Hideo Oguni
Writing
Biography
Hideo Oguni (小国 英雄 Oguni Hideo, 9 July 1904 – 5 February 1996) was a Japanese writer who wrote over 100 screenplays. He is best known for co-writing screenplays for a number of films directed by Akira Kurosawa, including Ikiru, The Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood and The Hidden Fortress. His first film with Kurosawa was Ikiru, and according to film professor Catherine Russell, it was Oguni who devised that film's two-part structure. Film critic Donald Richie regarded him as the "humanist" among Kurosawa's writers. In 2013, Oguni and frequent screenwriting collaborators Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto and Ryūzō Kikushima were awarded the Jean Renoir Award by the Writers Guild of America West. Writing credits other than for Kurosawa films include Heinosuke Gosho's Entotsu no mieru basho in 1953, Koji Shima's Warning from Space in 1956, Tora! Tora! Tora!, and Hiroshi Inagaki's Machibuse in 1970.
Known For

A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food.
Seven Samurai

A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.
High and Low

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
Ikiru

When a titan music mogul, widely known as having the "best ears in the business", is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma.
Highest 2 Lowest

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.
Ran

In the summer of 1941, the United States and Japan seem on the brink of war after constant embargos and failed diplomacy come to no end. "Tora! Tora! Tora!", named after the code words used by the lead Japanese pilot to indicate they had surprised the Americans, covers the days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which plunged America into the Second World War.
Tora! Tora! Tora!

Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.
Throne of Blood

A young farmer assembles a band of diverse mercenaries to defend his peaceful planet from an evil tyrant.
Battle Beyond the Stars

Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel.
Red Beard

A hardened convict and a younger prisoner escape from a brutal prison in the middle of winter only to find themselves on an out-of-control train with a female railway worker while being pursued by the vengeful head of security.
Runaway Train

In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains.
The Hidden Fortress

London, 1953. Mr. Williams, a veteran civil servant, is an important cog within the city's bureaucracy as it struggles to rebuild in the aftermath of World War II. Buried under paperwork at the office and lonely at home, his life has long felt empty and meaningless. Then a devastating medical diagnosis forces him to take stock, and to try and grasp some fulfilment before it passes permanently beyond reach.
Living

In this loose adaptation of "Hamlet," illegitimate son Kôichi Nishi climbs to a high position within a Japanese corporation and marries the crippled daughter of company vice president Iwabuchi. At the reception, the wedding cake is a replica of their corporate headquarters, but an aspect of the design reminds the party of the hushed-up death of Nishi's father. It is then that Nishi unleashes his plan to avenge his father's death.
The Bad Sleep Well

In this companion piece and sequel to "Yojimbo," jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a proper samurai on its ear.
Sanjuro

Residents of a rundown boardinghouse in 19th-century Japan, including a mysterious old man and an aging actor, get drawn into a love triangle that turns violent. When amoral thief Sutekichi breaks off his affair with landlady Osugi to romance her younger sister, Okayo, Osugi extracts her revenge by revealing her infidelity to her jealous husband.
The Lower Depths

The story of a professional nude model stalked by a bizarre, unknown man wearing a hideous mask.
The Vampire Moth

On a Tokyo dump’s shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who “drives” an imaginary trolley, a homeless father and son designing a dream house, a young woman brutalized at home, drunks, schemers, and saints of small kindnesses. Kurosawa crafts a ragged mosaic of hardship, fantasy, and flickers of grace that keep people moving forward.
Dodes'ka-den

The mighty warrior, Kain, crosses the barren wastelands of the planet Ura, where two arch enemies, Zeg and the evil degenerate Balcaz, fight incessantly for control of the village's only well. Kain sees his opportunity and announces that his sword is for hire... but his eyes stay clearly on the beautiful captive sorceress Naja, and his newly awakened purpose.
The Warrior and the Sorceress

After the Akizuku clan fall in defeat to rival clan Yamana, Princess Yuki and General Rokurota take cover in a hidden fortress, along with their clan and gold treasury. Fortuitously stumbling into the hideaways, brash young miner Takezo and his bumbling sidekick Shinhachi hatch a daring plan to help transport the gold out of enemy terrain – in exchange for a share of the stash, of course. With assassins hot in pursuit, Yuki disguises as a male and ventures into the real world with Rukurota and her peasant companions, getting her first taste of danger, toil, and budding romance with the strong-minded and willful Takezo.
The Last Princess

An aging foundry patriarch, gripped by terror of nuclear annihilation, tries to uproot his family to Brazil. When they petition to have him declared incompetent, a family-court counselor witnesses his obsession slide into ruin—and asks whether ignoring the atomic threat is any saner.