Daisuke Katō
Daisuke Katō (加東 大介 Katō Daisuke, February 18, 1911 – July 31, 1975) was a Japanese actor who appeared in over 150 films, including Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (as the loyal comrade Shichiroji), Rashomon, Yojimbo (as the "wild pig" Inokichi), Ikiru, and Hiroshi Inagaki's... Read full bio →
Featured Characters
Roles you can spot in Whatthemovie snapshots
Rikugun Nakano gakkô: Kaisen zen'ya
The last film in the series brings the tale to the doorstep of Pacific War, with the planning of the bombing of Pearl Harbor dominant in Nakano Spy School.
Rikugun Nakano gakko: Ryu-sango shirei
In late 1940 the Japanese were anxious to conclude peace in China and to that end sent Colonel Hidaka to inaugurate negotiations. He was mysteriously assassinated, however, when his car was blown up.
Rikugun Nakano gakko: Mitsumei
In the fourth film of series, Secret Assignment, Raizo again plays the Jiro Shiina. This time he's out to discover who is spying for the British in the Foreign Ministry, under the code name “Cat's Eye”.
Nihon no ichiban nagai hi
Following the detonation of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese military and the government clash over the demand from the Allies for unconditional surrender. Minister of the Army Anami leads the military officers who propose to fight on, even to the death of every Japanese citizen.
Midaregumo
A man falls in love with the widow of a man he killed in a car accident. Eventually she falls in love with him in return.
Rikugun Nakano gakko
Nakano Institution is the so-called ‘Spy School’ where many young men are trained to be excellent spies. They erase their names, families, even lovers to bury themselves in training. Jiro, one of the cadets, successfully seize the secret code of English army to pass the final exam.
Abare Gôemon
Farmer Abare Goemon is confronted by brigand-like samurai. He raises an army of farmers to fight them and does so brilliantly. When Lord Asakura sees the success Goemon has achieved, he attempts to recruit him to fight in a conflict between Asakura and another clan. Goemon refuses, and Lord Asakura sets out to destroy him.
Sugata Sanshiro
The story of Sanshiro Sugata, a young man who wants to learn the new art of judo. A wise teacher reveals to Sanshiro that judo is not merely a means of combat nor a demonstration of physical skill, but an art which reveals the artist to himself.
Kuro no chôtokkyu
A man operates a small real estate business near Osaka. A man from Tokyo asks for help in buying a large tract of land in order, he says, to build an automobile factory. But by accident the realtor learns that the Tokaido Railway Line is going to be built directly across the land just acquired. Also known as Black Super Express
Sanma no aji
Shuhei Hirayama is a widower with a 24-year-old daughter. Gradually, he comes to realize that she should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life, so he arranges a marriage for her.
Hôrô-ki
Based on the life and career of novelist Fumiko Hayashi, she bitterly struggles for literary recognition in the first half of the 20th-century – her affairs with feckless men, the jobs she took to survive (peddler, waitress, bar maid), and her arduous, often humiliating attempts to get published in a male-dominated culture.
Chûshingura
After their lord is tricked into committing ritual suicide, forty-seven samurai warriors await the chance to avenge their master and reclaim their honor.
Yôjinbô
A crafty ronin comes to a town divided by two criminal gangs and decides to play them against each other to free the town.
Kohayagawa-ke no aki
The Kohayakawa family is thrown into distress when childlike father Manbei takes up with his old mistress, in one of Ozu’s most deftly modulated blendings of comedy and tragedy.
Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki
Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her demanding mother and brother, and knowing she's growing older.
Musume tsuma haha
Sanae is left a widow after her prestigious husband dies, but holds the proceeds of a million yen insurance policy. Being childless, her former in-laws have no objection to her return to her own family.
Anzukko
Anzukko (Little Peach) is the daughter of a successful writer. She turns down each one of her suitors, until she marries a beginning writer named Ryokichi. Their life quickly sinks into despair.
Soshun
A young salaryman and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he embarks on an extramarital affair.
Nagareru
Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mothers trade in the late days of Geisha. But Otsuta will not give up. This film portraits the day time life of geisha when not entertaining customers.
Miyamoto Musashi kanketsuhen: kettô Ganryûjima
Musashi Miyamoto is challenged to a duel by a confident swordsman Sasaki Kojiro. He agrees to fight him in a year's time.
Akasen chitai
Follows five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation debates the passage of an anti-prostitution law.
Zoku Miyamoto Musashi: Ichijôji no kettô
After years on the road establishing his reputation as Japan's greatest fencer, Takezo returns to Kyoto. Otsu waits for him, yet he has come not for her but to challenge the leader of the region's finest school of fencing. To prove his valor and skill, he walks deliberately into ambushes set up by the school's followers.
Ukigumo
This film is based on flashbacks, which I'll ignore here for the sake of clarity. Married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.
Chiyari Fuji
Tragicomic road movie set during the Edo period. It follows a samurai, his two servants – including spear-carrier Genpachi – and the various people they meet on their journey, including a policeman in pursuit of a thief, a young child and a woman who is to be sold into prostitution.
Shichinin no samurai
Seven Samurai is the masterpiece from Akira Kurosawa from 1954 in which a town hires an old samurai to protect their village. A mix of action, comedy, and social drama. This epic film is an intimate look into the powerful emotions of the characters and named the greatest film in Japanese cinema history.
Miyamoto Musashi
Starring Toshiro Mifune as Musashi Miyamoti, this first film in Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy won a 1956 Honorary Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Struggling to elevate himself from his low caste in 17th century Japan, Mayamoto trains to become a mighty samurai warrior. In the film's bracing climax, Miyamoto finally gets a chance to prove himself.
Bangiku
What is the life of a Geisha like once her beauty has faded and she has retired? Kin has saved, and become a wealthy money-lender, spending her days coldly collecting debts. Even her best friends, fellow Geisha Tomi, Nobu, and Tamae, are now indebted to her.
Okaasan
A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family.
Ikiru
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
Rashômon
In ancient Japan a crime take place as told from three different travelers who have experienced the crime: a man being killed and his wife being raped. Which if any of the stories is true? A Akira Kurosawa film about morals, truth, and communication.
Genroku Chûshingura
The legendary Forty-seven ronin plot to avenge the death of their lord, Asano Naganori, by killing Kira Yoshinaka, a shogunate official responsible for Asano being forced to commit seppuku.
Ninjô kami fûsen
In a slum in Edo Japan, a ronin hopes that his deceased father's former master will hire him while a disgraced hairdresser attempts to regain his pride by kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy pawnbroker, who is set to be married.
Kôchiyama Sôshun
After a young shopkeeper steals the knife of one of his costumers, a samurai, a chain of increasingly complex events is set into motion.