KEN SAN pieces together the puzzle of the life and legacy of Japan's mythical acting icon, Ken Takakura. Collaborators, friends and family tell intimate stories of Ken's journey: how one man of quiet dignity became a cultural barrier-breaking film star.
The posthumous wish of Eiji's wife is for her ashes to be scattered in the ocean near her hometown. Eiji also learns that his wife letter for him at the post office before she died.
Kon Ichikawa's retelling of the classic true story of Samurai honor. When a young clan lord is forced to commit seppuku (ritual suicide), his loyal followers (now Ronin, masterless Samurai) dedicate their lives to avenging his death.
Through the lives of people aging in a seaside retirement home, the drama depicts the aging process that comes to everyone.
Jack Elliot, a one-time MVP for the New York Yankees is now on the down side of his baseball career. With a falling batting average, does he have one good year left and can the manager of the Chunichi Dragons, a Japanese Central baseball league find it in him?
In the past, it was bustling with coal mines, but due to the closure of the mine one after another, the city of Nupuka no Shiki in Hokkaido is currently suffering from depopulation. The mayor, Yamagata, is trying to revitalize the city by proceeding with the construction of the theme park "Tyrolean World" with capital participation from the Kanto Electric Railway in Tokyo. Tateishi, the head of the engineering department of the Kanto Electric Railway, is assigned to Hokkaido, leaving his daughter Aki in Tokyo to be responsible for the construction and operation of Tyrolean World. There he meets Kikukawa, whom Tateishi had dissuaded from committing suicide in the past. Soon complicated triangle forms, beetwen Tateishi feeling responsible for Kikukawa, his wife and Kikukawa himself, trying run from the situation.
A retrospective on the career of Robert Mitchum through interviews with friends and co-workers, scenes from his films and the actor himself.
Two New York cops get involved in a gang war between members of the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. They arrest one of their killers and are ordered to escort him back to Japan. However, in Japan he manages to escape, and as they try to track him down, they get deeper and deeper into the Japanese Mafia scene and they have to learn that they can only win by playing the game—the Japanese way.
Team DANKAI are a group of drivers set to compete in the Paris-Dakar Rally, an off-road endurance race spanning thousands of miles and multiple continents. Prior to the event, team leader Mizuki (Nenji Kobayashi) is ordered by their sponsor to add popular celebrity Ryuichi Yoshii (Goro Ohashi) to the roster for publicity. This exacerbates DANKAI's resentments and baggage. Needing a steady hand to mediate dispute and navigate their support vehicle, Mizuki recruits legendary, retired mechanic and driver Eiji Honma (Ken Takakura) to the team. Honma soon discovers his ex-wife Kei (Ayumi Ishida) is also participating in the rally, alongside her current husband, the bullfighter Antonio Vázquez (Tomas Arana). He is also accompanied by Yuko Takei (Junko Sakurada), a singer who followed Yoshii from Japan.
Shuji was once a feared member of the Yakuza crime syndicate, but he's reformed his ways, abandoned his old life and left the city for a small coastal fishing town where he's become an honest fisherman.
Ken Takakura (高倉 健, Takakura Ken), born Gouichi Oda (February 16, 1931, in Kitakyūshū, Fukuoka, Japan), was a Japanese actor best known for his brooding style and the stoic presence he brings to his roles. Takakura gained his streetwise swagger and tough-guy persona watching yakuza turf battles over the lucrative black market and racketeering in postwar Fukuoka. This subject was covered in one of his most famous movies, Showa Zankyo-den (Remnants of Chivalry in the Showa Era), in which he played an honorable old-school yakuza among the violent post-war gurentai. A graduate of Meiji University in Tokyo Takakura happened by an audition in 1955 at the Toei Film Company, and decided to look in. Toei found a natural in Takakura as he debuted with Denko Karate Uchi (Lightning Karate Blow) in 1956. Japan experienced a boom in gangster films in the 1960s as the Japanese people struggled with the generational differences between those raised in pre-war and post-war Japan and these were Takakura's stock and trade. His breakout role would be in the 1965 film Abashiri Prison, and its sequel Abashiri Bangaichi: Bokyohen (Abashiri Prison: Longing for Home, also 1965), in which he played an ex-con antihero. By the time Takakura would leave Toei in 1976, he had appeared in over 180 films. Takakura gained international recognition after starring in the 1970 war film Too Late the Hero as the cunning Imperial Japanese Major Yamaguchi, the 1975 Sydney Pollack sleeper hit The Yakuza with Robert Mitchum and is probably best known in the West for his role in Ridley Scott's Black Rain (1989) where he surprises American cops played by Michael Douglas and Andy García with the line, "I do speak fucking English". He again proved himself bankable to Western audiences with the 1992 Fred Schepisi comedy Mr. Baseball starring Tom Selleck. While he has slowed down a bit in his older years, he is still active. His most recent film was the 2005 Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles by Chinese director Zhang Yimou. Description above from the Wikipedia article Ken Takakura, licensed under CC-BY-SA,full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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