Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#39257
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Susumu Fujita represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 25 years in, and Susumu is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Susumu Fujita appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Susumu. High and Low is the clearest case: a film rated 7.9 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, drama. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for war, drama, history. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Richard Fleischer, Ishirō Honda, Akira Kurosawa and others, Susumu Fujita helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
High and Low (1963) as Chief of First Investigating Section · Yojimbo (1961) as Homma, Instructor Who Skips Town · The Hidden Fortress (1958) as General Hyoe Tadokoro
Career snapshot
Ranked #39257 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1945–1970
Career length
25 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.9
High and Low
Average Nutevio score
7.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.4
High and Low
Most frequent director
Akira Kurosawa
5 films together
Longest collaboration
5×
With Akira Kurosawa
Most common genre
Drama
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 55m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.7
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1960s
7.5 average MV
The 1960s are where the work and the material meet. Mothra vs. Godzilla, High and Low, Yojimbo — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1960s
7.5
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1960s
7.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1940s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two.
Most productive era
1950s
4 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.21 film | 6.94 films | 7.53 films | 7.01 film |
| Action | 6.21 film | 6.92 films | 6.81 film | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.42 films | 7.82 films | — |
| Crime | — | — | 7.91 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sanshiro Sugata.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1963High and Low
7.9 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Rear Adm. Tamon Yamaguchi.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
9 of 9 films
as Chief of First Investigating Section
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
as Homma, Instructor Who Skips Town
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
as General Hyoe Tadokoro
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
as Naruto Nitôhei
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
as Togashi
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Chief of First Investigating Section
High and Low (1963)
Performance score7.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Chief of First Investigating Section gives Susumu Fujita a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Homma, Instructor Who Skips Town
Yojimbo (1961)
Performance score7.6
Yojimbo asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Homma, Instructor Who Skips Town is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
General Hyoe Tadokoro
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
Performance score7.6
The Hidden Fortress asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. General Hyoe Tadokoro is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Naruto Nitôhei
The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity (1959)
Performance score7.2
The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Naruto Nitôhei is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Chief of First Investigating Section
Start here. High and Low is the clearest statement of what Susumu Fujita does — accessible, 142 minutes, and rated 7.9 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Susumu at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1952)
Same director as High and Low, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
Same director as The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity (1959)
Keeps the drama register of The Hidden Fortress but asks for a colder reading of it.
Yojimbo (1961)
Keeps the drama register of The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Akira Kurosawa
Director
5 films together
Notably High and Low
Ishirō Honda
Director
2 films together
Notably Mothra vs. Godzilla
Masaki Kobayashi
Director
1 film together
Notably The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity
Richard Fleischer
Director
1 film together
Notably Tora! Tora! Tora!
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Akira Kurosawa
Director
5 films together · 7.2 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 5 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
High and LowIshirō Honda
Director
2 films together · 6.5 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Mothra vs. GodzillaMasaki Kobayashi
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Human Condition II: Road to EternityRichard Fleischer
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Tora! Tora! Tora!Six degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
High and Low
as Chief of First Investigating Section
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail
as Togashi
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
High and Low
as Chief of First Investigating Section
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Tora! Tora! Tora!
as Rear Adm. Tamon Yamaguchi
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
High and Low
as Chief of First Investigating Section
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Susumu Fujita has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
25 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Drama Legend
Awarded
9 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
High and Low
as Chief of First Investigating Section
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
High and Low
as Chief of First Investigating Section
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail
as Togashi
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
High and Low
as Chief of First Investigating Section
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Hidden Fortress
as General Hyoe Tadokoro
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Hidden Fortress
as General Hyoe Tadokoro
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
High and Low
as Chief of First Investigating Section
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two
as Sanshiro Sugata
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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