Minoru Chiaki
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Minoru Chiaki (千秋 実 Chiaki Minoru) was a Japanese actor who appeared in such films as Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress. In Seven Samurai he was the good-natured samurai Heihachi. Later in his career he appeared as a... Read full bio →
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Roles you can spot in Whatthemovie snapshots
Rashômon
1950
Tanin no kao
A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his new doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality and causing him to question his identity.
Tengoku to jigoku
An executive on the outs with his company gets in deeper when he pays off kidnappers who have abducted the wrong boy.
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.
Yôtô monogatari: hana no Yoshiwara hyakunin-giri
A successful textile industrialist from the provinces, who is beloved by his employees for his kindness, cannot find a wife because of a disfiguring birthmark on his face. Even the courtesans in Yoshiwara refuse to entertain him, until an indentured peasant prostitute, Tamarazu, takes the unsavoury assignment and treats him with brash tenderness.
Ningen no jôken (II)
As a conscript in war-time Japan's military, a pacifist struggles to maintain his determination to keep his ideals.
Gigantis: The Fire Monster
A prehistoric monster called Gigantis emerges alongside another creature named Angurus.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Gojira no gyakushû
Two pilots race back to Japan to inform the government of two giant monsters locked in battle. Soon the world comes to the realization, that a monster closely related to the original Godzilla is on the loose as well as a new monster named Angilas. Soon, the two monsters arrive in Osaka where they resume their battle.
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.
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.
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.
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.