: Aiyako Wakao stars in this drama about an actress whose life experiences mirror those of the late Marilyn Monroe. The dedicated actress is befriended by an elderly producer, poses nude for a calendar, goes back to school, and marries a baseball player. After her divorce, she turns into an Read More

Gion Matsuri

Actors: Shima Iwashita, Toshiro Mifune, Eitaro Ozawa, Takashi Shimura

The Emperor and a General

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, So Yamamura, Chishu Ryu, Seiji Miyaguchi, Rokko Toura

Synopsis: This star-studded and relatively lavishly produced fact-based war drama, set in 1945 Japan during WW II, chronicles the attempts of Japan's War Minister, (played by Toshiro Mifune), to prevent Emperor Hirohito from publicly broadcasting the declaration of surrender. The War Minister rallies those Read More

Night in Bangkok

Actors: Yuzo Kayama, Yuriko Hoshi

Synopsis: In this Japanese melodrama a youthful physician is loved by his foster sister. Though she has felt this way for years, she loses interest when he falls in love with the daughter of a Chinese trader. Later, the doctor is assigned to a work in a major Bangkok hospital, and it seems as he and his Read More

Samurai Assassin

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Keiju Kobayashi, Yunosuke Ito, Koshiro Matsumoto, Michiyo Aratama

Synopsis: A ronin seeking to redeem his wandering status by gaining entry into one of the great houses takes part in a plot to assassinate a Shogunate Elder in this classic tale of swordplay directed by Okamoto Kihachi, starring Toshiro Mifune, and based on actual events. Niiro Tsuruchiyo (Mifune) is a 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

Frankenstein Conquers the World

Actors: Nick Adams, Tadao Takashima, Kumi Mizuno

Synopsis: This hilarious monster mess from the makers of the Godzilla series (including director Inoshiro Honda) essentially recruits Mary Shelley's classic creature into the ever-growing ranks of Japanese city-stomping behemoths -- albeit with a less colorful costume. The only nod to the original Read More

Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster

Actors: Yumi Ito

Synopsis: A true "monster rally," this Japanese special-effects smorgasbord stars no fewer than four "A"-list movie monstrosities. Once again, the citizens of Tokyo are subjected to an ill-tempered atomic mutant. This time it's the triple-headed Ghidrah, who breathes electric volts in all directions. Coming Read More

Gorath

Actors: Ryo Ikebe, Akihiko Hirata, Jun Tazaki, Yumi Shirakawa, Takashi Shimura

Synopsis: Japanese sci-fi director Inoshiro Honda and special effects wizard Eiji Tsuburaya teamed up again (Rodan, Godzilla, Mothra) for this thriller/adventure. Set in the futuristic 1980, a group of Tokyo scientists discover that Earth is in the direct path of a star with a gravitational pull 6,000 times Read More

Kwaidan

Actors: Rentaro Mikuni, Misako Watanabe, Michiyo Aratama, Keiko Kishi, Tetsuro Tamba, Tatsuya Nakadai, Katsuo Nakamura

Synopsis: Kwaidan is an impressively mounted anthology horror film based on four stories by Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek-born writer who began his career in the United States at the age of 19 and moved permanently to Japan in 1890 at the age of 40, where he eventually became a subject of the empire and took on Read More

The Lost World of Sinbad

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Jun Funado, Ichiro Arishima

Synopsis: In this Japanese adventure, a brave sailor--called Sinbad in the English language version Americans could relate to him--must stop a wicked premier from overtaking the kingdom. To do so he enlists the aide of a pirate band. In addition to ridding their land of the villain, they also get rid of the Read More

Chushingura

Actors: Koshiro Matsumoto, Yuzo Kayama, Chusha Ichikawa, Toshiro Mifune, Yoko Tsukasa

Synopsis: This sweeping historical epic has sometimes been labelled the Gone with the Wind of Japan; at any rate, it's almost the same length as Gone (the film was originally released in two parts). Chusha Ichikawa plays a powerful and ruthless feudal lord who battles virtuous young noble Yuzo Kayama. Ichikawa Read More

Different Sons

Synopsis: Different Sons was originally released in Japan as Futari no Musuko. When Kensuki (Akira Takarada) marries a bar hostess, he is disowned by his family--who, truth to tell, aren't much higher on the social scale than Kensuki's bride. Over the years, Kensuki's financial condition improves by leaps Read More

Sanjuro

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Yuzo Kayama, Tatsuya Nakadai, Keiju Kobayashi, Reiko Dan, Takashi Shimura

Synopsis: Set in the mid-19th century when the disintegration of a rigid social structure was turning the once wealthy into paupers, or vice-versa, this kinetic drama by acclaimed Akira Kurosawa features the hero Sanjuro (Toshiro Mifune), one of many samurai whose once traditional positions were fast 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

Yojimbo

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Eijiro Tono, Tatsuya Nakadai, Seizaburo Kawazu, Isuzu Yamada, Hiroshi Tachikawa, Daisuke Kato

Synopsis: Toshiro Mifune portrays a Samurai who finds himself in the middle of a feud-torn Japanese village. Neither side is particularly honorable, but Mifune is hungry and impoverished, so he agrees to work as bodyguard (or Yojimbo) for a silk merchant (Kamatari Fujiwara) against a sake merchant (Takashi Shimura 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

I Bombed Pearl Harbor

Actors: Yosuke Natsuki, Toshiro Mifune, Koji Tsuruta, Misa Uehara, Aiko Mimasu

Synopsis: The attack on Pearl Harbor is presented from the Japanese point of view in this war drama. The story centers upon Natsuki, the flight navigator for Admiral Isoroku Yamaguchi, the task force commander in charge of the fateful attack. After the bombing, Natsuki returns to Japan where his fiance 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

Man Against Man

Synopsis: Two war buddies help each other defend their businesses against gangsters in this crime drama. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Afraid to Die

Actors: Eiji Funakoshi, Yukio Mishima, Takashi Shimura

Synopsis: Yasuzo Masumura's yakuza yarn begins with an assassination attempt on Takeo (played by novelist Yukio Mishima), a gangster about to be released from prison. The assassin kills the wrong guy, however, and Takeo is released. On the run from a rival gang boss (Eiji Funakoshi) whom he wounded before 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

Saga of the Vagabonds

Synopsis: Released in Japan as Sengoku Gunto-Den, Saga of the Vagabonds stars Toshiro Mifune as a feudal bandit. Koji Tsuruta, entrusted with the money that will be used to fund the local warlords' battle against Mifune, is waylaid and robbed. Accused of stealing the money, the disgruntled Tsuruta casts Read More

The Lord Takes a Bride

Actors: Eitaro Shindo, Takashi Shimura

Synopsis: This opulent Japanese swashbuckler stars Ryutaro Ohtomo as a naive young Japanese aristocrat. After being habitually taken advantage of by those wiser and stronger than he, Ohtomo proves his true worth by rescuing a brace of kidnapped heiresses. Alas, the fickle damsels want nothing to do with the Read More

The Hidden Fortress

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Misa Uehara, Kamatari Fujiwara, Minoru Chiaki, Susumu Fujita

Synopsis: Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (original Japanese title: Kakushi Toride No San Akunin) stars Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara as a pair of misfit soldiers. Running from the enemy after a disastrous defeat, the two soldiers fall in with general Toshiro Mifune, who is in search of a huge Read More

Throne of Blood

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Minoru Chiaki, Takashi Shimura, Akira Kubo, Takamaru Sasaki

Synopsis: Macbeth is reimagined as a samurai in feudal Japan in director Akira Kurosawa's classic adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy. Familiar with Orson Welles's more faithful adaptation, Kurosawa chose to place a more personal stamp on his version by translating the events and characters to Read More

The Mysterians

Actors: Kenji Sahara, Yumi Shirakawa, Momoko Kochi, Akihiko Hirata

Synopsis: Most famous for his original Godzilla film in 1956, director Inoshiro Honda is primarily a screenwriter and quite seldom a director. One of his recurrent themes -- the deadly or mutant effects of atomic radiation (as in Godzilla), is also featured in this otherwise routine sci-fi film. The title Read More

Godzilla, King of the Monsters

Actors: Raymond Burr, Takashi Shimura, Momoko Kochi, Akira Takarada, Akihiko Hirata

Synopsis: Filmed in 1954 as Gojira, this grandaddy of all Japanese giant-reptile epics was picked up for American distribution two years later, at which time several newly filmed inserts, featuring Raymond Burr as reporter Steve Martin, were rabetted into the original footage. In both the Japanese and Read More

Samurai 3: Duel at Ganryu Island

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Koji Tsuruta, Kaoru Yachigusa, Michiko Saga, Mariko Okada

Synopsis: Samurai 3: Duel At Ganryu Island is the final movie in director Hiroshi Inagacki's trilogy following a samurai played by Toshiro Mifune. In this film, Mifune is challenged to a duel by his arch-rival (Koji Tsuruta). Before he fights the duel, Mifune is tested by a number of bandits and has to cope Read More

Record of a Living Being

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Eiko Miyoshi, Masao Shimizu, Yutaka Sada

Synopsis: When an elderly, wealthy man decides that nuclear holocaust is eminent in his country, he decides to move his family to Brazil at all costs--a place which, for some mysterious reason, he believes to be safe. His family refuses to move because they fear that the move will jeopardize their financial Read More

Seven Samurai

Actors: Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Yoshio Inaba, Seiji Miyaguchi, Minoru Chiaki, Daisuke Kato, Ko (Isao) Kimura

Synopsis: Akira Kurosawa's epic tale concerns honor and duty during a time when the old traditional order is breaking down. The film opens with master samurai Kambei (Takashi Shimura) posing as a monk to save a kidnapped farmer's child. Impressed by his selflessness and bravery, a group of farmers begs him Read More

Gojira

Synopsis: One of the longest-running series in film history began with Ishiro Honda's grim, black-and-white allegory for the devastation wrought on Japan by the atomic bomb. As his visual metaphor, Honda uses a 400-foot-tall mutant dinosaur called Gojira, awakened from the depths of the sea as a rampaging Read More

The Life of Oharu

Actors: Kinuyo Tanaka, Toshiro Mifune, Ichiro Sugai

Synopsis: Life of Oharu features Kinuyo Tanaka in the title role. Oharu is a middle-aged prostitute in 17th century Japan. As she prays before a statue of Buddha, Oharu reviews her past. Her road to degradation began when, as a teenager, she disgraced her family by falling in love with a samurai (Toshiro Mifune Read More

Ikiru

Actors: Takashi Shimura, Nobuo Kaneko, Kyoko Seki, Miki Odagiri, Makoto Kobori

Synopsis: Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru details the existential struggle of one ordinary man in his desperate search for purpose. Upon learning he has terminal stomach cancer, a low-level government bureaucrat (Takashi Shimura) leaves his job of thirty years without a word to find meaning in the year he has left Read More

Nusumareta Koi

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

Rashomon

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyo, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki

Synopsis: This landmark film is a brilliant exploration of truth and human weakness. It opens with a priest, a woodcutter, and a peasant taking refuge from a downpour beneath a ruined gate in 12th-century Japan. The priest and the woodcutter, each looking stricken, discuss the trial of a notorious bandit Read More

The Idiot

Actors: Masayuki Mori, Toshiro Mifune, Setsuko Hara, Yoshiko Kuga

Synopsis: A former soldier is branded an idiot because of his epileptic seizures caused by wartime experiences. He shows unbridled compassion for people after he moves in with friends of his family as he tries to help a young man ruined by the war and a woman hounded by a wealthy but cruel suitor. All the Read More

Ginza Sanshiro

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

Scandal

Actors: Yoshiko Yamaguchi, Takashi Shimura

Synopsis: Released in Japan as Shubun, Scandal was the eleventh film directed by Akira Kurosawa (it was produced just prior to his more famous Rashomon). The director described it as a "protest" film about press journalism. The film sets forth the theory that the postwar Japanese press was too free in its Read More

Stray Dog

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Awaji, Ko (Isao) Kimura

Synopsis: Akira Kurosawa directs the black-and-white 1949 film noir Nora Inu (released in the U.S. in 1963 as Stray Dog). In his third film with Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune plays young police detective Murakami. One summer day on a crowded bus in Tokyo, his gun is stolen by a pickpocket. Rather than face the Read More

The Quiet Duel

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Noriko Sengoku, Kenjiro Uemura, Chieko Nakakita, Miki Sanjo

Synopsis: A dedicated army surgeon finds his once-bright future suddenly obscured when he contracts syphilis while performing a life-saving operation in this early collaboration between director Akira Kurosawa and Toshirô Mifune. Contaminated with a disease that was virtually incurable in 1940s Japan Read More

Drunken Angel

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Reisaburo Yamamoto, Chieko Nakakita

Synopsis: Originally titled Yoidore tenshi, Drunken Angel was director Akira Kurosawa's first "auteur" project. "I finally discovered myself," he explained later. "It was my picture: I was doing it and no one else." Takashi Shimura plays an alcoholic doctor, running a fleabitten clinic in the slums of Read More

No Regrets for Our Youth

Synopsis: Based on the Takikawa incident of 1933, in which a prominent professor was forced out of his position by the government for his leftist views, Akira Kurosawa directs this socially minded tale about a pure-hearted lass coming to terms with the corrupt nature of the world. Though professor Yagihara Read More

Those Who Make Tomorrow

The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail

Actors: Hanshiro Iwai, Susumu Fujita, Kenichi Enomoto, Denjiro Okochi

Synopsis: Akira Kurosawa's Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail was put together at the last minute when Kurosawa's plan to direct a costume picture called Doko Kono Yari fell through (the producer couldn't get any horses!) Utilizing the costumes, sets and actors already commissioned, Kurosawa spent one long Read More

The Most Beautiful

Synopsis: Following up on his successful directorial debut, soon-to-be cinematic master Akira Kurosawa helms this war-era melodrama about female factory workers dutifully toiling for the greater good of the Imperial war effort. Under the watchful eye of their paternalistic factory manager (played by Kurosawa Read More

Sanshiro Sugata

Actors: Susumu Fujita, Denjiro Okochi, Yukiko Todoroki, Ryonosuke Tsukigata, Akitake Kono

Synopsis: This first effort by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa was originally released as Sanshiro Sugata . The film, made under reasonably smooth conditions despite the war, is based on a best-selling novel about the creation of Judo. Most of the film explores the relationship between the creator of this Read More

Ketto Takadanobaba

Actors: Tsumasaburo Bando, Tokuma Dan, Ryosuke Kagawa, Takashi Shimura