Classic Film Club

ISAO KIMURA

Isao Kimura

Isao Kimura (1949)

Biography

BIO

Isao Kimura | 木村功 was born in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1923.   He moved to Tokyo in 1941 intending to focus on his university studies, but he became immersed in the school's drama club.

Kimura was drafted into the Japanese Navy in 1944 and served a year before returning to Japan at the end of World War II to find his entire family wiped out after an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

He made his film debut in Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (1949).   After more than 60 motion pictures, Kimura’s last film was released in 1974, although he continued to appear on television.

In the the 1960s, Kimura became involved in modern Japanese theatre and was managing a troupe through the 1970s.   The theatre company was deeply in debt and ultimately went bankrupt in 1979.   He became personally liable for a large sum of money.

Kimura wed Kozue Kunie in 1948.   She would write a best-selling memoir after her husband's death.

He died of esophageal cancer in Tokyo, in 1981.   Kimura was 58 years old.


Other Pictures

Isao Kimura (1954)

Films

NOTED FILMS

Stray Dog

Stray Dog
  • Stray Dog
  • 野良犬
  • 1949
  • A pickpocket steals the service revolver of a greenhorn police detective and the gun falls into the hands of a psychopath who begins a killing spree.

    A seasoned police officer takes the young detective under his wing as the two try to track down the killer before anyone else is murdered. Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura are directed by Akira Kurosawa.

Ikiru

Ikiru
  • Ikiru
  • 生きる
  • 1952
  • A long-time city bureaucrat finds himself unmoored and dissatisfied with his accomplishments once he believes he has contracted stomach cancer and knows his death is imminent.

Seven Samurai

Seven Samurai
  • Seven Samurai
  • 七人の侍
  • 1954
  • Akira Kurosawa's homeric story of a band of samurai that defends a small village against marauders in the waning days of the feudal warlord era is not only a genre classic, but also influenced many Westerns decades later.

High and Low

High and Low
  • High and Low
  • 天国と地獄
  • 1963
  • Just as he is putting the finishing touches on a daring take-over, one for which he has mortgaged everything, an executive’s son is feared kidnapped and he must raise a kingly ransom.

    Akira Kurosawa directs Toshiro Mifune.

Complete filmography at: