FrameThrower · Actors · Minoru Chiaki
Minoru Chiaki
9 films · 536 frames · top-billed in 3 · 1950–1958
Born 28 April 1917 · Hokkaido, Japan · died 1 November 1999
Minoru Chiaki was a Japanese actor who appeared in such films as Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress.
In Seven Samurai he was the good-natured samurai Heihachi. Later in his career he appeared as a secondary actor in many Toei films. In 1986 he was given the Best Actor prize at the Japan Academy Prize ceremony for his performance in Toei's Gray Sunset (1985).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Minoru Chiaki, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Awards
On FrameThrower we have: 9 films · 536 frames · top-billed in 3 · 1950–1958
- Blue Ribbon Awards for Best Actor1986
How their films are shot
Measured across 536 frames from the 9 films we hold. This is the look of the work Minoru takes, not a claim about any single frame — we index the cast of a film, never the people in a shot.
Across the 9 films we hold, 58% of their frames are day, 46% natural — the look of the work Minoru takes.
Time of day
Lighting
Shot size
Camera angle
Mood
Films in the library
Every poster opens that film — stills, cinematography notes and colour palette.
The Hidden Fortress
1958 · Tahei
I Live In Fear
1955 · Jiro Nakajima
Godzilla Raids Again
1955 · Kôji Kobayashi
Throne of Blood
1957 · Yoshiaki Miki
The Lower Depths
1957 · Former Samurai
Seven Samurai
1954 · Heihachi Hayashida
Ikiru
1952 · Noguchi
The Idiot
1951 · Mutsuo Kayama, the secretary
Rashomon
1950 · Priest
Often with
Shared films in this library, not a full filmography.
A reference database for filmmakers
FrameThrower is a fully machine-searchable film database and visual reference library — all 536 frames from Minoru Chiaki's 9 films, and 5,000+ films besides, indexed frame by frame and readable by AI. Search it in plain language, from a reference image, or by colour; call it from an API, an MCP server or an SDK. It's the reference layer for making the next movie.