Attended art classes at Waseda University. His work with the Shochiku film company was interrupted by becoming a POW during the Sino-Japanese war. His most famous film, the epic "The Human Condition", set in a Manchurian forced labor camp, was partly based on his experience of wartime incarceration. With films like "Hara-Kiri" and "Kwaidan", he came to be feted in the 1960s as a master of both the samurai movie and the supernatural genre.