Hisashi Igawa Movies

A murder investigation takes a number of unexpected and unsettling turns in this suspense thriller from Japan. Nango (Tsutomu Yamazaki) is a prison guard moonlighting as a detective as he investigates the case of Toru Kihara (Kankuro Kudo), a petty thief who ten years before was convicted of a multiple murder he claims he can't remember. Toru's lawyer Sugiura (Tsurubei Shofukutei) hires Nango at the request of a nameless client who wants to see Toru cleared, and Nango brings in Junichi Mikami (Takashi Sorimachi) to assist him; Nango met Junichi when the latter was serving time for manslaughter, and Nango wants to give the young ex-con a chance to start over. However, as they dig deeper into the case, Nango discovers several disturbing parallels between the crime for which Toru was convicted and Junichi's own record; he becomes especially alarmed when he learns Junichi was near the scene of Toru's alleged murder. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

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, All Movie Guide

Based on a book by noted novelist Shusaku Endo, this film concerns three lost souls looking for meaning and redemption: Mitsuko Naruse (Kumiko Akiyoshi) is a recent divorcee still wracked with a guilty conscious; Isobe (Hisashi Igawa) is a white-collar worker morning the death of his wife to cancer; and elderly Kiguchi (Yoichi Numata) is still plagued by memories of the War. All three find themselves on the tour bus headed towards Benares, an Indian holy site on the banks of the Ganges River. As the film progresses, the trio are less tourists than pilgrims looking for relief of private demons and spiritual rebirth. Kiguchi tries to understand why he survived in the Burmese jungles while his mates all died. Fulfilling a promise given to his dead wife, Isobe is looking for his wife's reborn soul. Mitsuko looks for Otsu (Eiji Okuda), a Catholic monk and her former lover. This film, which was directed by Kei Kumai, also features performance by screen legend Toshiro Mifune. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Akira Kurosawa's swansong is a delicate, sentimental portrait of his long avowed hero, educator and literary figure Hyakken Uchida. At the film's opening, Uchida -- a professor of German literature at a military school where he is beloved for his wisdom and his impish humor -- is delivering his final lecture to his adoring students. Near the end of the speech, one student in the back rises up and declares, without guile or irony, that their teacher is "pure gold, gold without any impurities." He retires to his small Tokyo home to concentrate on his writing and to be with his wife (Kyoko Kagawa). In spite of his emeritus status, the bond between him and his students remains strong. Two students (Hisashi Igawa and George Tokoro) decide to tease their teacher by breaking into his house to steal his bowler. Uchida responds by placing a sign reading "Burglar's Entrance" over his garden door. In spite of an Allies raid on Tokyo, which levels his house, forcing he and his wife to move to an even more modest abode, Uchida's wit remains sharp and spirits remain high. The loss of his cat, Nora, proves to be a much more heartbreaking affair. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

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, All Movie Guide

The independent filmmaker Tadashi Imai raised a significant portion of the funds needed to make this movie by popular subscription. The story illuminates the Japanese view of World War II and its aftermath in ways which may be difficult for some outsiders to comprehend, for instance, by referring to Allied air raids on Tokyo as murder, and by downplaying some (but by no means all) of Japan's war crimes. In the story, a high-school girl in the 1980s has been given a school assignment to find out and report on her family's experience of the war. She has a paternal aunt who is voluntarily mute, and particularly hates to be reminded of the war, but her father eventually (and very reluctantly) tells her what her aunt's mutism is all about. It dates back to 1943, when the aunt was married to a pacifist who went to Hokkaido to protest Japanese ill treatment of Korean laborers and was killed. The aunt was pregnant at the time, and during an air raid on Tokyo, she gave birth to a daughter, who was lost in the confusion. These two traumatic events led to the aunt's silence. Soon after she finds out her aunt's story, her aunt dies. Not long after that, she tracks down the missing child, who was (in a karmically appropriate fashion) adopted by Koreans and was raised in Korea. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Acclaimed director and headmaster of the Sogestsu school of flower arranging Hiroshi Teshigahara helms this elegant historical drama about tea master Sen no Rikyu. A Buddhist priest who talks of the beauty of a single flower or the shape of a hand holding a teacup, Rikyu (played by Rentaro Mikuni) not only perfected the art of the tea ceremony, but he was one of the primary arbiters of taste during his age. That era was a bloody one, culminating in the uniting of Japan's disparate kingdoms by a series of strong leaders. The most ambitious and the most extravagant was Toyotomi Hideyoshi (Tsutomu Yamazaki), who favored flashy displays of wealth as much as he did violent conquest. Hideyoshi thought of the tea ceremony not as an art but as a show of refinement and power. In 1587 he held a ten-day tea-drinking orgy in Kyoto and Osaka. Hideyoshi chose Rikyu to oversee it and soon the buffoonish, violent leader and the reserved master were engaged in a thinly veiled clash of wills. Rikyu eventually does teach Hideyoshi that beauty is found in the minute. Yet when Hideyoshi receives both guns and a globe from Portuguese missionaries, he is overwhelmed with Napoleonic visions. When Rikyu expresses his reservations about Hideyoshi's impending invasion of Korea and China, the potentate demands an apology. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Ran is Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's reinterpretation of William Shakespeare's King Lear. The Lear counterpart is an elderly 16th-century warlord (Tatsuya Nakadai), who announces that he's about to divide his kingdom equally among his three sons. In his dotage, he falls prey to the false flattery of his treacherous sons (Akira Terao and Jinpachi Nezu), while banishing his youngest son (Daisuke Ryu), the only member of the family who loves him enough to tell him the unvarnished truth. Thanks to his foolish pride, his domain collapses under its own weight as the sons battle each other over total control. Kurosawa's first film in five years, Ran had been in the planning stages for twice that long; Kurosawa had storyboarded the project with a series of vivid color paintings that have since been published in book form in England. The battle scenes are staged with such brutal vigor that it's hard to imagine that the director was 75 years old at the time. This 160-minute historical epic won several international awards, but it was not a hit in Japan, and it would be five more years before Kurosawa would be able to finance another picture. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In a story strictly for the younger set, a little boy lives in a small seaside village with his newly-acquired puppy named Husty. He makes friends with the girl next door who aspires to become a great pianist, and the three -- canine, boy, and girl -- become best buddies. One day the girl is injured in a car crash and it seems she will completely lose her eyesight, already damaged in the accident. The boy is stricken with sadness, made all the worse when he learns that Husty is to be taken away from him for awhile. Not everything is bleak -- he still has his friend, and Husty will return to be a companion to both in a new and better way. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Suicide has long been used as a form of social protest in Japan. In this film, set in 1703, samurai culture is being transformed by the emergence of a new merchant class. Elements of the social contract are beginning to unravel, and some unscrupulous people took undue advantage of these changes before the social order was re-created. In this story, a rich merchant gives his clerk an I.O.U. instead of wages. When the impoverished clerk presents the paper to the merchant at the agreed upon time asking for payment, the man flies into a rage and pretends he never wrote it and claims the clerk is trying to defraud him. Then he sets his henchmen on the clerk to administer a beating. Though similar in story and period, this is a different film from the 1969 Double Suicide by director Masahiro Shinoda. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A Japanese family business is endangered by the threat of a large corporation. ~ All Movie Guide

Wolves is set in Japan in the 1920s. The disintegration of the ancient samurai traditions is paralleled with the rise of the Yakuza, Japan's equivalent of the Mafia. Three gangsters try to keep themselves from getting killed, not only by their higher-ups but by those who perceive them as a threat against the old ways. Evocatively photographed, Wolves allows Western audiences a glimpse of an oft-ignored chapter in Japanese history. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide