Kōjirō Kusanagi

Acting

Kōjirō Kusanagi

Born 1929-09-19 · Tokyo, Tokyo Prefecture, Japan

Acting credits

The Man Who Stole the Sun poster
7.3

A high school science teacher is the butt of all his students' jokes, until their bus is hijacked on a school trip. But something more sinister lurks beneath the surface: he's building an atomic bomb in his apartment.

The Man Who Stole the Sun

1979

XX: Beautiful Target poster
4.9

When beautiful forensic scientist Kyoko and her colleagues fail to uncover clues to the identity of a man who brutally attacks and kills women, she agrees to become the bait to lure the killer into a police snare. But as the murderer remains frustratingly aloof, Kyoko discovers that she will have to risk everything in order to apprehend him. Naosuke Kurosawa directs this steamy thriller.

XX: Beautiful Target

1995

Playtime Never Ends poster
8.0

A serious-minded policeman plays the role of robber in a police training operation against bank robberies. He's so good his fellow policemen can't catch him. TV networks begin to broadcast the operation nationwide. TV audiences are amused and root for the runaway robber and police grows desperate to arrest him to save their face. However the robber remains at large.

Playtime Never Ends

1991

The Scarred Angel poster
NR

A musical film based on the original work of Saigo Teruhiko. After leaving the juvenile detention center and returning to his hometown of Ibusuki, Hachiro begins to investigate the cause of his older sister Sumiko's suicide. While Hachiro was in juvenile detention, Sumiko committed suicide, but there are too many mysteries surrounding this suicide...

The Scarred Angel

1966

Darkness at Noon poster
6.9

Police beat a murder confession out of four innocent men who are then sentenced to death. Based on a true story.

Darkness at Noon

1956

Woman in a Box: Virgin Sacrifice poster
4.4

A young virgin is captured by an abnormal couple. The girl is kept locked in a wooden box, and subjected to sexual torture and abuse. Loosely inspired by the real-life case of Colleen Stan.

Woman in a Box: Virgin Sacrifice

1985

A Colt Is My Passport poster
7.1

A gang lord hires Kamimura, a hit man, to take out a rival boss who's gotten greedy.

A Colt Is My Passport

1967

Hometown poster
9.0

Deep in the mountains of Japan a dam is scheduled to be built, thus forcing a relocation of the farmers. One of them is 78-year-old Denzo, whose son and his wife consider him senile. Left alone, he befriends a young boy, Sentaro, who has heard that the old man was once a great angler. The unlikely pair spend lots of happy time together, until Denzo has a heart attack and dies far upstream. The dam is completed and the entire area is inundated. Everyone will move away, except Denzo.

Hometown

1983

The Beast to Die poster
5.8

A Nietzschean journalist who covered the Vietnam War, Lebanese Civil War and other conflicts becomes mentally unstable and goes on a spree of robbery and murder.

The Beast to Die

1980

Madadayo poster
7.3

In postwar Tokyo, beloved writer-professor Hyakken Uchida retires and is buoyed through hardship by the fierce devotion of his former students, who honor him each year with a raucous “Not yet!” birthday toast. Told in warm, gently comic vignettes, Kurosawa’s farewell celebrates aging, friendship, and the sustaining ritual of teacher and pupils refusing to say goodbye.

Madadayo

1993

Sleepy Eyes of Death 10: Hell Is a Woman poster
6.8

Two devious retainers are competing to take control of a fief when the current Lord dies, but involving Kyoshiro in the conflict against his will is the textbook example of a bad idea - especially when the collateral damage starts to tick him off.

Sleepy Eyes of Death 10: Hell Is a Woman

1968

Kimagure tosei poster
NR

1962 Japanese movie

Kimagure tosei

1962

Akitsu Hot Springs poster
6.5

Just after WW2, a romance between an innkeeper and a man with tuberculosis unravels near a thermal spring.

Akitsu Hot Springs

1962

Danger Pays poster
7.0

Joe, Okita, and Serizawa hear of the armed robbery of a truck carrying one billion eighty million yen's worth of Mint paper. Knowing that the thugs will now need a counterfeiter to make the bogus bills, they each decide to cash in on it by selling them the idea that they need Sakamoto, the best counterfeiter in Japan. A seesaw game unfolds between the three men as each tries to outdo the other two in handing over Sakamoto for one million yen to Hijikata, the big boss, who intends to make counterfeit money with the stolen paper. A little belatedly, they realize it needs their combined forces to outwit Hijikata and they raid his place together. Outnumbered, however, they are thrown into a basement room and the gas is turned on. Certain death stares them in the face, but the three men are not ones to take things lying down....

Danger Pays

1962

Stranger poster
6.7

After serving time for bank fraud, Kiriko now lives a quiet life as a taxi driver working night shifts... but her peace is shattered by a relentless stalker in a Land Cruiser.

Stranger

1991

Zatoichi Challenged poster
7.0

Ichi is staying at an inn when a woman dies. Her dying wish is that Ichi take her son to his father, an artist living in a nearby town. After arriving in the town, Ichi finds out that the father has been forced by a local boss to create illegal pornography to pay off his gambling debts. Ichi makes it his mission to save the man and reunite the family, even though it brings him into conflict with a samurai he sort of befriended on his way to the town.

Zatoichi Challenged

1967

I'm All Yours poster
4.7

A beautiful day Rokurou, a student, was to masturbate when a beautiful girl knocks on his door: You need a girl? And so begins the story. Rokurou did not know what it was that this beautiful girl was from a millionaire family.

I'm All Yours

1985

Song of a Traveller poster
NR

A crime film released in 1962

Song of a Traveller

1962

Night Drum poster
5.9

Following a yearlong attendance upon his shogun in Edo, samurai Hikokuro makes a long-awaited return to his home and doting wife, Dane. Initially greeted by the effusive welcome of his family, spiteful whispers also reach his ear about an adulterous affair carried on, in his long absence, between his wife and a famous drummer. With Hikokuro’s honor imperiled by rumor, his family insists on a formal investigation into the veracity of the gossip. Through the combined testimony of many witnesses, a tale unwinds around the visits of a traveling musician hired to tutor the family heir, the spurned attentions of the man who started the rumor, and the ultimate truth behind the accusations. The conclusion of events prove as much an indictment of bushidō as it is of the reluctant parties involved. Adapted from a 1706 play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon and based on a true case.

Night Drum

1958

Tokyo: The Last War poster
6.3

In 1945, after the horrific fire-bombings of the Pacific War levels Japan to the ground, the government consults spiritual psychics to aid them in winning the war. Unfortunately, the souls' resentment and agony of the victims culminate together to revive the evil Onmyoji, Yasunori Kato. Only a young, psychically imbued priests' apprentice will dare fight the evil magician.

Tokyo: The Last War

1989

My Second Brother poster
6.6

The film tells the story of four orphans living in an impoverished mining town. An adaptation of a best-selling book based on the diary of a ten-year-old zainichi (ethnic Korean Japanese) girl, it was one of the first films to deal with the subject of zainichi identity and struggles in Japan.

My Second Brother

1959

The Sun poster
6.7

A re-imagination of Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s final days in power as WWII draws to a close.

The Sun

2005

Black Dice poster
NR

1962 Japanese movie

Black Dice

1962

Cruel Gun Story poster
6.7

Businessmen arrange the early release from prison of Togawa, serving time for taking revenge on the truck driver whose carelessness confined Togawa's sister, Rie, to a wheelchair. They want Togawa to hijack an armored truck loaded with 120 million yen; their leverage is to promise him money for surgery for Rie. Togawa consents and plans the heist with three others. The plan is solid, but it doesn't go smoothly. Togawa must improvise, there are traitors somewhere, and double-crosses mount. Can Togawa escape with enough money to help his sister and ensure a passage out of Japan?

Cruel Gun Story

1964