
Acting
Yukio Ninagawa
Born 1935-10-15 · Honcho, Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, Japan
Yukio Ninagawa was a Japanese theatre director and film actor, particularly known for his Japanese language productions of Shakespeare plays and Greek tragedies. He directed Hamlet differently eight times. Description above from the Wikipedia article Yukio Ninagawa, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Acting credits
6.5A former murderer and genius chef along with a waitress come together with a group of fantastical assassins in a diner. A girl with a hollowness in her heart, who believes that she belongs nowhere, is thrust into a series of attacks where she must struggle to find her will to live.
Diner
2019
7.5In 1960s Tokyo, Gonda owns a bar in which the gay, cross-dresser, and trans scenes meet. Gonda is in a relationship with the madam of the bar, Leda. As the younger Eddie starts a passionate affair with Gonda, she ignites the jealousy of Leda, unaware of another kind of history between them.
Funeral Parade of Roses
1969
6.7After a salary-man's fiancée attempts suicide, he recounts his gruesome family history which saw generations of his ancestors suffer and sacrifice themselves for the sake of their cruel lords.
Bushido: The Cruel Code of the Samurai
1963
7.0Set in the postwar turmoil, Akasaka no shimai paints a vivit portrait of the life of three sisters who struggle to live in Tokyo.
The Akasaka Sisters: Soft Touch of Night
1960
6.5In 1026, students in western China are shanghaied into the forces of crown prince Li Yuanhao of Xi Xia, who wants to control the length of the Silk Road. One student is Zhao Xingde, who becomes the favorite of his commander, Zhu Wangli. While sacking a fortress, Xingde discovers Tsurpia, princess of the Uighur. He hides her; they fall in love. When he's sent away to study Xixian, he leaves Tsurpia in Zhu's care, but returns to find her engaged to Li. Tragedy follows, and he and Zhu enter a pact to take revenge when Li arrives at Dun-Huang, the region's seat of learning and culture. Against overwhelming odds, they find a surprising way to leave a monument to their life and love.
The Silk Road
1988
7.3A 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
4.4Shoko and Mutsuki get married to satisfy their worried parents, but she is well past the age at which a ‘good’ Japanese woman should marry, and he is in love with a young male college student.
Twinkle
1992
9.0A man who hunts for women and sells them to bars and cabarets. This film depicts the lives of men and women who breathe the dark side of the city and live with a mysterious strength amidst vice. The fourth film in the Night Youth series by the duo Umemiya Tatsuo and Midori Mako.
Dupe
1965
7.7A young theatre actress fights for her uncertain career while having to confront the personal sacrifices that will arise from it.
W's Tragedy
1984
7.1In 1863, when American warships approach Japan, an enigmatic ronin becomes an important figure in a complex game of power between the Shogunate and the empire.
Assassination
1964
7.0As her husband Eiichi becomes more entangled in his life as businessman, Naoko looks for ways to expand her own life even as her husband's life shrinks in scope and intimacy. She finds new interests, new love, and a greater sense of her place in the world.
She and He
1963
6.9In an isolated mountain resort, a woman gets involved in a love triangle between herself, her volatile lover and her ex-boyfriend, for whom she had platonic feelings.
Affair in the Snow
1968
7.0Hiromi Go plays a high school student who needs a role model in his life badly. He's raised by his older sister played by Keiko Matsuzaka who is a hostess at a night club. She meets a man who becomes her boyfriend. He races in a off-road car rally professionally. The same man becomes Go's role model and teaches him sophisticated car driving techniques. One of the techniques taught is 'double clutch' ( Thus the movie's title Double Kuracchi ) to make gear transition smoothly between shifts. Hiromi Go was a big pop idol in Japan when this movie was created. Both Go and Matsuzaka still enjoys high celebrity status in Japan.
Double Clutch
1978
6.9After a young boy captures a rare butterfly in Nagasaki, a caterpillar begins a relay-trip toward the northern tip of Hokkaido, serving as a silent witness to a series of vignettes featuring people struggling with the psychological and social scars of post-war Japan.
Silence Has No Wings
1966
NRA rebel youth joins a duo of entertainers only able to communicate by gesturing; when the female performer is suddenly abducted, he and Takeru must take action.
Lost Lovers
1971
7.1An outlaw pushes the residents of Edo's red light district to rebel against a growing number of stifling, moralistic laws.
The Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan
1970
NRNo synopsis available yet.
A Cheerful Yakuza
1976
'The Ninagawa of the world', still ill. The 80-year-old's intense run to stay alive, even after falling ill!
疾走する蜷川幸雄80歳 〜生きる覚悟〜
2016
NRA successful lyricist, Sakumaki (Yukio Ninagawa), lives with his partner Kazue (Keiko Fujita) and their daughter, though he has always kept an emotional distance from them. One night, he returns home to find a mysterious woman in black (Yuko Kusunoki) waiting in his apartment. She calmly tells him that he will die the next night at precisely 12:13 a.m. Shaken, Sakumaki flees, only to discover the same woman appearing wherever he goes. As her presence grows more menacing and unexplainable, his fear spirals into paranoia. Directed by Toshiya Fujita, the episode blends domestic drama with supernatural dread, blurring the line between hallucination and reality. With Ninagawa in a rare starring role, supported by Ichiro Zaitsu and Akira Nagoya, the story pushes its protagonist into a psychological nightmare where fate, guilt, and obsession collide.
A Woman Who Warns of Death
1973
NRNo synopsis available yet.
蜷川幸雄×藤原竜也〜ハムレットへの軌跡
2004
NRNo synopsis available yet.
蜷川幸雄 傷だらけの鬼才
2018
No synopsis available yet.
蜷川幸雄2005 : ~疾走する70歳~
2005
Behind the camera
6.1While alone in a nightclub, straight-laced Lui meets sensitive but troubled punk kid Ama. Mesmerized by his split tongue, she becomes obsessed with body modification and soon wants the same treatment. After Ama's heavily-tattooed friend Shiba pierces her tongue, Lui finds herself inexorably drawn to both men – and to her growing list of desires, she now adds a tattoo.
Snakes and Earrings
2008
6.1While alone in a nightclub, straight-laced Lui meets sensitive but troubled punk kid Ama. Mesmerized by his split tongue, she becomes obsessed with body modification and soon wants the same treatment. After Ama's heavily-tattooed friend Shiba pierces her tongue, Lui finds herself inexorably drawn to both men – and to her growing list of desires, she now adds a tattoo.
Snakes and Earrings
2008
6.0A former retainer to a noble family kills his wife's father when he tries to expose his past crimes. When he begins an affair with the daughter of another clan's retainer, her father tries to poison him but the substance instead claims an innocent victim...
Summer of Demon
1981
7.4Shuichi Kushimori is a 17 year old high school student who lives happily with his mother and stepsister. One day, without warning, his estranged stepfather returns home from a long absence. He quickly falls into a circle of drinking and starts abusing his ex-wife and daughter. When he begins making sexual advances towards Shuichi’s stepsister, Shuichi is compelled to take matters into his own hands.
The Blue Light
2003
7.4Shuichi Kushimori is a 17 year old high school student who lives happily with his mother and stepsister. One day, without warning, his estranged stepfather returns home from a long absence. He quickly falls into a circle of drinking and starts abusing his ex-wife and daughter. When he begins making sexual advances towards Shuichi’s stepsister, Shuichi is compelled to take matters into his own hands.
The Blue Light
2003
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Umi yo omae ga
1981
6.3Having put down his sword and given up the will to fight, the masterless samurai Iemon lives in solitude while being haunted by his violent enigmatic past...
Warau Iemon
2004
NRKenji stutters and suffers from interpersonal blushing. After his mother's death, he lives with his violent father, but cannot stand it, so he takes a live-in job at a barbershop to get out of the house. On the other hand, Shinji's father committed suicide when he was young, his mother abandoned him and he grew up with a wild personality. The two, who may or may not have similarities, meet by chance and are trained by Horiguchi, a former boxer, to become professional boxers. A coming-of-age story about love, loneliness and facing oneself.
あゝ、荒野
2011
NRNo synopsis available yet.
蜷川幸雄演出「パンドラの鐘」
1999
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Julius Caesar
2014
NRNo synopsis available yet.
唐版 滝の白糸
2013
NRThe film depicts the fatal, forbidden love between Nadeko, who is bought by a shop selling her mother, and her son-in-law, Jisumaru.
Shintokumaru
1997
NRIn William Shakespeare's "Cymbeline," King Cymbeline is furious when his only daughter, Inogen, marries Postumus, a man of low birth, instead of marrying Cymbeline's stepson, Cloten. As a result, Postumus is exiled from the kingdom and heads to Rome... There, he meets a Roman named Jaquimo and bets his wife as the stake, but what is Jaquimo's true motive? Saitama Arts Theater Grand Hall, Kitakyushu Arts Theater, Umeda Arts Theater Theater Drama City London Performance - Barbican Theater
Cymbeline
2012
NRMusashi is a play by Hisashi Inoue. It is set six years after the Ganryujima duel, when Musashi Miyamoto and Kojiro Sasaki are reunited at a Zen temple in Kamakura.
Musashi
2009
NRNo synopsis available yet.
お気に召すまま
2007
NROedipus, a prince of Corinth, was prophesied to "kill his father and marry his mother." To avoid the fulfillment of this prophecy, he went on a wandering journey, drove off the monstrous Sphinx in the kingdom of Thebai, and became the king of Thebai. Oedipus takes the former king's wife, Iocaste, as his wife and lives happily ever after, but a few years later, a plague of evil strikes the kingdom of Thebai. In order to save his kingdom, Oedipus asks for an oracle and follows its oracle to find the cause of the death of the former king Laius, but in the course of his investigation, the tragic truth is revealed...
Oedipus Rex
2002
NRIn the summer of 1963, flats of modern construction begin to be built in the slums where vagrants and women of the night gather. The city hall's plan is to house the slum dwellers in cultural housing, complete with gas and running water. Kenji, a construction worker, and Yumiko, a waitress at a late-night rest house, meet in the slum, but only at dusk. One day, a Korean worker falls from scaffolding at an apartment building site and dies. The site supervisor and city hall workers bury the corpse in the concrete foundations of the apartment building...
Aoi Shushi wa Taiyou no Naka ni Aru
2015
NRYukio Ninagawa's striking rendering of the classic play by Euripides done entirely in Japanese performed in both Japan and Greece at the famous Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Athens.
Princess Medea
1984