Noriko Sengoku

Acting

Noriko Sengoku

Born 1922-05-29 · Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan

Reiko Mori (April 29, 1922 – December 27, 2012), known by her stage name Noriko Sengoku, was a Japanese film and television actress active primarily in the 1950s and 1960s. She made her film debut in 1947 and starred in several of Akira Kurosawa's early films such as Drunken Angel, The Quiet Duel, Stray Dog, Scandal, The Idiot and Seven Samurai. During the war, she was a member of the traveling theater troupe Sakura-tai , which was wiped out in the Hiroshima atomic bombing . However, she escaped the atomic bombing because she was away from Hiroshima giving birth She was highly praised as a great supporting actress, and excelled in the role of a spiteful landlady. She believed that "a supporting role is like a 'screw in each corner'; if even one screw comes loose, the whole thing falls apart."

Acting credits

Seven Samurai poster
8.5

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 others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food.

Seven Samurai

1954

Invasion of Astro-Monster poster
6.8

Astronauts Glenn and Fuji investigate Planet X and encounter mysterious aliens known as the Xiliens, who ask Earth's people to help save their world from "Monster Zero". In exchange for borrowing Godzilla and Rodan, the Xiliens offer a cure for cancer. As Glenn investigates, he develops a romance with Miss Namikawa and uncovers the Xilien's true intentions.

Invasion of Astro-Monster

1965

Kwaidan poster
7.7

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.

Kwaidan

1965

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs poster
8.0

Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her demanding mother and brother, and knowing she's growing older.

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

1960

Floating Clouds poster
7.7

A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.

Floating Clouds

1955

Drunken Angel poster
7.6

In postwar Tokyo, a blunt, alcohol-soaked doctor diagnoses a swaggering young yakuza with tuberculosis, forging an uneasy bond that’s tested when the gangster’s ruthless former boss returns and drags him back toward the swampy underworld he can’t escape.

Drunken Angel

1948

Scandal poster
6.9

A celebrity photograph sparks a court case as a tabloid magazine spins a scandalous yarn over a painter and a famous singer.

Scandal

1950

Stray Dog poster
7.6

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.

Stray Dog

1949

Out poster
5.6

When pregnant lunchbox factory worker Yayoi has finally taken all the abuse she can handle, she strangles her brutish husband and disposes of the body parts, piece by piece. She's soon joined by three down on their luck housewives who murder their own husbands and find various ways to hide the evidence.

Out

2002

Utako's Story poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Utako's Story

1949

I Live in Fear poster
7.3

An aging foundry patriarch, gripped by terror of nuclear annihilation, tries to uproot his family to Brazil. When they petition to have him declared incompetent, a family-court counselor witnesses his obsession slide into ruin—and asks whether ignoring the atomic threat is any saner.

I Live in Fear

1955

The Quiet Duel poster
7.3

A young army surgeon, Kyoji Fujisaki, accidentally contracts syphilis during a WWII field operation. Back at his father’s clinic, he treats himself in secret and breaks off his engagement rather than risk his fiancée’s future, even as he confronts the irresponsible patient who infected him—testing his ethics, pride, and capacity for sacrifice.

The Quiet Duel

1949

The Trap poster
6.8

When a hooded stranger appears in private eye 'Mike' Hama's office with the cryptic challenge "I want you to look for me," Hama is drawn into a string of bizarre serial murders that have Yokohama's police baffled and the city terrified.

The Trap

1996

Foghorn poster
10.0

A Japanese woman, the mistress of an American, falls in love with her servant.

Foghorn

1952

Echo Mountain poster
9.0

An Ishiro Honda film.

Echo Mountain

1959

Girls of the Night poster
6.5

In the wake of the 1956 Prostitution Prevention Law, a young woman recently released from one of Japan's new rehabilitation centers struggles to build a new life.

Girls of the Night

1961

The Life of a Uniquely Interesting Man: Katsura Harudanji poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

The Life of a Uniquely Interesting Man: Katsura Harudanji

1956

The Idiot poster
7.0

A gentle, war-shattered ex-soldier, Kinji Kameda, arrives in wintry Hokkaidō and is pulled into a volatile tangle of love and pity between the disgraced Taeko Nasu, the proud Ayako, and his possessive friend Akama. Kameda’s saintly compassion exposes everyone’s wounds, steering the quartet toward jealousy, violence, and inexorable tragedy. Adapted from Dostoevsky’s novel.

The Idiot

1951

Women in Prison poster
4.0

The woman prison has a cast all with a story of their own and with no dull or routine day. There is an employee who is divorced after her husband had an affair. She loves the jailed criminals and almost sees them as family. One day at a workshop someone faints while working hard to make money because she has a poor boyfriend. Another inmate is knocked up Another is a mother and has her child with her.

Women in Prison

1956

Tokyo Towers: Mom and Me, and Sometimes Dad poster
6.9

Adapted from the bestselling Japanese autobiography of the same title, this gentle coming-of-age drama concerns an adolescent boy, Boku - Masaya, torn between the inherited recklessness of his father Oton and the inherited responsibility, wisdom and emotional strength of his mother Okan. Following a period of intensely rebellious behavior, Boku learns that his mom has contracted cancer; suddenly, his mother comes to live with him in Tokyo the entire emotional landscape of his life is altered.

Tokyo Towers: Mom and Me, and Sometimes Dad

2007

Blind Beast poster
6.5

A blind sculptor kidnaps an artists' model and imprisons her in his warehouse studio – a shadowland of perverse monuments to the female form. Here a deranged passion play of sensual and sexual obsession is acted out in world where sight is replaced by touch.

Blind Beast

1969

The Curio Master poster
NR

A contemporary comedy.

The Curio Master

1960

The Inheritance poster
7.3

A dying businessman intends to will ¥200 million to his three illegitimate children, but his associates scheme to take advantage of the situation.

The Inheritance

1962

Karaoke Terror poster
5.7

One of a gang of karaoke loving middle aged women is murdered by a young man. Her friends track him down and kill him. His friends track them down and kill the killer and it escalates!

Karaoke Terror

2003