Shinichiro Ikebe

Nobutora - Samurai Tiger (2021)

Based on the historical figure of Nobutora, the father of the famous Warring States period general Takeda Shingen. Takeda Shingen has proven himself in battle but there's an even more capable person in his family, his father Nobutora (lit. Samurai Tiger). ...

Haruko's Doll (2018)

In the early days of the Showa era in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture a newborn baby is abandoned with a doll under the eaves of a merchant house along the pilgrimage route in Shikoku. It seems to be a pilgrim struggling to make a living. This baby girl is nam ...

Climbing to Spring (2014)

Toru grew up in alpine countryside around Mount Tate. As a child, he resented the yearly trek up the mountain with his father to prepare their mountain hut for the summer season of climbers. When Toru grows up, he leaves his hometown and enters the working ...

The Summit: A Chronicle Of Stones to Serenity (2009)

In 1907, a group of men climb an unconquered peak in the last unmapped region of Japan. ...

Glory to the Filmmaker! (2007)

Takeshi Kitano plays a version of himself in which he's a struggling director cycling through a number of different genres in an effort to complete his latest project. ...

The Ode to Joy (2006)

Based on the true story of the Bandō prisoner-of-war camp in World War I. It depicts the friendship of the German POWs with the director of the camp and local residents at the stage of Naruto, Tokushima Prefecture, in Japan. ...

Summer of Ubume (2005)

Kyogokudo is a used book seller who doubles as an onmyouji, or Heian style occultist. His friend Sekiguchi brings him the story of a woman who has been pregnant for twenty months. Sekiguchi investigates further with the help of his friend Enokizu, a detect ...

The Milkwoman (2005)

Minako (TANAKA Yuko), begins her day running up and down the hills of her hometown delivering milk door to door. When that's done, she heads to her day job as a supermarket cashier. Minako is 50 and single. In one of the houses to which she delivers milk i ...

Winter Days (2003)

An animated film based on one of the renku (collaborative linked poems) in the 1684 collection of the same name by the 17th-century Japanese poet Bashō. The creation of the film followed the traditional collaborative nature of the source material – the ...

Spy Sorge (2003)

A foreign spy using the Sorge alias is assigned to Tokyo the capital of Japan just prior to the outbreak of World War II and in the midst of the Japanese imperial ambitions in Eastern Asia. The spy becomes acquainted with a sympathetic communist who like h ...

Ino Tadataka: Meridian Dreams (2001)

Biographical story, based on life of Ino Tadataka, a Japanese measurer and cartographer. Ino Tadataka travelled the length and breadth of Japan on foot for 17 years from the age of 55 to perform his surveys. The accuracy of his maps also owed much to the f ...

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001)

A down-and-out businessman travels to a seaside town, where he meets a woman with unusual sexual powers. ...

Closed Ward (2001)

Boy's Choir (2000)

A young teen's father dies, and he is sent to an orphanage. He's teased because he stutters almost runs away, until a beautiful, androgynous boy, Yasuo, convinces him to join the choir. ...

Colorful (2000)

Upon reaching the train station to death, a dejected soul is informed that he is "lucky" and will have another chance at life. He is placed in the body of a 14-year-old boy named Makoto Kobayashi, who has just committed suicide. ...

Murder on D Street (1998)

Detective Kogoro Akechi is faced with a peculiar murder case involving forgeries of classic pornographic artworks. ...

The Eel (1997)

A businessman kills his adulterous wife and is sent to prison. After his release, he opens a barbershop and meets new people, talking to almost no one except for an eel he befriended while in prison. ...

Moonlight Serenade (1997)

After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, a writer remembers travelling with his family to bury his brother after World War II. ...

Paradise of Paradise (1993)

A composer who can no longer compose music is led back to the past by his mother's voice. As a boy in the past, he encounters various characters, including a wild samurai and a king of the mountain forests, and arrives at the Paradise of Paradises. ...

Madadayo (1993)

In postwar Tokyo, beloved writer-professor Hyakken Uchida retires and is buoyed through hardship by the fierce devotion of his former students, who honor him each year with a raucous "Not yet!" birthday toast. Told in warm, gently comic vignettes, Kurosawa ...

The Great Shogunate Battle (1991)

The early days of the Tokugawa shogunate are brought to light in this exciting historical tale of broken vows and violent swordplay. In an ambush the heir to the shogun's seat is brutally cut down by those who hope to install the emperor's 5th son as milit ...

Rhapsody in August (1991)

An elderly Nagasaki hibakusha spends a summer caring for her four grandchildren, whose curiosity about the 1945 bombing stirs buried memories and moral questions. When an American nephew from Hawaii visits, the family confronts grief, guilt, and the possib ...

Dohten (1991)

Jubei is a Japanese merchant who learns tricks from Western merchants to get ahead in the game. ...

Sea of ​​Wandering (1990)

Set in Osaka just after the end of the war, the story depicts an unconventional merchant who returns from evacuation. The film is based on the novel of the same name written by Teru Miyamoto, and the screenplay was written by Eizo Sugawa, who also wrote "H ...

Making of 'Dreams' (1990)

This 150-minute documentary, directed by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi on the set of Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, features behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with cast and crew. ...

Dreams (1990)

Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa's own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier's ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh's canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity's ...

Takeshi: Childhood Days (1990)

A story of childhood life during wartime Japan. Takeshi, the intelligent son of a fisherman, is the schoolyard bully. When his cousin comes to stay with his family to avoid bombing raids, Takeshi at first treats him well, then begins bullying him too. Take ...

Days with Harasu (1989)

The movie depicts the interaction between a childless middle-aged couple and a small dog. ...

Labyrinth Romanesque (1988)

A serial killing occurs at a port town brothel. ...

Zegen (1987)

At the time between the World Wars, Japan is involved in empire-building throughout East and Southeast Asia. After a brief career as a low-level military adventurer, Iheiji sets up chains of brothels throughout Asia. As Japan's power in the region grows, s ...

Surgical Designs in Flames (1986)

A story of the skilled brain surgeon, Todo, whose talent and ambition are put to test through a series of high risk surgical procedures. ...

Gray Sunset (1985)

Grandfather Fuyukichi Takano, a former university professor, gets fired from his museum job when he is affected by Alzheimer's disease, but his affliction serves to deepen family ties. ...

MacArthur's Children (1984)

In this drama at the end of World War II, the inhabitants of a small Japanese fishing village must come to terms with their nation's defeat and the sudden occupation of General MacArthur and his troops. ...

Future Boy Conan: The Big Giant Robot's Resurrection (1984)

In the aftermath of a war fought by magnetic weapons which caused massive earthquakes, a young and spunky boy naned Conan gets involved in a grand adventure. Conan lives in a world that is mostly oceans; the major land masses having been destroyed by the w ...

The Ballad of Narayama (1983)

In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse they would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. Bu ...

Eternal Monument (1982)

A remake of the 1953 film of the same name. ...

Eijanaika (1981)

The film depicts carnivalesque atmosphere summed up by the cry "Ei ja nai ka" ("Why not?") in Japan in 1867 and 1868 in the days leading to the Meiji Restoration. It examines the effects of the political and social upheaval of the time, and culminates in a ...

Kagemusha (1980)

Akira Kurosawa's lauded feudal epic presents the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid attacks by competing clans. When Shingen dies, his generals reluctantly agree to have the impostor take over ...

Vengeance Is Mine (1979)

A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu is on the run from the police. ...

Akai Hana (1976)

Adaptation of a manga by Yoshiharu Tsuge. ...

Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (1975)

A mountain man beheads his many wives to prove his love to an alluring woman he meets in an enchanted forest. ...

Dream Island Girl (1974)

A boy rescues a girl who has collapsed in a river, from their exchanges and memories a tale of loneliness and meaningful connection gradually unfolds. ...

Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create: 'Drunken Angel' (2002)

Documentary made by Toho for the Masterworks reissue of all of its Kurosawa films. This one focuses on "Drunken Angel" (1948). ...

Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create: 'Kagemusha' (2002)

Documentary made by Toho for the Masterworks reissue of all of its Kurosawa films. This one focuses on "Kagemusha" (1980). ...

Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create: 'Seven Samurai' (2002)

Documentary made by Toho for the Masterworks reissue of all of its Kurosawa films. This one focuses on "Seven Samurai" (1954). ...

Paradise of Paradise (1993)

A composer who can no longer compose music is led back to the past by his mother's voice. As a boy in the past, he encounters various characters, including a wild samurai and a king of the mountain forests, and arrives at the Paradise of Paradises. ...