Taro Iwashiro

Taro Iwashiro

Birth : 1965-05-01, Tokyo, Japan

History

Taro Iwashiro (岩代 太郎 Iwashiro Tarō) has composed the music for many Japanese television series and films. He has composed for both Red Cliff films, Shinobi: Heart Under Blade, Azumi, The Prince of Tennis, Rurouni Kenshin: The Motion Picture, and the Korean film Memories of Murder. He was also lead composer for the Capcom video game Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny. Iwashiro has often led the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra for his soundtracks, including the 2005 taiga drama Yoshitsune and 2008 film Red Cliff.

Profile

Taro Iwashiro

Movies

The Moon
Original Music Composer
Yoko, who gets a job at a nursing home, witnesses the elderly and disabled people there having their human dignity threatened.
The Village
Original Music Composer
In a once-scenic village now dominated by a vast trash disposal site, a young man yearns to break free from a cruel fate tying him to the very grounds.
Unlock Your Heart
Original Music Composer
Ai has had a crush forever on her classmate Tatoe. When she finds out that Tatoe is in a secret relationship with another girl, she sets out to sabotage their plans for the future.
It's a Flickering Life
Original Music Composer
The story centers on a man who loves movies, having once worked at movie studio in pursuit of his dreams, surrounded by great directors and famous actors. In this tale of love and friendship spanning a lifetime, the "god of cinema" that Go has worshipped since he was young will transcend time, and work a miracle in the lives of one family.
Fukushima 50
Original Music Composer
Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi facility in Japan risk their lives and stay at the nuclear power plant to prevent total destruction after the region is devastated by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
The Journalist
Original Music Composer
It is the job of the press to cover corporate crime, government plots and society. It is in this context that young female reporter on the beat Erika rolls up her sleeves and goes to work regarding what seems to be a government cover up. She is dealing with a government bureaucrat called Sugihara. It seems as if a clash is inevitable.
Starlight Promises
Original Music Composer
Shoma Mihara, a freshman in high school, receives a sudden message from his friend Atsushi inviting him to meet again at a mysterious festival. Having been unable to contact Atsushi for three and a half years, Shoma jumps at the chance and heads to join the Starlight Festival, held in a deserted mountain village. Once there, Shoma searches for Atsushi but finds no trace of him. Instead Shoma meets Shiori, a young woman who’s also looking for someone. Kana, the director of the Starlight Festival, assures Shoma that he’ll be able to reunite with Atsushi before the festivities end. Both Shoma and Shiori end up helping with preparations, only to find themselves pulled deeper and deeper into a series of strange happenings. Will Shoma be able to meet his dear friend...?
Manhunt
Original Music Composer
Accused of a murder he didn't commit, a prosecutor sets out on a mission to clear his name.
Museum
Original Music Composer
In Tokyo, Japan, several grotesque murders take place on rainy days. Detective Sawamura, who is in charge of the case, soon discovers that his own family is connected to the crimes.
Ken San
Original Music Composer
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.
Detective Mitarai's Casebook: The Clockwork Current
Original Music Composer
Private Detective Kiyoshi Mitarai and Miyuki Ogawa arrive in Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture. They are interested in a case which involves discovered bodies. The bodies were found drifting in the Seto Inland Sea, where the currents repeat every 6 hours.
The Crossing II
Original Music Composer
A story of three couples and their intertwining love stories set in 1940s Taiwan and Shanghai, centered around the 1949 sinking of Taiping.
The Pearls of the Stone Man
Original Music Composer
Atsushi and Ryoko are a married coupled. They decide they want to live around nature and move to Biei in Hokkaido, Japan. Atsushi isn't sure what to do with his free time, so Ryoko asks him build a stone wall around their house. Atsushi experiences tragedy, but later gets closer to his estranged daughter, Satoko. Atsushi continues building the stone wall.
The Crossing
Original Music Composer
During the Chinese Revolution in 1949, three couples flee from China to an island of Taiwan.
Kiki's Delivery Service
Original Music Composer
A young girl named Kiki must leave her home for a year to begin training in witchcraft. She leaves on her broom, but first says goodbye to her friends and family. Kiki then begins her new life with her trusted cat Jiji.
A Tale of Samurai Cooking
Original Music Composer
In this love story set in the Edo period, 27-year-old Oharu is a genius in the kitchen. Oharu attracts the attention of the master chef of the Kaga Domain, who arranges for her to marry his son and heir, 24-year-old Yasunobu. But, Yasunobu is cold to his new wife, and he's more interested in swordplay than cookery.
Unforgiven
Original Music Composer
Set in Hokkaido, Japan in the 1880s. Jubei Kamata (Ken Watanabe), who is on the side of the Edo shogunate government, kills many people. His name is infamous in Kyoto. When the battle at Goryoukaku is about to be finished, Jubei disappears. 10 years later, Jubei lives with his kid in relative peace. He is barely able to make a living. Protecting his dead wife's grave, Jubei has decided to never pick up a sword again, but due to poverty he has no choice but to pick the sword again. Jubei becomes a bounty hunter.
Super Fish - An Endless Adventure
Music Director
Since man made the spear one-hundred thousand years ago, the fish have been a surprising role in human history. They've only been known as food for man who have been hungry! How have they changed the history of humans? Here goes the story...
Super Fish - An Endless Adventure
Music
Since man made the spear one-hundred thousand years ago, the fish have been a surprising role in human history. They've only been known as food for man who have been hungry! How have they changed the history of humans? Here goes the story...
Tug of War!
Music
The mayor of Oita wants to improve the image of his city, so he instructs Chiaki - a young woman working for the city's PR department - to form a female tug of war team. Nobuo MIZUTA mixes comedy, drama and a pinch of social criticism to tell a tale of eight women, their everyday struggles and their support for each other.
Isoroku Yamamoto, the Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet
Music
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (1884-1943) was the Japanese Naval commander who was given the order to attack Pearl Harbour, an order he was duty bound to obey which went against his own personal beliefs. While this infamous attack is a low point in Japanese and US history it wouldn’t have happened if the Japanese government had listened to Yamamoto in 1939 and searched for a more peaceful way to end their war campaign, proving his many ominous presages of the outcomes of the attack to come true.
Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: The Sacred Star of Milos
Original Music Composer
After a mysterious prisoner with only a few weeks left on his sentence breaks out of prison in Central City, the Elric brothers attempt to track him down. The search leads them to Table City in the southwestern country of Creta, where Alphonse rescues a young alchemist named Julia from the very man they are trying to capture. In the thick of the fight, they literally tumble into Julia's home turf, the slums of Milos Valley, and are embroiled in the grassroots rebellion of her people.
No More Cry
Original Music Composer
Abandoned by his father as a boy, Yuta grows up as the foster son of a restaurant owner and takes over the restaurant at the owner's death. Cheery, always smiling, always helpful, Yuta is known as Yama-chan, the friend everyone turns to. When Yuta discovers he had a hitherto unknown baby brother, he sets out to track him down. But the baby brother, Yusuke, has grown up to be half of a successful comedy team, the Kinjo Brothers, and Yusuke's professional "brother" has just written a best-selling book about their adventures growing up together. Yuta's appearance on the scene threatens to reveal that the book is a complete fiction and to set all three "brothers" into conflict with each other.
252: Signal of Life
Original Music Composer
At some point in the distant future, a massive, catastrophic earthquake strikes Tokyo, causing the temperature of the Pacific Ocean to rise meteorically and the largest typhoon in recorded Japanese history to sweep toward the city and inundate it with water. The Tokyo Fire Department and its team of crack rescuers swing into action, and shortly after they do, a distress call arises from an underground subway station - with repeated indications of the rescue code, 252 252, and the exclamation "We Have Survivors." It soon becomes apparent that the local rescue squad must attempt to save the survivors, doing so at the expense of their own lives and safety. Written by Nathan Southern
Red Cliff
Original Music Composer
In 208 A.D., in the final days of the Han Dynasty, shrewd Prime Minster Cao convinced the fickle Emperor Han the only way to unite all of China was to declare war on the kingdoms of Xu in the west and East Wu in the south. Thus began a military campaign of unprecedented scale. Left with no other hope for survival, the kingdoms of Xu and East Wu formed an unlikely alliance.
The Chasing World
Original Music Composer
A teenager is transported to a parallel world where everyone who shares his family name is being hunted down by the dictatorial government.
Akanezora Beyond the Crimson Sky
Original Music Composer
A young tofu maker, Eikichi comes from Kyoto to open a tofu shop in a friendly neighborhood. He meets there a feisty local girl Ofumi who befriends him as he sets up his shop, Kyo-ya and in spite of the difficulties stemming from cultural differences between the two ancient capitals including the favored taste of tofu itself, they eventually marry and become the owner of a tofu shop on a more respectable street. Behind the rock-solid business of Kyo-ya, their son, Eitaro bears the brunt of other tofu shops' animosity toward Kyo-ya's refusal to comply with Edo's way of running business and starts to frequent a gambling hall run by the mysterious "Boss", which throws the family into a critical situation that threaten to pull them apart...
Aogeba Tôtoshi
Original Music Composer
Mortality and death seen through the eyes of a lonely student who has an morbid and albeit naive fascination with death. His teacher, Koichi is also grappling with the issue of mortality as he deals with the impending death of his ailing father, who has decided to spend his final days in the family home. As the story progresses, Koichi finds unexpected solace from his grief by letting his troubled student visit and meet with his father in the hopes that he will understand the meaning of life and death.
Snowy Love Fall in Spring
Music
Based on the first novel, Spring Snow, of Mishima Yukio's Sea of Fertility tetralogy, it follows the troubled and illicit affair between two youngsters amongst the aristocracy and rich of early twentieth century Japan.
Shinobi: Heart Under Blade
Original Music Composer
Even though Gennosuke and Oboro are from rival ninja villages, they are secretly in love. At an annual conference with the Lord, it is dictated that a competition--a fight to the death--will take place between the five best shinobi from each village. Gennosuke and Oboro's love is made even more impossible when they each got picked as the leader of the five to represent their respective villages.
Making Memories of Murder
Himself
Made in 2004, this extensive documentary chronicles the production and release of Memories of Murder.
Dear Hinagon
Music
Blood and Bones
Music
In 1923, teenager Kim Shun-Pei moves from Cheju Island, in South Korea, to Osaka, in Japan. Along the years, he becomes a cruel, greedy and violent man and builds a factory of kamaboko, processed seafood products, in his poor Korean-Japanese community exploiting his employees.
Farewell, Kuro
Music
Based on a true story set in Matsumoto city, Nagano, during 1960s. A stray dog wanders into a high school's grounds. The dog, named Kuro, stays at the school and becomes a special friend to everyone.
Azumi
Music
In war-torn Japan, the Tokugawa Shogun, desperate to restore peace to his people, orders the assassination of the hostile warlords. A beautiful young woman is raised from birth with nine other orphans, to become an assassin. Her name is Azumi, the ultimate assassin.
Memories of Murder
Orchestrator
During the late 1980s, two detectives in a South Korean province attempt to solve the nation's first series of rape-and-murder cases.
Memories of Murder
Conductor
During the late 1980s, two detectives in a South Korean province attempt to solve the nation's first series of rape-and-murder cases.
Memories of Murder
Original Music Composer
During the late 1980s, two detectives in a South Korean province attempt to solve the nation's first series of rape-and-murder cases.
11'09''01 September 11
Original Music Composer
Filmmakers from all over the world provide short films – each of which is eleven minutes, nine seconds, and one frame of film in length – that offer differing perspectives on the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Another Heaven
Original Music Composer
A pair of hard-boiled Tokyo cops are investigating a gruesome murder: after killing the victim, the murderer cut his skull open and cooked his brain in a stew. As they try to track down the killer, they discover that, quite literally, everybody is a suspect. Will they bring the terror to an end, or will they become part of it themselves?
Ping Pong Bath Station
Original Music Composer
An unhappy housewife regains her passion for life by taking over a failing bath house.
Rurouni Kenshin: Requiem for the Ishin Patriots
Music
The war against the Tokugawa Shogunate ended years ago. But there are some who are not happy with the outcome. Shigure Takimi watched his friends and family get slashed down in the name of freedom and prosperity. Now he and a band of desparate rebels have sworn to settle one final score. Only one man stands in their way: Rurouni Kenshin. Will the former assassin take up his sword to fight again? When Shigure discovers Kenshin's true identity and his fight becomes a personal vendetta, the young hero will have no choice.
The Dog of Flanders
Original Music Composer
Poor but happy, young Nello and his grandfather live alone, delivering milk as a livelihood, in the outskirts of Antwerp, a city in Flanders (the Flemish or Dutch-speaking part of modern-day Belgium). They discover a beaten dog (a Bouvier, a large sturdy dog native to Flanders) and adopt it and nurse it back to health, naming it Patrasche, the middle name of Nello's mother Mary, who died when Nello was very young. Nello's mother was a talented artist, and like his mother, he delights in drawing, and his friend Aloise is his model and greatest fan and supporter.
The Bridge Club
Original Music Composer
Tatsuo was leading a peaceful suburban life with his wife and daughter. But an ex-girlfriend attends his bridge club. Then Haruo, an old friend, appears. He is being chased by loan sharks and needs shelter. Haruo overstays his welcome and family relations become strained.
Goodbye for Tomorrow
Music
People from all walks of life (a high-school student, a middle-aged businessman, a yakuza chief, etc.) all receive mysterious messages from loved ones who were killed 3 months earlier in a shipwreck. They are instructed to go to a small island in the Inland Sea that evening. At the stroke of midnight, the lost ship emerges from the sea and they are given a brief time to say their final words to their lost loved ones, before the deceased must once again board the ship and it sinks back into the depths.