Yasuzō Masumura

Directing

Yasuzō Masumura

Born — Died

1924-08-25 — 1986-11-23

Place of birth

Kōfu, Yamanashi, Japan

Known for

Directing

Credits

41 titles

Yasuzo Masumura (増村 保造 Masumura Yasuzō, August 25, 1924 - November 23, 1986) was a Japanese film director. Masumura was born in Kōfu on Honshū. After dropping out of a law course at the University of Tokyo he worked as an assistant director at the Daiei studio, later returning to university to study philosophy; he graduated in 1949. He then won a scholarship allowing him to study film in Italy at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia under Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. Masumura returned to Japan in 1953 and from 1955 worked as a second-unit director on films directed by Kenji Mizoguchi and Kon Ichikawa, before directing his own first film, Kisses, in 19…

Known for

Red Angel poster
7.6

In 1939, Sakura Nishi is a young army nurse who is sent to the field hospitals in China during the Sino-Japanese war. She has to assist the surgeon Dr. Okabe with an incredible number of amputations. In the crowded wards, she gives sympathy to some of the soldiers, including sexually servicing one who has lost both arms and has no hope of returning home. She falls in love with Dr. Okabe, and follows him to the front, even though he is impotent from his morphine addiction.

Red Angel

1966

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

One Day at Summer's End poster
6.5

A Yasuzō Masumura film about a love affair starring Ayako Wakao. The literal title is The Two Who Got Wet.

One Day at Summer's End

1968

The Blue Sky Maiden poster
7.1

Yuko is sent to the coastal regions to be raised away from the rest of her sophisticated family where she finds out from her ill grandmother that she is not who she thought she was.

The Blue Sky Maiden

1957

Irezumi poster
6.8

Otsuya, the daughter of a rich merchant, elopes with her lover Shinsuke, an employee of her father's. During their flight, Otsuya's beauty attracts the gaze of Seikichi, a mysterious master tattooist who sees her pristine white skin as the perfect canvas for his art. The image of the large demonic spider that he emblazons across Otsuya's back marks her as the property of another man, radically altering her relationships with all around her as her personality seems to transform under its influence.

Irezumi

1966

Hanzo the Razor: The Snare poster
6.2

Against the backdrop of the Edo treasury devaluing currency and driving many into poverty, Hanzo Itami enforces the law without regard to status. He shows inadequate respect to the treasurer, who wants him dead.

Hanzo the Razor: The Snare

1973

Film credits

Behind the camera

Red Angel poster
7.6

In 1939, Sakura Nishi is a young army nurse who is sent to the field hospitals in China during the Sino-Japanese war. She has to assist the surgeon Dr. Okabe with an incredible number of amputations. In the crowded wards, she gives sympathy to some of the soldiers, including sexually servicing one who has lost both arms and has no hope of returning home. She falls in love with Dr. Okabe, and follows him to the front, even though he is impotent from his morphine addiction.

Red Angel

1966

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

One Day at Summer's End poster
6.5

A Yasuzō Masumura film about a love affair starring Ayako Wakao. The literal title is The Two Who Got Wet.

One Day at Summer's End

1968

The Blue Sky Maiden poster
7.1

Yuko is sent to the coastal regions to be raised away from the rest of her sophisticated family where she finds out from her ill grandmother that she is not who she thought she was.

The Blue Sky Maiden

1957

Irezumi poster
6.8

Otsuya, the daughter of a rich merchant, elopes with her lover Shinsuke, an employee of her father's. During their flight, Otsuya's beauty attracts the gaze of Seikichi, a mysterious master tattooist who sees her pristine white skin as the perfect canvas for his art. The image of the large demonic spider that he emblazons across Otsuya's back marks her as the property of another man, radically altering her relationships with all around her as her personality seems to transform under its influence.

Irezumi

1966

Hanzo the Razor: The Snare poster
6.2

Against the backdrop of the Edo treasury devaluing currency and driving many into poverty, Hanzo Itami enforces the law without regard to status. He shows inadequate respect to the treasurer, who wants him dead.

Hanzo the Razor: The Snare

1973

Hanzo the Razor: The Snare poster
6.2

Against the backdrop of the Edo treasury devaluing currency and driving many into poverty, Hanzo Itami enforces the law without regard to status. He shows inadequate respect to the treasurer, who wants him dead.

Hanzo the Razor: The Snare

1973

Music poster
4.6

A young woman undergoes psychiatric treatment after she no longer hears music and develops sexual hang-ups.

Music

1972

Music poster
4.6

A young woman undergoes psychiatric treatment after she no longer hears music and develops sexual hang-ups.

Music

1972

The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka poster
6.6

The disturbing story of a physician who conducted the first operation with general anaesthetic, and the women in his life who are both so determined to win his love that they volunteer as subjects for his experiments

The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka

1967

Two Wives poster
7.3

After a random encounter at a bar, two couples collide. Two men, two women, embroiled in a love-and-hate drama that threatens to engulf them. The sexual anxiety between the interwoven couples tautens right up to the nearly unbearable tension of the climax...

Two Wives

1967

Manji poster
6.5

The four principals in a love affair collide when jealousy, blackmail and suicide enter the picture.

Manji

1964

Double Suicide of Sonezaki poster
6.3

Suicide has long been used as a form of social protest in Japan. In this film, set in 1703, samurai culture is being transformed by the emergence of a new merchant class. Elements of the social contract are beginning to unravel, and some unscrupulous people took undue advantage of these changes before the social order was re-created. In this story, a rich merchant gives his clerk an I.O.U. instead of wages. When the impoverished clerk presents the paper to the merchant at the agreed upon time asking for payment, the man flies into a rage and pretends he never wrote it and claims the clerk is trying to defraud him. Then he sets his henchmen on the clerk to administer a beating.

Double Suicide of Sonezaki

1978

Double Suicide of Sonezaki poster
6.3

Suicide has long been used as a form of social protest in Japan. In this film, set in 1703, samurai culture is being transformed by the emergence of a new merchant class. Elements of the social contract are beginning to unravel, and some unscrupulous people took undue advantage of these changes before the social order was re-created. In this story, a rich merchant gives his clerk an I.O.U. instead of wages. When the impoverished clerk presents the paper to the merchant at the agreed upon time asking for payment, the man flies into a rage and pretends he never wrote it and claims the clerk is trying to defraud him. Then he sets his henchmen on the clerk to administer a beating.

Double Suicide of Sonezaki

1978

Lullaby of Death poster
6.2

Also known as: For My Daughter's 7th Birthday. Many years following her mother’s suicide, Maya seeks out her father, who deserted them, for revenge. All intertwined with the investigation of journalists into local murders, the manipulations of a palmist known as the “blue moth”, and political corruption.

Lullaby of Death

1982

Lullaby of Death poster
6.2

Also known as: For My Daughter's 7th Birthday. Many years following her mother’s suicide, Maya seeks out her father, who deserted them, for revenge. All intertwined with the investigation of journalists into local murders, the manipulations of a palmist known as the “blue moth”, and political corruption.

Lullaby of Death

1982

Love for an Idiot poster
6.0

A middle-aged factory engineer trains, marries, and ultimately loses a teenage bride after she enslaves him to her whims.

Love for an Idiot

1967

Vixen poster
6.7

Michi's first encounter with Nobuyuki Ishida, secretary to the chairman of a private school, takes place in the drawing room, when she attempts to swindle him out of two million yen for alleged rape by his son. Akie, Ishida's wife and the chairman's daughter, offers her a million, but he gives her what she demands. Now Michi is not only satisfied, but she has a mad desire for Ishida and calls him every day asking for a date. His sympathy for her gradually evolves into love, and he soon allows her insatiable passion to strip him of his decency.

Vixen

1969

Vixen poster
6.7

Michi's first encounter with Nobuyuki Ishida, secretary to the chairman of a private school, takes place in the drawing room, when she attempts to swindle him out of two million yen for alleged rape by his son. Akie, Ishida's wife and the chairman's daughter, offers her a million, but he gives her what she demands. Now Michi is not only satisfied, but she has a mad desire for Ishida and calls him every day asking for a date. His sympathy for her gradually evolves into love, and he soon allows her insatiable passion to strip him of his decency.

Vixen

1969

Black Report poster
6.6

After a businessman is murdered, an investigation identifies a suspect who is then put on trial for that crime.

Black Report

1963

A Woman's Testament poster
6.4

The first story concerns an attractive young woman who works in a Tokyo nightclub. Her plan for a solid financial future has a double whammy. 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 who falls in love with a forger.

A Woman's Testament

1960

Thousand Cranes poster
8.2

The entangled relations between the son of a seductive tea-ceremony teacher and the women in his father's life. Based on the novel by Kawabata Yasunari.

Thousand Cranes

1969

The School of Spies poster
6.6

Nakano Institution is the so-called ‘Spy School’ where many young men are trained to be excellent spies. They erase their names, families, even lovers to bury themselves in training. Jiro, one of the cadets, successfully seize the secret code of English army to pass the final exam. However, he reaches the crossroad when his fiancee Yukiko turns out to be a spy of the enemy.

The School of Spies

1966

The Garden of Eden poster
3.7

A young pick-pocket meets a sheltered teenage girl at an art museum while trying to lift her wallet. He falls in love with her and lures her to deserted strip of beach where he pretends his stolen motorbike has broken down and they are stranded. An unlikely romance follows.

The Garden of Eden

1980

Black Test Car poster
7.1

Two car manufacturers spy on each other to try to find out details and prices of a new sports car each is about to launch.

Black Test Car

1962

Main Line to Terror poster
6.2

Akiyama is an intern, disgusted with the noise pollution caused by the bullet trains and the heart attacks that noise has been causing in older hospital patients, plots to disrupt and, in ten days, destroy a unit of the operation. He warns the Japan National Railway, that, if nothing is done to reduce the noise, he will derail a bullet train. Takigawa is the police detective sent to stop him.

Main Line to Terror

1975

Main Line to Terror poster
6.2

Akiyama is an intern, disgusted with the noise pollution caused by the bullet trains and the heart attacks that noise has been causing in older hospital patients, plots to disrupt and, in ten days, destroy a unit of the operation. He warns the Japan National Railway, that, if nothing is done to reduce the noise, he will derail a bullet train. Takigawa is the police detective sent to stop him.

Main Line to Terror

1975

The Most Valuable Wife poster
8.0

Kyoko is the third daughter of the Nonomiya family, a very ordinary family. Momoko, the eldest daughter, is married to Ichiro, the president of Mihara Shoji, and Riko, the second daughter, is married to Jiro, the managing director, and they plot to marry Kyoko to Saburo, the third son of the Mihara family. Kyoko is angry at the marriage talk that is being pushed forward without her permission, and declares that she "definitely won't get married," but before she knows it, she begins to become aware of the other person...

The Most Valuable Wife

1959

Play It Cool poster
5.0

This Japanese melodrama chronicles the exploits of a geisha's beautiful daughter. The daughter is the geisha's pride and she spares nothing to insure that she has a bright future. But the hard-working young woman's dreams of becoming a dressmaker are shattered.... She then becomes a nightclub hostess who plays cards with male patrons using her body as the prize.

Play It Cool

1970

Play It Cool poster
5.0

This Japanese melodrama chronicles the exploits of a geisha's beautiful daughter. The daughter is the geisha's pride and she spares nothing to insure that she has a bright future. But the hard-working young woman's dreams of becoming a dressmaker are shattered.... She then becomes a nightclub hostess who plays cards with male patrons using her body as the prize.

Play It Cool

1970

The Precipice poster
9.0

Kosaka drops to death while ice climbing with his friend Uozu to see the sunrise on the New Year’s Day. The investigators try to find the cause of the death, then discover that the cut rope was made in the factory for which Uozu’s brother works.

The Precipice

1958

An Ode to Yakuza poster
7.0

Tatematsu Minoru, a yakuza belonging to the Ishikawa group that runs the Shinjuku area, has a beautiful sister named Akane. He dreams of sending her to college and turning her into a perfect young lady. He's extremely fond of Akane. His fondness for her goes beyond how he feels about his mistress, Kanae. And yet, Akane feels alone. Now, a new tutor comes into her life that seems to have taken a liking to her...

An Ode to Yakuza

1970

A Wife Confesses poster
6.7

Tied to a mountain between her brutalizing spouse and her secret lover, disaster strikes; the authorities accuse her of murder and prompt a confession.

A Wife Confesses

1961

Games poster
6.5

A 16-year-old girl works in a factory to pay her late father’s debt. When she makes up her mind to become a hostess, a boy approaches her with kind and gentle manners...(Also occasionally known in English as “Play”)

Games

1971

A Lustful Man poster
5.6

Fascinated with women from an early age, Yonosuke had his first sexual encounter at the age of seven. From that day on, he recklessly and forwardly pursues women, feeding his fascination and experience. As Yonosuke's salacious behavior brings much cause for shame to the family, his father eventually breaks relations with him. Expelled from the family, 19-year-old Yonosuke embarks on a pilgrimage of lust, traveling far and wide to acquaint himself with women of all walks.

A Lustful Man

1961

Seisaku's Wife poster
7.3

On the eve of the Russo-Japanese war at the beginning of the 20th century, small-town girl Okane has married an old wealthy man to escape a life of poverty.

Seisaku's Wife

1965

Love and Greed poster
7.8

Namiko is married, but has an infatuation with Ishizuka who runs a nightclub. The businessman is also planning on wrecking the company of Namiko's husband. As personal lives and professional careers intertwine and cross one another including a love triangle dangerously, the affair is taken up a notch following a murder.

Love and Greed

1964

Afraid to Die poster
6.3

On his release from prison a young yakuza, along with his brother, decides to turn his back on criminal life instead of taking over the position of his recently deceased father, boss of the Asahina clan. But their exit proves more difficult than planned when their rival clan steps in to exact revenge.

Afraid to Die

1960

Lullaby of the Earth poster
6.4

The story of an orphan girl, brought up in naive, rustic innocence by an elderly relative, who is suddenly exposed to the brutality, greed and deceptiveness of the outside world when her grandmother dies.

Lullaby of the Earth

1976

The Woman Who Touched Legs poster
7.0

Detective Katahachi meets a young and beautiful pickpocket and doesn’t arrest her because she was not in the act. Instead, he listens to the story about her parents who killed himself and died for overwork to feel sorry about her.

The Woman Who Touched Legs

1960