Kon Ichikawa
Date of Birth: Nov 20, 1915
Country: Japan
Biography: Kon Ichikawa (20 November 1915 – 13 February 2008) was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. His work displays a vast range in genre and style, from the anti-war films The Burmese Harp (1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959), to the documentary Tokyo Olympiad (1965), which won two BAFTA Film Awards, and the 19th-century revenge drama An Actor's Revenge (1963). His film Odd Obsession (1959) won the Jury Prize at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival.
Total Credits at Criticker: 1 (Actor), 40 (Director), 24 (Writer)
Biography last updated by Rivette, and picture by kangadoodoo
Find more information about Kon Ichikawa at The Internet Movie Database
Titles you haven't rated - Actor (1) | Director (40) | Writer (24)
An anthology featuring ten dreams.
When tycoon Inugami Sahei passes away, he unexpectedly leaves the family fortune to outsider Tamayo on the condition that she marry one of the Inugami grandsons - Sukekiyo , Suketake, or Suketomo - pitting blood against blood. Soon afterwards, members of the family begin to show up dead, one by one. Detective Kindaichi Kosuke is called in to investigate the murders, and the truth is slowly revealed as he happens upon years of hidden skeletons and a shocking family secret. (Asian Media Wiki)
Okatsu is a widow raising five children - adults but still mama-dependent - in mid-eighteenth century Edo, Japan. Her frugality attracts unflattering comment even amid national tough times (the region is in famine) What Okatsu tells no one is that she saves so that a friend can start his own business once he's released from prison. (The crime: stealing food for his starving baby.) She doesn't blink when she finds herself facing a robber late one night. (Variety)
Samurai Koheita Mochizuki, who goes by the nickname Dora-Heita, meaning "alley cat" or "playboy," pretends to be an alcoholic magistrate but is in actuality an envoy from the daimyo sent to clean up the corrupt and lawless town. His task is complicated by the unexpected arrival of his mistress Kosei. (imdb)
In a remake of a well-known Japanese mystery, a man in Kobe does not have a family. He receives a visitor who is a researcher one day who has noticed that the man has a well-off family in Okayama. This village is called Yatsuhakamura. This family has been there for four hundred years. The man decides to visit his new-found family only for a series of murders to coincide with his arrival. This family's lawyer hires a private investigator who begins working on the crimes. (imdb)
Oishi Kuranosuke, a chamberlain of the Ako-Asano Clan loses his master to Seppuku. The Asano Lord was forced to commit suicide because of his provoked attack on Lord Kira during the reception for the envoys. In the aftermath, Oishi disbands the clan publicly and at the same time recruits a crew of 47 samurai. They patiently prepare their plans for a year and a half and then storm the fortress of Lord Kira in a mission that-succeed or fail- will ultimately end in their deaths. (asianwiki)
When an amnesiac woman walks into the household of a young samurai no one knows what to make of the mysterious newcomer. However, with her serene beauty and hard working etiquette both the master of the house, who is engaged, and the servants soon come to admire the woman whom they have named Fusa. This changes everything. Still, Fusa and her new friends and family know nothing about her circumstance prior to her arrival.
Based on a centuries-old traditional Japanese fairy tale, a country couple finds a baby girl in some bamboo and raises her as their own daughter. Not the same as the original tale, though, in which the girl was a fairy from the moon and was finally taken home. Instead, the film ends with the girl taken home by a spaceship. (imdb)
Ichikawa remake of his 1956 classic.
This sensuously beautiful film chronicles the activities of four sisters who gather in Kyoto every year to view the cherry blossoms. It paints a vivid portrait of the pre-war lifestyle of the wealthy Makioka family from Osaka, and draws a parallel between their activities and the seasonal variations in Japan. (imdb)
There is a shooting at a small bookstore in town. When the police arrive they find three victims two of whom have already died. One of the dead uttered something strange before dying. The criminal has fled the scene. Coincidentally, one of the victims is the girlfriend of one of the policemen. (imdb)
The Yamatai, represented by Prince Susano-O and elderly advisor Sumuke, hire Yumihiko of Matsuro to hunt the phoenix so that Queen Himiko, sister of Susano-O can have eteranal life. (imdb)
Private detective Kindaichi investigates a series of murders in scenic rural Japan.
Several young women are killed in an isolated village, leading to an intriguing search for their killer.
Intrepid detective Kindaichi (Ishizaka) tracks down a triple murderer using Haiku poem clues. (Audie Bock)
The death of the Inugami Family head leaves behind a complicated series of relationships, both personal and business, that results in increased danger, some murders and deaths, and a subsequent investigation by Tokyo Private Detective, Kindaichi. (twitchfilm.net)
Kushami (Tatsuya Nakadai) is a teacher given to flights of philosophy as he mulls over life and its meanings, unaware that his gray cat is observing life at home with his own version of a philosopher's eye. Kushami's relatives dominate the action as they move in and out of romantic liaisons broadly characterized by an unusual combination of satire, slapstick, and vulgarity. (Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide)
Follows the fluctuating fortunes of three friends in feudal Japan who are ronin. (imdb)
Documentary about the 1972 Munich Olympics, as seen by eight different directors.
Ichikawa's cameras follow the 1964 Summer Olympics from opening to closing ceremonies.
While performing in a touring kabuki troupe, leading female impersonator Yukinojo comes across the three men who drove his parents to suicide twenty years earlier (imdb)
The true story of an ordinary twenty-three year old who crossed the Pacific in a small yacht, a feat which no Japanese had ever accomplished. (imdb)
The trials, tribulations, and joys of raising a child. The film follows the everyday events of a family with one boy, coming up to his second birthday, interspersed with occasional thoughts of the child. They initially live in an apartment building, and then move into the doting grandmother's house. (imdb)
A young teacher struggles to overcome prejudices in early 20th century Japan.
Kaze is a philandering TV producer. His wife and nine of his mistresses conspire to kill him. However each woman would rather keep him alive, as long as she was the only woman in his life. (imdb)
A story told through the eyes of an elder sister of her childhood with her younger brother.
Set among the matrilineal merchant class of Osaka in the early 20th century, this 1960 family drama by Kon Ichikawa follows the son of a prosperous family (Raizo Ichikawa) as he fathers only boys with various wives and geishas, much to the chagrin of his manipulative grandmother and mother. Ichikawa wrote the script with his wife and frequent collaborator, Natto Wada, and despite its sharp satirical jabs, it carefully notates the hero's ambivalence and regret toward women. (Chicago Reader)
The first story concerns an attractive young woman who works in a Tokyo nightclub. In the second story, a beautiful young woman is employed by an unscrupulous real estate agent to convince male clients to invest in worthless property. The last story is about a widowed geisha who has no real financial worries and when she falls in love with a forger, she opts to wait for him after he is sent to prison, rather than follow societal or family dictates. (All Movie)
It is the Philipines, 1945. The Japanese Imperial Army has been reduced to a ragtag mob hiding in the jungles... (imdb)
A man getting on in years sets out to find a way to resurrect his flagging virility. (imdb)
Told in an intricate flashback structure, Enjo dramatizes the psychological collapse of Goichi (Raizo Ichikawa), a young Buddhist acolyte from a dysfunctional family who arrives at a Kyoto temple - the Golden Pavilion - for further study. (Wikipedia)
Tamio Moroi graduates from a prestigious university and obtains a job at the Camel Brewery in a distant town. He is keen to work hard, but is warned to take it easy and just appear as if he were working. He receives a letter from his father saying that his mother is going crazy. After hiring a psychiatric student from his university to investigate his mother, she comes to visit him to tell him that it is really his father that is going insane... (imdb)
Eccentric film about female reporter fired for writing about police corruption. To make money she hides while a weekly magazine offers a prize for her discovery. A bank embezzler and his underlings take advantage of her disappearance to pin the theft on her, as well as the murder of the weak link in their gang. Meanwhile, the cop she got fired is now a private detective and he gets involved in the investigation. (East Asia Film Library)
July, 1945: Japan's army is on the run. A platoon in Burma sings to keep its spirit up. Inspiration comes from their self-taught lute player... (imdb)
A rebellious delinquent student puts sleeping powder in a girl's beer and rapes her. She falls in love with him, but he rejects her. Her irate family and other outraged students then punish the boy themselves. (Audie Bock)
Why does Nobuchi visit the grave of his old friend Kaji? Why is he so secretive with his wife Shizu ? And how does Nobuchi's friendship with the young student Hioki - for whom the older man acts as reluctant sensei - relate to his time with Kaji? As the Meiji Era draws to a close with the emperor's death and the suicide of General Nogi, a fateful tale of tainted love, failed friendship, and redemptive honor unravels with tragic consequences. (MoC)
Very fast-moving sketches of a corrupt politician, a jaded geisha, an impoverished family with 18 children and a boarder who works as a day-laborer and manufactures atomic bombs at night. (Audie Bock)
A teacher at a continuation school who is not getting ahead in the world goes to the Ginza and is hit by a car. A student he asks to help him demands money, and the girl he loves snubs him. (Audie Bock)
On the eve of a young woman's wedding day, a man she's known since childhood visits and spend the afternoon and evening with her.