Masanobu Higurashi

Birth : 1927-09-03, Chiba Prefecture, Japan

Death : 2003-03-11

Movies

The Ando Gang Documentary Film
Original Music Composer
This biopic of notorious yakuza-turned-actor Noboru Ando focuses on the days leading to his arrest after the shooting of businessman Hideki Yokoi.
A True Story of the Private Ginza Police
Original Music Composer
After a desperate gang of ex-soldiers and gamblers meet in a fistfight in occupied Ginza they decide to make the neighborhood their own.
Quarreling with Yakuza
Original Music Composer
Set loose in a postwar world with no rules, an ex-juvenile delinquent begins building the most powerful gang in Tokyo's glittering Shibuya ward.
Yakuza Skirmishes
Original Music Composer
In the gaudy world of 1930s Shinjuku, a violent youth known as Bakudan Match tangles explosively with prostitutes, politicians and the police.
Gang Warfare
Original Music Composer
The Armed Organization
Original Music Composer
Violent Gang Re-Arms is a rousing tale of friction in yakuza and labor interactions with Koji Tsurata as a yakuza supervising a dockworker's union. He finds himself between a rock and a hard place, at odds with both the dockworkers' leader (Tomisaburo Wakayama) and sadistic, unprincipled bosses (Fumio Watanabe and Tetsuro Tamba).
The Gambler's Counterattack
Original Music Composer
Aiba is a gang boss who has just got out of jail, and finds everything has changed. His old gang has broken up, and only a few people still respect him. So he becomes a consultant to another gang who are about to be clobbered by a much larger gang moving in from out of town. Aiba proves a crafty tactician, and does very well at playing gangs off against each other in order to save the smaller gang. His advice is not always taken by those he tries to help, but he is generally proved right.
Japan's Violent Gangs: The Boss and the Killers
Original Music Composer
An honorable yakuza syndicate deeply rooted in Kyoto fights for survival when a new breed of gangsters threaten their very existence.
A Gambler's Certain Death
Original Music Composer
Part 7 in the Gambling Den series. This time Koji Tsuruta is a gambler who feels sympathetic towards a woman whose naive husband is driven to a debt trap by a rotten gambling den owner (Tatsuo Endo) and his dishonest card dealer (Isamu Nagato). The plot is standard stuff and features too much talk, but there's also a decent balance between melodrama and lyricism in the form and storytelling. Tsuruta was a perfect fit for these kind of roles, with the stoic and emotional sides nicely mixed in his screen persona.
Japan Organized Crime Boss
Original Music Composer
Coming out of jail and hoping for a quiet life, Yokohama yakuza has to take the lead of his gang after the death of his boss. His small group is is taken in a crossfire between a big yakuza group from Osaka at war with the Tokyo alliance for the control of the city. He tries to keep to the old yakuza code but he is no match for the new thugs who live and fight without honor.
The Shape of Night
Original Music Composer
Yoshie Nogami, a factory worker by day, moonlights as a hostess at a bar. One of the regulars, Eiji Kitami, invites her out on a date. Still only 19, she goes along out of curiosity and ends up spending the night at a hotel where she gives herself to him. They begin a passionate love affair and move in together, after which Yoshie begins skipping work at the factory and rarely returns to her family home. Before long, Eiji’s demeanor changes and he begins to constantly ask her for money. Despite claiming to be a businessman, he is actually a local thug, and his inability to pay his dues to his gang leads him to force Yoshie into prostitution.