Movies: Shinichiro Ikebe

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...

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 tak...

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, Ku...

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 mounta...

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

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. Japan's submission to the 58th Academy Awards for the Academy Awa...

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

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 gr...

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

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 wr...

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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....

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....

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....

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...

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

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

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....

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 ...

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 – t...