
Acting
Chieko Baisho
Born
1941-06-29 (85)
Place of birth
Kita, Tokyo, Japan
Known for
Acting
Credits
65 titles
Chieko Baisho (倍賞 千恵子, Baishō Chieko, born June 29, 1941) is a Japanese actress and singer. In Japan, she is well known for her performance as Sakura in the "Otoko wa Tsurai yo" series from 1969 until 1995. In addition, she has acted in many films directed by Yōji Yamada since the 1960s. She won the award for best actress at the 5th Hochi Film Award for "A Distant Cry from Spring".
Known for
8.4Sophie, a young milliner, is turned into an elderly woman by a witch who enters her shop and curses her. She encounters a wizard named Howl and gets caught up in his resistance to fighting for the king.
Howl's Moving Castle
2004
8.5In 1924, a time when both steam engine trains and early Showa Era's first train stations are just beginning. In the waiting room of Asumoe Station, a small country station, a passenger finds an abandoned baby and rushes to tell the station master, Tokiwa Jiro. The news quickly spreads and soon friends of Tokiwa's along with other townsfolk are saying that this baby must be a gift, it is Tokiwa's recently departed beloved wife reborn as a baby.
Suzuran
1999
8.0The summer of his high school freshman year, Hodaka runs away from his remote island home to Tokyo, and quickly finds himself pushed to his financial and personal limits. The weather is unusually gloomy and rainy every day, as if taking its cue from his life. After many days of solitude, he finally finds work as a freelance writer for a mysterious occult magazine. Then, one day, Hodaka meets Hina on a busy street corner. This bright and strong-willed girl possesses a strange and wonderful ability: the power to stop the rain and clear the sky.
Weathering with You
2019
NRThe story follows the Nakamori family in Yokote, Akita Prefecture, where half of the year is buried by deep snow.
Mansaku no hana
1981
6.6In a Japan of the near future, the government program Plan 75 encourages senior citizens to be voluntarily euthanized to remedy a super-aged society. An elderly woman whose means of survival are vanishing, a pragmatic Plan 75 salesman, and a young Filipino laborer face choices of life and death.
Plan 75
2022
7.0A convict, newly released from prison for murder, joins two strangers on a road trip through Hokkaido to visit his ex-wife, whom he hasn't seen in four years, knowing that if she puts a yellow handkerchief on the window, it would mean that she wants him back at home.
The Yellow Handkerchief
1977
Film credits
2020s · 4 titles
6.6In a Japan of the near future, the government program Plan 75 encourages senior citizens to be voluntarily euthanized to remedy a super-aged society. An elderly woman whose means of survival are vanishing, a pragmatic Plan 75 salesman, and a young Filipino laborer face choices of life and death.
Plan 75
2022
7.3One day, taxi driver Koji Usami is tasked with driving 85-year-old Sumire Takano from Shibamata, Tokyo to a senior care facility in Hayama, Kanagawa. Sumire asks Koji to make some detours. Gradually opening up to her, Sumire begins to tell the story of her grand past...
Tokyo Taxi
2025
6.6Rina is living a nomadic existence when at age 19 she meets her mentor Ema and gets a job doing "BodyWerks," which preserves dead bodies just as they were while alive. Ema's brother Amane uses the technology to make immortality a reality. Rina gets the treatment and will live forever with her 30-year-old body.
Arc
2021
5.6Kazuki Suzumoto is divorced and he lives with his 15-year-old son Kouki. Kouki is in a susceptible time. The father feels guilty about his son. Kouki then fails his high school entrance exam. In the spring of the following year, Kouki barely passes his high school entrance exam. Kouki mentions to Kazuki that he likes his father's lunch box. The father and son make a promise to each other. Kazuki promises that he will make a lunch box everyday for Kouki. Kouki promises that he will never skip school.
461 Days of Bento: A Promise Between Father and Son
2020
2010s · 4 titles
8.0The summer of his high school freshman year, Hodaka runs away from his remote island home to Tokyo, and quickly finds himself pushed to his financial and personal limits. The weather is unusually gloomy and rainy every day, as if taking its cue from his life. After many days of solitude, he finally finds work as a freelance writer for a mysterious occult magazine. Then, one day, Hodaka meets Hina on a busy street corner. This bright and strong-willed girl possesses a strange and wonderful ability: the power to stop the rain and clear the sky.
Weathering with You
2019
6.8Following the death of the unmarried and childless Taki, Takeshi, a young relative of hers, discovers several pages of closely written lines in which the old lady has recorded her memories. This is how he learns the truth about her youth working as a housemaid and nanny for the Hirai family in a little house in Tokyo with a red gabled roof.
The Little House
2014
8.0The 50th film in Tora-san series, using the old footages and newly shot scenes to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the series. The adult Mitsuo, Tora-san’s nephew, who runs into Izumi, his first love, whom he had once promised to marry. The familiar faces of Kurumaya Cafe, which Tora-san’s family ran in Shibamata, also return. Catching up with old friends, it is always their dearest memories of Tora-san which everyone shares on such occasions…
Tora-san, Wish You Were Here
2019
7.0Masaru and Yukiko have been married 44 years. They have three children who live independently from them. Masaru and Yukiko enjoy their peaceful days, but, one day, Yukiko tells her daughter Naoko that she wants to divorce Masaru.
Only the Cat Knows
2019
2000s · 5 titles
8.4Sophie, a young milliner, is turned into an elderly woman by a witch who enters her shop and curses her. She encounters a wizard named Howl and gets caught up in his resistance to fighting for the king.
Howl's Moving Castle
2004
7.6Set in Tokyo in 1940, the peaceful life of the Nogami Family suddenly changes when the father, Shigeru, is arrested and accused of being a Communist. His wife Kayo works frantically from morning to night to maintain the household and bring up her two daughters with the support of Shigeru's sister Hisako and Shigeru's ex-student Yamazaki, but her husband does not return. WWII breaks out and casts dark shadows on the entire country, but Kayo still tries to keep her cheerful determination, and sustain the family with her love. This is an emotional drama of a mother and an eternal message for peace.
Kabei: Our Mother
2008
8.0Animated film about the Seveso disaster, which took place north of Milan, Italy in 1976.
Tracing the Gray Summer
2001
6.3Leo, a young Japanese college student, travels to Hawaii and eventually falls in love with Maray, an older Japanese-Caucasion woman.
Honokaa Boy
2009
7.5Hiroshi, a 30 year-old businessman, has traveled back in time 20 years. He encounters Kazumi, a young woman who was gravely ill. Hiroshi regarded this as an opportunity to help the young woman from his past, the memory of whom he had always cherished.
A Heartful of Love
2005
1990s · 3 titles
7.0Tezuka Osamu's most famous work "Jungle Emperor Leo" has been made into an animated version a number of times. In this theater version, Tezuka Osamu was able for the first time to depict the theme that "All life is equal" through Leo's self-sacrifice.
Jungle Emperor Leo
1997
NRSequel to The Rainbow Seeker where Ryo meets Katsu on a small island in the south of Japan. There, he falls in love for a single mother.
The Rainbow Seeker 2
1997
9.0After failing to find a job, Mitsuo becomes a fisherman on a small island, and develops a crush on a young nurse there. Tora-san, dispatched to bring Mitsuo back home, himself falls in love with an attractive but troubled woman visiting her father.
Tora-san's Matchmaker
1993
1980s · 19 titles
6.2A detective goes out of his way to crack the case of a serial killer who specialises in murdering police officers.
Station
1981
8.3A playboy-gambler friend of Tora-san’s dies and, abandoned by his mother, his little boy suddenly turns up in Shibamata. Searching for the boy’s mother, Tora-san meets a cosmetics saleslady and the three become a surrogate family, with Tora-san as “daddy”.
Tora-san Plays Daddy
1987
NRTV adaptation of the novel "Twenty-Four Eyes", combining animation with a few live-action scenes.
Twenty-Four Eyes
1980
8.6The adventures and tribulations of a group of students during the years following the II World War.
Downtown Heroes
1988
7.4The quiet life of a mother and her young son living on a farm in Hokkaido is changed by the arrival of a man who ignites flames of romance in the heart of the mother and shows her boy the importance of grit and kindness, but then he leaves with the autumn wind.
A Distant Cry from Spring
1980
6.6Director Ogata discovers a new female star in Koharu Tanaka, who works selling candy at a studio theater and she is given a part as a bit player. After the studio's top leading lady is embroiled in a scandal, Koharu is suddenly thrust into the limelight when she replaces her in a film and gains instant fame and fortune. But the going is not always easy, and she soon seeks help from unexpected quarters.
Final Take: The Golden Age of Movies
1986
9.0When his travels bring him to Osaka, Tora-san falls in love with a local geisha. He helps her to track down her estranged brother, and informs his family that he plans to marry her. His plans are foiled when the geisha informs Tora-san that she is engaged.
Tora-san's Love in Osaka
1981
8.3Tora-san returns to his family home to learn that his brother-in-law cannot go to Mitsuo's (Tora-san's nephew) athletic event. Tora-san volunteers to take his place, but gets into an argument with his brother-in-law's boss and returns to the road. He meets a young woman in Niigata who, unbeknownst to him, is a popular enka singer.
Tora-san's Song of Love
1983
6.5A young unicorn named Unico must fight an evil magician and save everyone who's trapped under his spell.
Unico in the Island of Magic
1983
7.7Tora-san visits brother-in-law Hiroshi's hometown to attend a memorial service for his late father. When the local temple priest becomes intoxicated, Tora-san wearing the priest's robe delivers the memorial speech, much to his family's surprise. Thinking he's found his true calling, Tora-san decides to join the order, and falls for the priest's divorced daughter.
Tora-san Goes Religious?
1983
8.3In his travels through Japan, Tora-san meets and falls in love with a female doctor, however he is afraid of committing to a relationship.
Tora-san's Salad-Day Memorial
1988
9.0When his travels take him to rural Hokkaido, Tora-san helps a cantankerous old veterinarian (Mifune) in his relationships with his estranged daughter, and a woman in whom he is secretly interested.
Tora-san Goes North
1987
8.0Tora-san spends several days at the home of a hard-working salaryman ("salaried worker"), who abruptly disappears. When the man's wife asks Tora-san to help find him, he falls in love with her, and secretly hopes the husband will not be found.
Tora-san's Forbidden Love
1984
8.7Tora-san gets into an argument with his uncle and sets out on the road again. In Kyushu he meets a young woman named Keiko and the shy zoologist Saburō, and attempts to play matchmaker between the two when they all return to Tokyo.
Tora-san, the Expert
1982
8.2Tora-san's nephew Mitsuo is exchanging letters with Izumi, a former classmate whose parents divorced and took her out of Tokyo.
Tora-san, My Uncle
1989
4.0Karate expert Katayama (Takeda) investigates the robbery of a bank in Hokkaido, where an apple seed left at the scene holds the answer to the robbers' whereabouts.
Karate Cop 2
1983
8.7Tora-san returns to his family's home to attend an elementary school class reunion. After he embarrasses himself by getting drunk and insulting all his ex-classmates, he resumes his travels. In Kyushu he meets an outspoken 18-year-old girl who becomes enamored of Tora-san and follows him around. One of Tora-san's old friends is terminally ill and makes Tora-san promise him to marry his wife once he is gone.
Tora-san's Promise
1981
7.0When Unico, a young unicorn, is banished from his family by a pantheon of manipulative gods, his powers of joy and happiness are tested as he explores the lands with his friends Beezle and Katy.
The Fantastic Adventures of Unico
1981
8.3Tora-san's family's neighbor, Akemi, who had been married in Marriage Counselor Tora-san (1984), runs away from her husband, who is only interested in work. Tora-san follows her to Shikinejima, and attempts to bring her back to her home. In doing so he encounters a school-reunion group who are traveling to meet their elementary school teacher, which is a reference to the film Twenty-Four Eyes by Keisuke Kinoshita. Tora-san joins them and falls in love with the teacher.
Tora-san's Island Encounter
1985
1970s · 17 titles
7.0A convict, newly released from prison for murder, joins two strangers on a road trip through Hokkaido to visit his ex-wife, whom he hasn't seen in four years, knowing that if she puts a yellow handkerchief on the window, it would mean that she wants him back at home.
The Yellow Handkerchief
1977
7.7Torajiro becomes homesick during his travels after watching a television report about his hometown and meeting a young woman that reminds him of his sister Sakura. Meanwhile, a new tenant moves into Toraya restaurant.
Tora-san's Shattered Romance
1971
8.4On the road again, Torajiro meets a kindred spirit in Lily, a lounge singer.
Tora-san's Forget Me Not
1973
8.2Tora-san's opinions about Americans get challenged when another wandering peddler Michael Jordan stops by Shibamata.
Tora-san's Dream of Spring
1979
8.0After a chance encounter with Hiroshi's father on a bus, Tora decides to get serious and reflect on the mortality of man. His plans are derailed when a beautiful lady starts working at Toraya.
Talk of the Town Tora-san
1978
7.4Traveling salesman Kuruma Torajirō falls in love with an inn manager as New Year's approaches.
Tora-san, His Tender Love
1970
8.0After a quarrel with his mother, Torajiro sets off to find a bride.
Tora-san, the Good Samaritan
1971
8.8Tora-san befriends the descendant of a feudal lord. The man asks Tora to locate his deceased son's wife who resides somewhere in Tokyo.
Tora-san Meets His Lordship
1977
8.7Tora-san helps out a runaway bride.
Tora-san, the Matchmaker
1979
8.0After an encounter with a dying yakuza's son and at his sister Sakura's urging, Torajiro attempts to change his vagrant lifestyle and become an honest worker with a steady job.
Tora-san's Runaway
1970
7.7The story is set in 1970 during the time of the first EXPO in Japan. The film’s main figure is a miner who suddenly becomes unemployed because the mine he worked in was shut down. He decides to resettle with his whole family to Hokkaido in northern Japan and start a new life as a farmer.
Where Spring Comes Late
1970
7.2On a beautiful island in Seto Inner Sea, Seichi and Minko make their living by transporting rocks to construction sites by boat. They cherish the deepest affection for this piece of land they call home, and the simple life they lead. But rapid industrial growth makes it all but impossible to continue their chosen living style, and they are forced to leave their beloved hometown in search of a brighter future. But their hometown lingers on their hearts, and they dream of a time when they may once again return.
Home from the Sea
1972
8.3When Tora-san returns to visit his family, he is surprised to find an arrogant professor occupying his room. The professor and Tora-san become rivals for the affection of Chiyo.
Tora-san's Dream-Come-True
1972
8.0After Torajiro's latest attempt to find a bride goes awry, he starts traveling again and runs into Utako (last seen in Tora-san's Dear Old Home), now a widow.
Tora-san's Lovesick
1974
8.3While Sakura and Hiroshi struggle to save funds to build a house, Torajiro befriends three young women on vacation during his travels.
Tora-san's Dear Old Home
1972
8.2Tora-san leaves Shibamata once again after an argument with his family and finds himself at an inn where he meets Tomekichi, a young man who looks up to Tora-san.
Stage-Struck Tora-san
1978
7.4This appears to be a labor of love. Its about a village which is given the opportunity to put on a musical. They would have to pay the overhead and, being that they are farmers and always busy and not rich, question the wisdom and feasibility of such an idea. A spokesperson for the acting troupe Ms. Kono lays out the whole thing and they must decide. You get little slices of rural life in Japan far, at least in sentiment, from Tokyo. The best thing about this film is that it has heart. The acting is good, but it is really about the simple storyline of outing on a show. Films rarely get made with such simplistic plots these days. Enjoy this little slice of what city people call “the simple life”.
The Village
1975
1960s · 8 titles
7.8Tora-san, an itinerant peddler who is thrown out of his father's house twenty years before but reconnects with his aunt, uncle and sister Sakura. Tora wreaks some havoc in their lives, like getting drunk and silly at a marriage meeting.
Tora-san, Our Lovable Tramp
1969
7.4Police detectives investigate the link between a serial killer's machinations and a teenage boy who committed suicide.
I, the Executioner
1968
6.8Kuruma Torajiro is discovered looking around Kyoto for someone special to him.
Tora-san's Cherished Mother
1969
7.1Misawa Ihei (Nagato) is traveling with his wife Tae (Iwashita Shima) who abhors the practice of sword fighting for prize money. Tae is the daughter of the clan's chief counselor who married the low-ranking Ihei to avoid becoming the clan lord's mistress. Into the mix comes Oba Gunjuro (Tetsurō Tamba), a mysterious ronin who will do anything for money. This leads to a fitting climax as the forces of hate and love converge while the couple attempt to break through the border!
Samurai from Nowhere
1964
7.1When her only relative, her elder brother is accused of robbing and murdering an old woman loan-shark, pretty, young Kiriko travels from her home in Kyushu to Tokyo to get Japan's top lawyer to defend her brother. Unfortunately her naive idealism is shattered when the lawyer refuses to take the case based on her insufficient funds. What follows is a long determined revenge plot that sees the heroine become a Tokyo bar hostess and worse to punish the lawyer. The plot thickens with another murder mystery and a sleuthing reporter.
A Trap
1965
5.7A young factory worker struggles to figure out what she wants to do with her life.
The Sunshine Girl
1963
7.7Saotome is a white-collar worker on the brink of a burnout who one day strikes up a friendship with Gen, a boorish drifter who approaches life one day at a time.
The Lovable Tramp
1966
9.0No synopsis available yet.
Get Married, Mother
1962
Series credits
8.5In 1924, a time when both steam engine trains and early Showa Era's first train stations are just beginning. In the waiting room of Asumoe Station, a small country station, a passenger finds an abandoned baby and rushes to tell the station master, Tokiwa Jiro. The news quickly spreads and soon friends of Tokiwa's along with other townsfolk are saying that this baby must be a gift, it is Tokiwa's recently departed beloved wife reborn as a baby.
Suzuran
1999
NRThe story follows the Nakamori family in Yokote, Akita Prefecture, where half of the year is buried by deep snow.
Mansaku no hana
1981
NRThe series tells about the life of construction foreman Eiji and his sister. Both have a love interest: she has a boyfriend, and he has a young girl. The sister is thinking about marriage, and the brother has too strict principles to recklessly rush into the abyss of passion.
Older brother
1977
Yoko is aiming to become an actress in the city far away from her home. I lost my husband in an accident during autumn salmon fishing and tried to escape from my mother who had a hard time raising with one woman. One day, a phone call returns to the home where Yoko should have forgotten. “Mom fell ...” My mother, who met on a homecoming for the first time in five years, had a hard day as a mother while having a serious illness. The captain of the sightseeing boat, who was close to retirement, touched her mother and her mother-in-law who had been absent for a long time because of her father's absence. When Yoko found that her mother's illness was actually life-threatening, Yoko had to return to the city with a ticket that could make her dream come true. Yoko understands her feelings toward her mother's feelings as her true feelings while the scent of her hometown is loosing.
The Summer Promise
2002
NRA light-hearted comedy about love, fortune telling and songs of life that begins when a couple of sisters and brothers meet. It depicts a group of coming-of-age men and women earnestly seeking for love.
Kōfuku Sōdan
1972
