Kei Satō
Kei Satō (佐藤 慶, Satō Kei; born December 21, 1928 in Aizuwakamatsu – May 2, 2010) was a Japanese character actor and narrator. He is known for his work with Japanese New Wave director Nagisa Oshima, and for several films with Kaneto Shindo, such as Onibaba and Kuroneko. He won... Read full bio →
Featured Characters
Roles you can spot in Whatthemovie snapshots
Onibaba
1964
Gerumaniumu no yoru
Rou has returned to the monastery he was raised in. As he listens to the whispering of the Gods through his germanium radio, Rou defies God in every which way and puts religion to the test.
Azumi
In war-torn Japan, the Tokugawa Shogun, desperate to restore peace to his people, orders the assassination of the hostile warlords. A beautiful young woman is raised from birth with nine other orphans, to become an assassin. Her name is AZUMI, the ultimate assassin.
Gohatto
Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering around a handsome young samurai named Sozaburo Kano.
Rônin-gai
Near the end of Japanese civil war, several disgraced ronin living in Edo's red light district attempt to regain their honor by defending a brothel from a hostile militia bent on wiping out local prostitutes.
Gokudô no onna-tachi
While her husband is in prison doing time, Tamaki, the wife of a yakuza capo, runs her spouse’s gang with an iron hand. Meanwhile, Makoto, her younger sister, marries a member of a rival band after being raped by him. The two sisters, united by blood ties but married to enemy yakuzas, will ultimately have to decide whose side they’re on.
Godzilla 1985
Originally released in Japan as "The Return of Godzilla" in 1984, this is the heavily re-edited, re-titled "Godzilla 1985".
Gojira
After a fishing boat is attacked, the sole surviving crew member realizes it is none other than a resurrected Godzilla. However, efforts to bring the story to light are suppressed by the Japanese government amid growing political tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, who are both willing to bomb Japan to stop the monster.
Yajû shisubeshi
A policeman is murdered and his gun, stolen, used to commit the next crime. Detective Kashiwagi, who is leading the investigation, learns that the author of the killings "walks like a dead man".
Taiyō wo nusunda otoko
A high school science teacher builds an atomic bomb and uses it to extort the nation, but cannot decide what he wants. Meanwhile, a determined cop is catching up to him, as is radiation poisoning.
Sûpâ gun redei Wani Bunsho
Mika Hino is a sharp-shooting investigator that belongs to the infamous "Gator Branch.” When an executive board member of a trading company is accused of being involved in a bribery, Mika is assigned to keep watch over him. A few nights later her target is found dead outside of his 30 floor office building.
Satsujin yûgi
The second movie of Tôru Murakawa's "Game" trilogy. After making a sensational hit, a hitman has gone into hiding for five years. When he comes back he bumps into two women that he has spared five years ago. Two rival yakuza bosses hire Narumi to kill the other. Will Narumi's sense of chivalry entrap him again?
Ai no borei
In a small Japanese village at the end of the 19th century, a rickshaw driver's wife takes on a much younger lover and the two conspire to murder him.
Yakuza no hakaba: Kuchinashi no hana
A police investigator cracks down on yakuza business, but once he realizes the police are in negotiations with certain factions, he sides with his own syndicate of choice.
Shin Zatôichi monogatari: Kasama no chimatsuri
Zatoichi, the famed blind swordsman, returns to his home village for the first time in many years. He is befriended by Omiyo, who had the same wet-nurse as Zatoichi. He also encounters a boyhood friend, Shinbei, who is now wealthy and appears not to remember Zatoichi.
Goyôkiba: Kamisori Hanzô jigoku zeme
Against the backdrop of the Edo treasury devaluing currency and driving many into poverty, Hanzo Itami enforces the law without regard to status. He shows inadequate respect to the treasurer, who wants him dead.
Natsu no imôto
Sunaoko come to Okinawa to find his brother Tsuruo. Her searching is not very painless because it tears up old wounds in complicated relationships, some of which date back to the horrors of war.
Gishiki
Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades.
Nippon no akuryo
Murase is a bodyguard of yakuza group. Ochiai is a police officer who once was a student activist. When they meet, they are surprised how identical they look. So they swtiched their positions. Murase investigates the case he was involved. Ochiai feels rather comfortable in the world of yakuza. They begin to feel sympathy for each other...
Yotsuya kaidan - Oiwa no borei
About 1786 the doings of a demented lord results in many masterless samurai, including Iyemon (Kei Sato) who is used to luxury and cannot adjust to the hand-to-mouth conditions & piecework of umbrella making. Having hired ruffians to make him look like a superior swordsman, he arranges for himself the opportunity of a profitable marriage.
Shinjuku dorobô nikki
This is the story of a bookstore thief named Birdy, who is led through various adventures in Tokyo's Shinjuku district by salesgirl Umeko.
Yabu no naka no kuroneko
In the Sengoku period, a woman and her daughter are raped and murdered by soldiers during a time of civil war. Afterwards, a series of samurai returning from the war through that area are found mysteriously dead with their throats torn out. The governor calls in a wild and fierce young hero to quell what is evidently an Onryō ghost.
Kôshikei
A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but somehow survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.
Kaette kita yopparai
Three students spend their holidays at the seaside where they are mistaken for Koreans, a minority which is looked down on in Japan. The action develops into a crime story.
Ninja bugei-chô
The son of an assassinated feudal lord, in the Muromachi period, attempts to avenge his father's death and meets Kagemaru, a renegade ninja helping peasants and farmers rebel against Oda Nobunaga's regime, all depicted through an experimental form of filming pages from the original manga set to sound.
Muri shinjû: Nihon no natsu
A sex-obsessed young woman, a suicidal young man she meets on the street, a gun-crazy wannabe gangster—these are just three of the irrational, oddball anarchists trapped in an underground hideaway in Oshima’s devilish, absurdist portrait of what he deemed the “death drive” in Japanese youth culture.
Ju-ichinin no samurai
The lord of the Oshi fief is killed by his trespassing neighbour, the cruel and despotic Nariatsu, son of the former Shogun. After an investigation, the Oshi clan is blamed for what happened and sentenced to be disbanded. Eleven of the best samurai of the clan refuse the sentence and are willing to give their life for justice.
Zatoichi no uta ga kikoeru
Zatoichi comes upon a dying man who asks him to give a bag of money to "Taichi". Zatoichi has no idea who this is but when he comes upon a small town harassed by gangsters, he finds that "Taichi" was the man's young son. Along his travels he also met a blind monk who makes Zatoichi question his murderous lifestyle.
Irezumi
Otsuya, the daughter of a rich merchant, elopes with her lover Shinsuke, an employee of her father's. During their flight, Otsuya's beauty attracts the gaze of Seikichi, a mysterious master tattooist who sees her pristine white skin as the perfect canvas for his art.
Hakuchû no tôrima
Two young women must come to terms with the fact that a man they're deeply linked to is a murdering rapist.
Dai-bosatsu tôge
Through his unconscionable actions against others, a sociopath samurai builds a trail of vendettas that follow him closely.
Ken ki
Hanpei is a gentle young samurai who loves flowers. But one day he witnesses an old mans quick draw of the sword. He is so impressed that he becomes the old mans pupil. Soon Hanpeis skill of sword comes to attention of his lord. The lord orders him to assassinate a man...
Ibun Sarutobi Sasuke
Years of warfare end in a Japan unified under the Tokugawa shogunate, and samurai spy Sasuke Sarutobi, tired of conflict, longs for peace. When a high-ranking spy named Tatewaki Koriyama defects from the shogun to a rival clan, however, the world of swordsmen is thrown into turmoil.
Onibaba
While her son, Kichi, is away at war, a woman and her daughter-in-law survive by killing samurai who stray into their swamp, then selling whatever valuables they find. Both are devastated when they learn that Kichi has died, but his wife soon begins an affair with a neighbor who survived the war, Hachi.
Miyamoto Musashi: Ichijôji no kettô
In the fourth installment, Musashi's potentially greatest opponent Kojiro jumps in and out of the story at the oddest and most coincidental moments. As his great love Otsu has succumbed to madness. Musashi then sets off to beat the functionaries of a treacherous clan in an arranged duel. 73 against one.
Kaidan
A classic collection of four Japanese Horror stories. Features "Black Hair", "The Woman in the Snow", "Hoichi the Earless" and "In a Cup of Tea"
Bushidô zankoku monogatari
After a salary-man's fiancée attempts suicide, he recounts his gruesome family history which saw generations of his ancestors suffer and sacrifice themselves for the sake of their cruel lords.
Seppuku
When a ronin requesting seppuku at a feudal lord's palace is told of the brutal suicide of another ronin who previously visited, he reveals how their pasts are intertwined - and in doing so challenges the clan's integrity.
Otoshiana
A man wanders into a seemingly deserted town with his young son in search of work. But after a bit of bad luck, he joins the town's population of lost souls.
Karami-ai
A dying businessman intends to will ¥200 million to his three illegitimate children, but his associates scheme to take advantage of the situation.
Taiyô no hakaba
In Osaka's slum, capricious folks without futures engage in pilfering, assault and robbery, prostitution, and the trading of ID cards and blood.
Seishun zankoku monogatari
A budding gangster enthralls a freeloading young woman, soon taking advantage of her knack for hitch-hiking to rob middle-class, middle-aged men.
Nihon no yoru to kiri
Long takes and a highly theatrical visual approach combine to form a tense and confrontational look at the decline of a socialist student activists' movement in Japan.
Ningen no jôken (II)
As a conscript in war-time Japan's military, a pacifist struggles to maintain his determination to keep his ideals.