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...

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

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

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...

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

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...

In this companion piece and sequel to "Yojimbo," jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil...

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

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...

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

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...

An intimate chronicle of the shooting of Ran (1985), a film directed by the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.

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

A free-spirited girl living in a Japanese province spends her time working in a brothel and running with her dog. When her routine is shattered she...

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...

Yuzo Kayama is an American-Japanese operative working for the US to uncover an arms deal between an American seller and Chinese communists, and to...

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...