Yoshitaka Sakamoto
Birth : 1942-02-14, Nara, Japan
Director of Photography
Director of Photography
Kinjiro, an official with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, is a good-natured fellow who goes around the country helping farm families. At his new appointment in Usuki City, Oita Prefecture, he visits a tea-growing family he has known for a long time. There, he finds the family head's granddaughter Minori, who lost her job in Tokyo and has just returned home.
Director of Photography
In May 2003, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (or JAXA) launched an unmanned spacecraft of their own development to retrieve samples from an asteroid. Seven long years later, Hayabusa achieved its goal and was the first of any kind of craft launched from Earth to safely return samples of this kind to home base. The story was one of such great national pride for Japan, and in the wake of the tsunami and resulting tragedies in Japan it’s strong nationalistic message became the subject of no less than three rival films. Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s high-profile effort, simply titled Hayabusa (2011) starred the incomparable Toshiyuki Nishida. Most recently, Welcome Home, Hayabusa (2012) was released to Japanese audiences. Slipping in between those two was Hayabusa: The Long Voyage Home, concentrating on the people on the ground who helped return the probe safely.
Director of Photography
Japanese history explodes across the screen in the life story of Hitokiri Nakamura Hanjiro, one of the great heroes of the Meiji Restoration. From his earliest beginnings as a country samurai raising sweet potatoes whose exceptional sword skills impressed Saigo...
Director of Photography
Drama about a young doctor.
Director of Photography
1943, two baseball teams play a last match before fighting in WW2.
Director of Photography
A man with plans to propose to his girlfriend hides an engagement ring in the ancient underwater ruins off Japan's Yonaguni Island. When he goes missing she must investigate and remember what happened.
Cinematography
An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a râmen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.
Director of Photography
A young girl meets a strange Old Monk.
Director of Photography
In 370 B.C, China was separated as seven nations and several other small tribes, one of these being the city state of Liang. The nation of Zhao is led by the terrifying Xiang Yangzhong who orders his troops to conquer the small city. Leaping to the defense of the people of Liang is 'Ge Li' from the Mo-Tsu tribe, their last hope from the terrors of Yangzhong's troops.
Director of Photography
Directed by Junya Sato and based on a book by Jun Henmi, "Yamato" has a framing story set in the present day and uses flashbacks to tell the story of the crew of the World War II Japanese battleship Yamato. The film was never released in the United States, where reviewers who have seen it have compared the military epic to "Titanic" and "Saving Private Ryan."
Director of Photography
A school brass band gets a new member.
Director of Photography
Young assassins Azumi and Nagara continue their mission to prevent a civil war. In their hunt for Masayuki Sanada, who is protected by both an army and a dangerous clan, they meet Ginkaku, a person who shows a remarking resemblance with former friend Nachi.
Director of Photography
LIFE IS JOURNEY is an anthology of four stories about people who live in solitude, but who yearn for togetherness. Each day brings chance meetings and reluctant partings, joy and pain. The first vignette, "Life", portrays half of a woman's life in one-scene, one-cut, nine-minute sequence. "N" is a comical take on a man abandoned by his lover. "Ya" explores the bond of female friendship as one woman consoles a brokenhearted girlfriend. In "Nowhere", a man and a woman roam the streets of a foreign land in search of lost time.
Director of Photography
War between North Korea and Japan
Director of Photography
When radicals from Japan's Red Army took a woman hostage in the resort town of Karuizawa, Nagano in 1972, Officer Atsuyuki Sassa was put in charge of diffusing the situation. But the task had its challenges. Upon arriving in mountainous Nagano, Sassa had to compete with freezing winter temperatures, conflicting opinions between the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and the Nagano Prefectural Police, as well as public opinion to gain entrance to the lodge that held the single woman captive.
Director of Photography
Director of Photography
"Quartet" tells the story of four young musicians as they form a string quartet and pursue fame.
Director of Photography
When a major bank is caught paying off a corporate extortionist, the media and prosecutors begin to dig, breaking open a money-and-favours scandal that threatens to rock the entire structure of business and government to its core. While the bank's top executives continue to vacillate, a quartet of middle-management reformers, led by straight-arrow Kitano (Koji Yakusho), decide to stage a boardroom coup and install a new, clean management team. With the aid of a hotshot news anchor (Miho Wada) and a hard-nosed prosecutor (Kenichi Endo), heads begin to roll.
Director of Photography
In the year 198X, a young screenwriter, Ryohei Shimura, has been in a slump lately. Then an opportunity arises. He is asked to write a script for the comeback film of Akiko Ryuzoji, the legendary beauty who was known as Japan's Cleopatra. Ryohei met Akiko right away, but he couldn't believe his eyes. Akiko was young and good-looking, even though she was already an old woman. Ryohei moved into Akiko's house to work on his scenario. A film director, Mizumori, who lives with Akiko at the mansion, warns Ryohei, “Don't sleep with Akiko,” he says. In fact, Ryohei was chosen for the job for a surprising reason...
Director of Photography
Yukie is a romance story about an American veteran (Bo Swenson) of the Korean War veteran and his undying love for a beautiful Japanese nurse named Yukie (Mitsuko Baisho) who marries him despite her parents' objections.
Director of Photography
Filmed somewhat in documentary style, it follows three girls over the span of one day and night in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. Jonko runs a group of high school girls involved in paid dating, Raku is a street dancer, and Togo was brought up in the US and back in Japan for one year wants to escape to New York. Their contact with the world of talent scouts and yakuza places them in danger.
Director of Photography
A young foot soldier in the yakuza seeks revenge when his prostitute girlfriend dies after a session with a high-ranking Japanese politician with a taste for torture. He sets out on a 'kamikaze' mission to kill his bosses and the politician; along the way, he acquires the aid of a taxi driver who has recently returned to Japan after living in South America for several decades and is struggling to cope with poverty and the prejudices of native-born Japanese.
Director of Photography
"Don't pity me, just give me money." A smart little girl, Suzu, for the sake of her beloved sick mother, has no choice but to attempt all ways to fork up the money required for the operation. It includes stealing, cheating and almost anything that could yield cash. However, deep within her is a sadness unseen by many.
Director of Photography
A special effects filled fantasy adventure, in which an 8 year old boy encounters an ancient samurai warrior who is only six inches tall.
Director of Photography
Director of Photography
Director of Photography
Two pilots compete to be the best jet fighter. A commander with a troublesome past, a female director who wants a good scoop, a competition that is looking for their best guy.
Director of Photography
Director of Photography
Harada is a successful scenario writer, and his best buddy has just announced an intention to propose to Harada's ex-wife. Recovering from the shock, Harada indulges in melancholy, mainly on his failure as a husband and father, and goes to a 'Rakugo' (sit-down comedy) show, where a friendly man in the audience invites him home. Harada is puzzled at the strong resemblance of this man and his wife to his own parents, who were killed nearly 30 years ago when he was twelve.
Director of Photography
During the fervently nationalist months leading up to World War II, a rebellious teenager is transferred to a new primary school in a small Inland Sea town. He vies with the school’s reigning bully, who takes a romantic interest in his older stepsister. When they learn she’s going to be sold to a brothel to pay off her father’s debts, they form an uneasy alliance to free her.
Cameraman
A Francophile filmmaker in a creative rut tries to pass off a free-spirited young actress as his movie-star wife in order to fool a chief from the South Seas.
Cinematography
A Francophile filmmaker in a creative rut tries to pass off a free-spirited young actress as his movie-star wife in order to fool a chief from the South Seas.
Director of Photography
Plot missing
Director of Photography
After a series of chance meetings a shiftless motorbike enthusiast Ko begins a romance with a carefree girl Miyo, after teaching her to ride. When Miyo proves herself a biker prodigy Ko begins to fear that she is destined to crash.
Director of Photography
A lonely high schooler suddenly meets the love of his life out of thin air. Is she a real person or a figment of his imagination?
Director of Photography
A high school girl travels to the island of New Caledonia and has magical adventures.
Director of Photography
After noticing in the news there was a fire in an old canal town, Eguchi recalls visiting there a decade ago as a university student.
Director of Photography
Yoshiyama Kazuko is in the 3rd grade of junior high. One day, she's cleaning in the laboratory, she notices of the smell of lavender, and faints. Since then, she has acquired a mysterious power to travel time.
Director of Photography
Director of Photography
9th-graders Kazuo and Kazumi take a tumble at a temple in a small seacoast town in Japan. Through supernatural intervention, their minds and bodies are switched, and the result is a touching and hilarious coming-of-age comedy as they attempt to survive the pressures of junior high school life.
Director of Photography
Mitamura Yuka is a normal, shy high school student. Except for the fact that she has psychic powers. When a new student with similar powers begins to show her skills, creating a force of psychic Nazi student enforcers, Yuka and her friends vow to stop her. But behind it all is a mysterious force that will put Yuka's powers to the ultimate test!
Director of Photography
A travelling group of young people running a pirate radio station from a small truck encounter an eccentric elderly couple who are on the run from the law.
Director of Photography
Komori Tiaki is a budding tennis student, however one day in training her coach hits the ball into her eye accidentally. She is taken to hospital but it advised that she will never regain the sight in her eye. Her coach knows of a mysterious doctor 'Blackjack' who lives in a secluded house, who might be able to help. 'Blackjack' agrees to do the operation, but for a 'substantial reward'! Her sight is regained, but now she starts to see a mysterious man that is invisible to those around her....
Director of Photography
Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip to the countryside to visit her aunt at their ancestral house. She invites her six friends, Prof, Melody, Mac, Fantasy, Kung Fu, and Sweet, to join her. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.