Kumeko Otowa
Known For & Full Filmography42 Titles
Movie - 1985, 2h 15m • as Sue's lady in waiting
Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.
Movie - 1990, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa’s own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier’s ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh’s canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity’s uneasy bond with nature.
Movie - 1980, 2h 15m • as Takemaru's Nurse
Akira Kurosawa's lauded feudal epic presents the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid attacks by competing clans. When Shingen dies, his generals reluctantly agree to have the impostor take over as the powerful ruler. He soon begins to appreciate life as Shingen, but his commitment to the role is tested when he must lead his troops into battle against the forces of a rival warlord.
Movie - 1991, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
An elderly Nagasaki hibakusha spends a summer caring for her four grandchildren, whose curiosity about the 1945 bombing stirs buried memories and moral questions. When an American nephew from Hawaii visits, the family confronts grief, guilt, and the possibility of reconciliation across generations.
Movie - 1958, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A film about the life of Kiyoshi Yamashita, a Japanese painter with disabilities.
Movie - 1962, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
After their lord is tricked into committing ritual suicide, forty-seven samurai warriors await the chance to avenge their master and reclaim their honor.
Movie - 1955, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.
Movie - 1956, 2h 15m • as (uncredited)
A humble and simple Takezo abandons his life as a knight errant. He's sought as a teacher and vassal by Shogun, Japan's most powerful clan leader. He's also challenged to fight by the supremely confident and skillful Sasaki Kojiro. Takezo agrees to fight Kojiro in a year's time but rejects Shogun's patronage, choosing instead to live on the edge of a village, raising vegetables. He's followed there by Otsu and later by Akemi, both in love with him. The year ends as Takezo assists the villagers against a band of brigands. He seeks Otsu's forgiveness and accepts her love, then sets off across the water to Ganryu Island for his final contest.
Movie - 1956, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 1996, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A band of samurai warriors places a curse on a family fortune thus frustrating the heir 4 centuries later.
Movie - 1956, 2h 15m • as Tsurumoto maid
Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mother's trade in the late days of geisha. But Otsuta will not give up. This film portrays the day time life of geisha when not entertaining customers.
Movie - 1967, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A man is involved in a fatal car accident, and though he is blameless, his company transfers him to a remote branch in a small town. Before he leaves, he gives the man's widow a large sum of money that she uses to move back to her hometown.
Movie - 1968, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Penultimate 23rd "Ekimae" comedy is about oil-field exploration.
Movie - 1962, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Drama about the lives of the five daughters and daughter-in-law of a store owner.
Movie - 1954, 2h 15m • as Oyone
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 1951, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
In post-WWII Osaka, a middle-aged woman is forced to examine her dreary life and marriage when her husband's young and flirtatious cousin arrives for a brief stay to escape an arranged marriage.
Movie - 1956, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
An adaptation of the popular Sazae-san comic strip. The first entry in Toho's Sazae-san series.
Movie - 1938, 2h 15m • as The second wife
Masako, the daughter of an impoverished itinerant tinsmith, wins a grammar school composition contest with an essay about her neighborhood. The much publicized essay ends up causing the family problems and their chronic money troubles threaten Masako's further education.
Movie - 1941, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The story is based on the serial novel by Tsunoda Kikuo.
Movie - 1952, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A high-born woman named Okuni travels around the country with Gohei, a samurai retainer who is in service to her. They are in search of Tomonojo, who has killed the man who was Okuni’s husband and Gohei’s master, and they cannot return to their lord’s home until they have fulfilled their duty of hunting down and killing Tomonojo.
Movie - 1959, 2h 15m • as Togawa Masae
A psychological Japanese drama about a department store clerk whose fleeting encounter with a mysterious woman leads to obsession, deceit, and tragic consequences. The film explores desire, guilt, and the blurred line between love and delusion.
Movie - 1957, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Historical drama about a sleep-eyed ronin
Movie - 1939, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
This film attempts to reconstruct the tension of the Battle of Shanghai through an episode in an understated way, introducting its story in a documentary mode. In the film story, Japan's marine regiment protects Japanese residents and Chinese refugees-women and young children-from rampant street fighting, Shanhai Rikusentai unsparingly uses its first eight minutes for an official-mannered self-justification of the war. From the viewpoint of explaining Japan's military operation,the narration refers to the city s spatial division in sync with maps on screen.
Movie - 1942, 2h 15m • as Miyoko
What is marriage? Young couple in match-making wanted to know before they decide. They visited married couples of sisters and brothers. Love comedy in 1942.
Movie - 1967, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The fourth and final "Comic Storyteller" feature.
Movie - 1968, 2h 15m • as Yoshiko Nakagawa (Megumi's Mother)
"Shacho" comedy about the president of a salt manufacturing company.
Movie - 1955, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A sequel to Geisha Konatsu (1954).
Movie - 1941, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
The story is based on the serial novel by Tsunoda Kikuo.
Movie - 1941, 2h 15m • as Geisha
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 1962, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
1962 Japanese movie
Movie - 1941, 2h 15m • as Omaki
This epic depicts the battle between Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen. The focus of the story is the struggle by the unit leader in charge of the main supply wagons and the supply troops to transport materiel to the Uesugi army. To this are added episodes involving an itinerant woman.
Movie - 1952, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
1950s Japanese comedy.
Movie - 1969, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Japanese horror thriller from 1969.
Movie - 1960, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A woman and her daughter are in love with the same man, a chef at the restaurant that the mother manages. He is slightly crippled from frostbite in his years in Siberian labor camps and considers himself 'already dead'.
Movie - 1938, 2h 15m • as Yoriko
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 1940, 2h 15m • as Yuriko, Hideko's sister
Hideko, a young Baseball fan, determined to cheer for her favourite baseball team by creating a new song for them.
Movie - 1952, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.
Movie - 1939, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Two hyper-competitive salarymen let their workplace rivalry spill over into their private lives, as both men try to one-up each other on a luxurious beach vacation neither's family can afford.
Movie - 1940, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Part two of two.
Movie - 1940, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
Part one of two.
Movie - 1937, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
An outstanding performance featuring brilliant storytelling, high stakes drama, and unforgettable character arcs.