Takao Saitō Movies

A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six...

A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.

Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between...

Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him...

A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the...

Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Kurosawa's tightly paced, beautifully composed "Sanjuro." In this companion piece and...

Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa’s own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier’s ghosts, a walk...

In this loose adaptation of "Hamlet," illegitimate son Kôichi Nishi climbs to a high position within a Japanese corporation and marries the...

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...

An elderly Nagasaki hibakusha spends a summer caring for her four grandchildren, whose curiosity about the 1945 bombing stirs buried memories and...

On a Tokyo dump’s shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who “drives” an imaginary trolley, a...

In postwar Tokyo, beloved writer-professor Hyakken Uchida retires and is buoyed through hardship by the fierce devotion of his former students, who...

Lt. Col. Senda resists the idea of sending Japanese fighter pilots on suicide missions. He believes that what is really necessary for Japan to regain...

During World War II, Japan sends gold to the Phillipines. After the war, the gold is lost in the bay of Manille. Former soldier Takeichi Matsuo is...

An adventurous and daring sailor sets sail to the castle of an ailing king to stop an evil premier, hungry for power and wealth, from succeeding the...

Documentary made by Toho for the Masterworks reissue of all of its Kurosawa films. This one focuses on "The Hidden Fortress" (1958).

A group of travelers is stranded in a small country inn when the river floods during heavy rains. As the bad weather continues, tensions rise amongst...

Japan, February 1868. As the Tokugawa shogunate declines and the power of Emperor Meiji grows, Gonzo, a soldier of the Restoration Army, returns to...

In Hong Kong an International Secret Police (ISP) Agent is murdered while investigating ZZZ, a group bent on assassinating the Prime Minister of...

Captain Murakami takes over as skipper of the Azuma Maru, replacing the well-liked former captain. Murakami forces the crew to work harder than they...