Eiko Miyoshi
Eiko Miyoshi (April 8, 1894 – July 28, 1963) was a Japanese actress. She was born in Tokyo. Her husband was the film producer Nobuyoshi Morita. She appeared in many Toho films, including those directed by Akira Kurosawa. Her birth name was Haru Miyata, and her real name after... Read full bio →
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Roles you can spot in Whatthemovie snapshots
Ohayô
Two boys beg their parents for a television set, nagging them until all patience is lost. The parents order the boys to be quiet and the boys do exactly that--refusing to utter a word. The boys' silence ultimately puts the whole neighborhood into turmoil.
Aru kengo no shogai
Edmund Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac, transplanted to Japan. A poet-warrior with an oversized nose (matched only by his great heart) loves a lady. But she sees him only as a friend, so he helps another man to woo her by giving him the poetry of his own heart.
Kakushi-toride no san-akunin
Lured by gold, two greedy peasants escort a man and woman across enemy lines. However, they do not realize that their companions are actually a princess and her general.
Tôkyô boshoku
Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot take the truth of being abandoned as a child.
Kuroi kawa
The story follows a university student who moves into an apartment building and becomes involved with a waitress. The landlord then attempts to evict the tenants and sell the building through illicit means.
Kumonosu-jô
Mikio and Washizu are the commanders of the 1st and 2nd Fortress under a local lord, who reigns in the Spiders' Web Castle. After defeating the lord's enemies in battle, they visit the fortress. Washizu, driven by his wife, conspires and murders the lord, becoming lord of the castle. But his evil deeds come back to haunt him.
Donzoko
Residents of a rundown boardinghouse in 19th-century Japan, including a mysterious old man and an aging actor, get drawn into a love triangle that turns violent. When amoral thief Sutekichi breaks off his affair with landlady Osugi to romance her younger sister, Okayo, Osugi extracts her revenge by revealing her infidelity to her jealous husband.
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.
Ikimono no kiroku
Kiichi Nakajima (Toshirō Mifune), an elderly foundry owner convinced that Japan will be affected by an imminent nuclear war, resolves to move his family to safety in Brazil. His family decides to have him ruled incompetent and Dr. Harada (Takashi Shimura), a Domestic Court counselor, attempts to arbitrate.
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.
Entotsu no mieru basho
Where Chimneys Are Seen focuses primarily on the interconnected lives of two couples in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Senju, a poor industrial section of Tokyo.
Okaasan
A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family.
Karumen junjô su
Strip dancer Carmen falls in love with Hajime, who is engaged to the daughter of a right-wing politician.
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.
Hakuchi
Kameda, who has been in an asylum on Okinawa, travels to Hokkaido. There he becomes involved with two women, Taeko and Ayako. Taeko comes to love Kameda, but is loved in turn by Akama. When Akama realizes that he will never have Taeko, his thoughts turn to murder, and great tragedy ensues.
Nora inu
In Akira Kurosawa's gritty Stray Dog, a young police detective gets his pistol stolen on a crowded bus during the oppressive heat of a late 1940s Tokyo summer. The gun is later used in a robbery and murder making finding it even more important.
Waga seishun ni kuinashi
After her anti-fascist professor father is dismissed, Yukie navigates love, political repression, and wartime upheaval—ultimately forging her own path in pre- and post-WWII Japan.
Utajo oboegaki
Uta’s mother died when she was six years old; her father she never met. She was forced to adopt a traveller’s life when her grandmother died, and now she is a dancer and part of a family of actors who travel from town to town, setting up street performances.