The best Nobuo Kaneko’s drama movies

Nobuo Kaneko

Nobuo Kaneko

27/03/1923- 20/01/1995
We present our ranking of the best Nobuo Kaneko’s movies. Do you love cinema? Or are you looking for a movie of your favorite actor to watch tonight? Surely you have some to see or that you did not know yet about Nobuo Kaneko.
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Ikiru

Ikiru
8.3/10
  • Genre: Drama
  • Release: 09/10/1952
  • Character: Mitsuo, son of Kanji
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.

The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer

The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer
8.8/10
After the Japanese defeat to the Russians, Kaji leads the last remaining men through Manchuria. Intent on returning to his dear wife and his old life, Kaji faces great odds in a variety of different harrowing circumstances as he and his fellow men sneak behind enemy lines.

Battles Without Honor and Humanity

Battles Without Honor and Humanity
7.4/10
In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza...

Sound of the Mountain

Sound of the Mountain
7.7/10
  • Genre: Drama
  • Release: 15/01/1954
An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.

Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Deadly Fight in Hiroshima

Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Deadly Fight in Hiroshima
7.5/10
Repeatedly beat to a pulp by gamblers, cops, and gangsters, lone wolf Shoji Yamanaka finally finds a home as a Muraoka family hitman and falls in love with boss Muraoka's niece. Meanwhile, the ambitions of mad dog Katsutoshi Otomo draws our series' hero, Shozo Hirono, and the other yakuza into a new round of bloodshed.

Floating Clouds

Floating Clouds
7.6/10
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.

Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Proxy War

Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Proxy War
7.3/10
Shozo Hirono has managed to separate from the Yamamori family and create his own small family, and extend his circle of acquaintances. These new friendships include a powerful underboss of the Muraoka family, Noboru Uchimoto.

Yakuza Graveyard

Yakuza Graveyard
7.1/10
A police investigator cracks down on yakuza business, but once he realizes the police are in negotiations with certain factions, he sides with his own syndicate of choice.

The Shogun's Samurai

The Shogun's Samurai
7.1/10
Following the death of the second Tokugawa shogun, it is revealed that he was poisoned by retainers of his son Iemitsu in hopes of gaining him the shogunate despite the stammer and birthmark which undermine his respect. Iemitsu and his brother Tadanaga become bitter rivals for the shogunate, and the land is split into factions, eventually erupting into warfare. Iemitsu's mentor, his fencing instructor Yagyu, is fixated upon securing Iemitsu the shogunate and ends up betraying everyone, even his own family, in pursuit of the goal.

The Imperial Navy

The Imperial Navy
6.9/10
  • Genre: DramaWar
  • Release: 08/08/1981
  • Character: Chuichi Nagumo
A lavish retelling of the true story of the final voyage and ultimate destruction and sinking of the battleship Yamato, Japan's greatest flagship during the Second World War.

Four Days of Snow and Blood

Four Days of Snow and Blood
6.3/10
  • Genre: DramaHistoryWar
  • Release: 17/06/1989
  • Character: Yoshiyuki Kawashima
Based on the "2.26 Incident", an attempted coup d'état in Japan 1936, launched by radical ultra-nationalist parts of the military. Several leading politicians were killed and the center of Tokyo was briefly held by the insurgents before the coup was suppressed.

A Sun-Tribe Myth from the Bakumatsu Era

A Sun-Tribe Myth from the Bakumatsu Era
7.2/10
  • Genre: ComedyDrama
  • Release: 14/07/1957
  • Character: Denbei
Saheji, a man-about-town, gets stuck at a high-class brothel when he can’t pay the bill. He makes the best of his situation by performing various tasks amidst the tumult of the end of the shogunate—but always by making sure to get a “commission” for his troubles.

Big Time Gambling Boss

Big Time Gambling Boss
7.6/10
Tokyo, 1934. The boss of the clan that controls gambling agonizes and some of his followers propose to Nakai to take his place, but he refuses the offer and suggests they choose Matsuda, who is in prison. Other clan members oppose and Ishido is elected. When Matsuda is freed, he doesn't accept this decision.

Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Final Episode

Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Final Episode
7.3/10
While Hirono is in prison, his rival Takeda turns his own crime organization into a political party, whose two executives stir up new tensions in their thirst for power.

The Shogun Assassins

The Shogun Assassins
6.6/10
  • Genre: ActionDrama
  • Release: 01/09/1979
  • Character: Hayashi Razan
This is a film about a real person. Sanada Yukimura fought a war against Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Police Tactics

Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Police Tactics
7.3/10
As Japan gears up for the 1964 Olympic games, the cops start to crack down on the gangs, under pressure from the public and the press, adding a new dimension in the war for power among the yakuza families of Hiroshima.

Fight, Zatoichi, Fight

Fight, Zatoichi, Fight
7.5/10
Blind swordsman/masseuse Zatoichi befriends a young woman returning home with her baby. When gangsters mistake her for Zatoichi and kill her, Zatoichi determines to escort the baby to its father. He gains the reluctant help of a young pick pocket and together they travel to find the baby's father. But they do not reckon on the father's reaction to their arrival, nor on their own growing feelings for the child.

Red Peony Gambler

Red Peony Gambler
6.8/10
Ryuko was raised by her father, a gambler named Senzo Yano in Kumamoto, Kyushu, after her mother died when she was little. When she turned 18 years old, her father was attacked and killed by a stranger in alley. Ryuko then dissolves her yakuza family, and, carrying the wallet left by the killer, she sets out on a journey to avenge her father's death. Five years later, she wanders the nation, known only as! Red Peony Oryu who has a red peony tattooed on her shoulder and has the defiance and courage of a man. She meets Katagiri - a loner gambler, Kumatora - boss of a family in Shikoku, and Otaka - female boss of the Doman Family in Osaka. With their help, she finally catches up with the man who murdered her father.

The Fall of Ako Castle

The Fall of Ako Castle
7.2/10
  • Genre: ActionDrama
  • Release: 28/10/1978
  • Character: Kira
This is the story of "The Forty-Seven Ronin." Based on historical events in 1701-2, the movie tells the tale of the Asano clan's downfall and the revenge of its former samurai on the perpetrator of the catastrophe. Lord Asano was goaded, or tricked, into drawing his sword inside the Shogun's palace -- a crime which carried the death penalty. The newly installed Shogun was furious at Asano and ordered all his clan's assets seized, meaning some 20,000 samurai and commoners were unemployed and landless at a stroke. Forty-seven of these ronin (masterless samurai) banded together to take attempt revenge on Lord Kira, who had goaded Asano into drawing his sword.

Vendetta of a Samurai

Vendetta of a Samurai
6.5/10
The famous showdown at Kagiya corner has been told many times, but never before with the realism and intensity of this version scripted by Kurosawa Akira and starring Mifune Toshiro as the famed swordsman who must face his best friend as they are forced to take opposite sides in a vendetta caused by the murder of a family member. Told mostly in flashback as the avengers await the arrival of their quarry, this film displays true heroism in the face of fear as most of the combatants, while of the samurai class are not skilled swordsmen. They contrast sharply with the true warriors involved in this battle. Araki Mataemon (Mifune), who was not only a direct student of Yagyu Munenori, but the founder of his own sword style under the Yagyu name is a powerful force ready to assist his brother-in-law against the murderer's allies that include not only another noted sword teacher, but the deadly spear of Katsumi no Hanbei.

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