Tatsuya Nakadai Movies

Precisely thirty-years after first bringing star detective Kosuke Kindaichi to the screen in The Inugami Family, acclaimed Japanese director Kon Ichikawa returns to follow author Seishi Yokomizo's super sleuth on his most challenging case. World War II has recently drawn to a close, and as powerful pharmaceutical executive and notoriously ruthless family patriarch Sahei Inugami (Tatsuya Nakadai) lays dying in his Nasu deathbed, his heirs all gather around to hear the reading of the will. Unfortunately for his eager offspring Sahei expires before summoning the strength to name his heirs, and family lawyer Furadate (Atsuo Nakamura) states that the will cannot be read aloud until all family members are present and accounted for. As eldest daughter Matsuko (Sumiko Fuji) sends for her war-ravaged son in Fukuoka, the lawyer's assistant contacts detective Kindiachi (Koji Ishizaka) with concerns about foul play. No sooner does the assistant voice his suspicions than he drops dead due to poisoning, and the eagle-eyed gumshoe begins working around the clock to crack the case. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Veteran filmmaker Kihachi Okamoto revives his similarly named 1960s television series about happy-go-lucky avenger-for-hire Sukeroku (Hiroyuki Sanada) who prefers to brandish a wooden pole or a rope rather than a sword. The film opens with Sukeroku returning to his home in the mountainous Joshu region after a seven-year absence to visit his mother's grave. He quickly encounters not only old flame Osen (Kyoka Suzuki) -- who is still clearly in love with him -- but also his boyhood rival Taro (Takehiro Murata) -- who tells him that local samurai Katakura (film legend Tatsuya Nakadai) is the target of revenge. Sukeroku tries to get hired as one of the avengers but is told that four professionals have already been hired for the job. When the dignified Katakura meets his fate, Sukeroku begins to plot revenge on a more personal note. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Akira Kurosawa was arguably the most important Japanese filmmaker who ever lived; he was certainly among the most revered and most influential. His award-winning feature Rashomon was one of the first major international successes in Japanese filmmaking, convincing many western cineastes for the first time that Japan had a national cinema worth investigating, and his subsequent body of work -- including Ikiru, The Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, and Ran -- is emotionally rich and esthetically compelling in a way few filmmakers can match. Kurosawa is a documentary which explores the personal and professional lives of this giant of world cinema, including interviews with his friends, family, contemporaries, actors, fellow filmmakers, and noted cinema historians -- and in archival clips, Kurosawa himself. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Shortly before his death in 1998, Akira Kurosawa completed a screenplay entitled Ame Agaru, based on a short story by Shugoro Yamamoto. Kurosawa passed on before he could bring this story to the screen, but one of his assistants, Takashi Koizumi, has directed a film adapted from the script, following as closely as possible the style of the master. Ihei Misawa (Akira Terao) is a ronin, a samurai without a master, whose skills with a sword make him a valuable employee but whose brutal honesty and lack of social graces prevent him from staying with one master for too long. One night, Ihei impulsively offers to buy food and drink for the guests at a hotel; he doesn't have the money to pay, and to raise cash he concocts a scheme to take on anyone brave enough to fight him for a prize. Ihei's fighting skills impress Lord Shigeaki (Shiro Mifune), who offers him a position as fencing master in his court. Ihei gratefully accepts, but when Shigeaki challenges him to a fight, Ihei beats the Lord decisively. Ihea is certain that he's managed to throw another opportunity away when a band of mercenaries attacks him, and his skills as a swordsman are put to the ultimate test. This traditionally styled samurai story harkens back to Kurosawa's best-known works, and features Shiro Mifune, the son of Toshiro Mifune, one of Kurosawa's favorite actors, in a key role. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Acclaimed filmmaker, actor, and head of the Sogetsu school of Ikebana, Hiroshi Teshigahara spins this sequel of sorts to his 1991 work Rikyu. In that film, tea ceremony master Sen no Rikyu dares to speak his conscience and is in turn forced to commit suicide by his ill-tempered master, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. This film deals with Rikyu's gifted protégé, Furuta Oribe, who reinvented the tea ceremony. The film centers on Gohime (Rie Miyazawa), a vivacious tomboy living on Hideyoshi's estate who soon develops a strong friendship with Oribe (played by screen legend Tatsuya Nakadai). When the brash young Gohime learns that officials looking to curry favor with Hideyoshi have publicly exhibited Rikyu's head, she and Oribe's gallant gardener Usu (Toshiya Nagasawa) retrieve it and place the disembodied body part at Rikyu's gravesite. Fearing that he could implicate his master, Usu decides to leave, but not before making love to the princess. Twenty years later, the three are able to meet once again but in very different circumstances. Oribe is now the tea master for Hideyoshi's rival, Ieyasu; Usu is a lonely mountain man. And the princess is living with her birth family and Hideyoshi ally, the Maeda clan. As things look increasingly bleak for her family -- Ieyasu exiled her husband -- the princess has Oribe lead the spring tea ceremony at the Maedas, a nudge to the ribs of authority. Lead actress Rie Miyazawa was a wildly popular teen idol who shocked the country by releasing a nude photo book of herself the same year this film was released. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

This gripping docudrama is a fictionalized account of what could happen to a Japanese family when one of their sons shames them in front of the entire nation. Director Masaki Kobayashi has used real events so the dramatic turns in the film are based on fact -- a 1970s shootout in the mountains between a band of Japanese terrorists and the police in which many men on both sides died. The Kidoji family bids good-bye to their son Otohiko (Kiichi Nakai) as he heads off for the mountains, keeping his objective a secret from them. After the shootout, other families publicly apologized for their sons' behavior out of a deep-seated sense of responsibility. Not so Otohiko's father -- he goes against cultural norms and says his son is an adult and is solely responsible for his own actions. The agony caused by society's stigma, the son's actions, and the father's lonely stance drive Otohiko's mother to suicide. The daughter in the family has to go to America after a clandestine wedding, and at first, the younger son in the family rebels against his father. After meetings with Otohito in prison, the younger son starts to reconsider his own attitude, but even now, fate is waiting in the wings with one more surprise for the long-suffering paterfamilias and his family.

~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In this brutal Japanese melodrama, the gangster boss of the town of Shikoku had been in charge since 1921. Though he is married and has two mistresses, the yakuza leader has no children so he adopts a pre-adolescent girl. The two become very close, and even the birth of a natural daughter does not tear them apart. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Just as many American studio-era directors found acclaim abroad that was denied them in their home country, by 1980 Akira Kurosawa's reputation outside Japan exceeded his esteem at home. As uncompromising as ever, he found considerable difficulty securing backing for his ambitious projects. Unsure he would be able to film it, the director, an aspiring artist before he entered filmmaking, converted Kagemusha into a series of paintings, and it was partly on the basis of these that he won the financial support of longtime admirers Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. Set in the 16th century, when powerful warlords competed for control of Japan, it offers an examination of the nature of political power and the slipperiness of identity. For some time, Shingen Takeda Tatsuya Nakadai has been able to stay removed from the heat of battle by using his brother Nobukado Tsutomu Yamazaki as a double. As the film opens, Nobukado offers another option, having discovered a condemned thief (also played by Tatsuya Nakadai) bearing an uncanny resemblance to the warlord. After he insists on witnessing the fall of an enemy in person, Shingen falls victim to a sniper's bullet, forcing his advisers to present the thief as the fallen warrior. At first awkward in his new position and plagued by dreams in which the spirit of his double confronts him, he slowly grows into the role even as his enemies begin to advance on his kingdom. The winner of the Palm D'Or at Cannes, Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior has also been released as The Double. ~ Keith Phipps, Rovi

The battle for good and against evil never ends in this long series of episodes about attempts to capture the phoenix, a mythic bird of immortality. Set in the second century A.D., this fantasy adventure yarn includes plenty of special effects and animation, yet that does not mean it is innocuous. Violence and mayhem rule the day as a brave little boy and his warrior-mentor are caught in tribal warfare over the phoenix. Mother nature is just as violent: volcanoes erupt to great destruction and earthquakes destroy what the volcanoes miss. After all this, the implication in the end is that a new Japan -- like the immortal phoenix -- will rise from the ashes. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Goyokin director Hideo Gosha makes his triumphant return to the samurai genre with this plot twisting, nerve shredding tale of an enigmatic bandit chieftain who resorts to elaborate trickery to finance a furious revenge plot. Tatsuya Nakadai is a desperate man. Robbery and con games are his specialty, and he'll swindle anyone who gets in his way in order to accomplish his bitter goal. Meanwhile, on the other side of the law, determined shogunate policeman Shogoro Ichikawa realizes that in order to catch a thief he'll have to engage in some shady double dealings as well. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

This Japanese-made film is basically a religious tract for the Nichiren Shoshu Association. The NSA is an atypically evangelistic self-labelled Buddhist group which has made some headway in the U.S. with the likes of performers Tina Turner and Patrick Duffy. The story concerns the religious conversion of a man imprisoned already for religious deviance, and is based on the book by Daisaku Ikeda. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This well-crafted Japanese animated feature adapts the novel Belladonna by Jules Michelet in a unique manner. The story concerns a love affair, taking place in the Middle Ages, shadowed by witch-trials and the Inquisition. The actual moments of the story are shown in more-or-less still tableaux, but the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters are fully animated. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi