General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Disciples of Hippocrates (ヒポクラテスたち)

Disciples of Hippocrates (ヒポクラテスたち) is a 1980 Japanese ensemble drama film directed and written by Kazuki Omori (大森一樹), depicting a group of final-year medical students during their clinical training at a university hospital in Kyoto. Omori, a graduate of Kyoto Prefectural Medical University, drew on his own experience as a medical student for the story.¹ The film was produced by Cinema House and ATG, distributed by ATG, and released in Japanese theaters on November 22, 1980, with a running time of 126 minutes.²

Key fact	Detail
Release	November 22, 1980; 126 minutes; color; distributed by ATG¹^•²
Director and writer	Kazuki Omori, a Kyoto Prefectural Medical University graduate, based the story on his own experience¹
Producer	Shiro Sasaki, who became ATG's second president in 1979 and first conceived producing the film³
Recognition	3rd place in the Japanese film category of the 54th Kinema Junpo Best Ten⁴
Setting	Final-year medical students at the fictional Rakuhoku Medical University in Kyoto rotate through 17 departments, one week at a time²
Notable cast	Masato Furuoya, Ran Ito, Akira Emoto, Takashi Naito; special appearances by Osamu Tezuka and Seijun Suzuki⁵
Legacy	Inspired Bakumatsu Hippocrates-tachi (2026), the Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine 150th anniversary film⁶

Spoilers

Story

The film is set at the fictional Rakuhoku Medical University in Kyoto. Final-year medical students spend the year in clinical training (polikurin), divided into groups of six or seven that rotate through 17 departments, including internal medicine, surgery, and pediatrics, one week per department.²

The central group includes Aisaku Ogino (26), who answered a regular exam question on contraception perfectly yet got his girlfriend Junko pregnant; Midori Kimura (24), anxious about becoming a doctor; the playboy Ichiro Kawamoto (25); baseball-loving Wang Ryumei, known as Wan-chan (24); Katoh Kenji (31), who left a company job to study medicine; and the bookish Osamu Oshima (23).¹ The training brings a series of small discoveries and failures: Midori is fled from by a young ringworm patient in dermatology, Oshima celebrates aloud when his cancer diagnosis proves correct, and Kawamoto pulls the arm off a doll baby while assisting a delivery.²

The dramatic core follows Ogino. After he takes Junko to an abortionist, and he learns the clinic was run by a physician without a medical license, his misgivings about entering a profession that handles life and death deepen.²^•⁷ When Junko calls him saying her bleeding will not stop, he has her admitted to Kawamoto's father's hospital; she eventually returns home in poor condition, and her father greets Ogino with kind words rather than reproach.² Around him, dormitory meetings debate the problems of modern medicine, and the new student Nogoku is drawn with the leftist activist Minamida into student activism, ending the film arrested during a protest while Ogino buries himself in study for the national medical licensing examination.²

Production background

Kazuki Omori was an unusual figure among Japanese directors of his generation: his father was a physician, he entered medical school himself, and he was simultaneously absorbed in independent filmmaking from his high school years.⁵ The film was his commercial breakthrough. Its production was tied to ATG (Japan Art Theatre Guild), whose second president, Shiro Sasaki, had first conceived producing films by the independent-film generation; the two projects he initially planned were Toshihiro Ito's Umishio (1980) and Omori's Disciples of Hippocrates.³

The film also marked several acting debuts and returns. Masato Furuoya, who had worked in Nikkatsu's Roman Porno films, made his commercial film debut in the lead role. Ran Ito, formerly of the idol group Candies, returned to entertainment as a solo performer with this film after the group's sudden breakup, and it was also the commercial film debut of Takashi Naito.⁵

Reception and style

The film placed third in the Japanese film category of the 54th Kinema Junpo Best Ten, behind Zigeunerweisen and Kagemusha, and became a defining work of Omori's twenties.⁴ Omori later recalled that ranking alongside Seijun Suzuki and Akira Kurosawa made him feel he had become a director, and that at the time he no longer intended to practice medicine.⁸ Critics have noted the film's unflattering portrait of its students: their immaturity and arrogance in the face of life and death are rendered through everyday detail, and personal touches such as a Jean Seberg poster on the wall, appearances by the admired Osamu Tezuka and Kitayama Osamu, and Omori's own 8 mm films color the picture.⁹

Legacy

Omori went on to direct films including Hear the Wind Sing (1981), Lovers of Love (1986), and entries in the Godzilla series, and died in November 2022 at age 70.¹⁰^•¹ His final project was Bakumatsu Hippocrates-tachi, a medical period drama conceived as the 150th-anniversary film of his alma mater, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, with the story of the "ancestors" of the Disciples of Hippocrates students in late-Edo Kyoto. Completed after his death by director Akira Ogata, it was released on May 8, 2026, and cast Takashi Naito and Akira Emoto, both veterans of the 1980 film, in new roles.⁶

The original film has remained available on home video and streaming: Pioneer LDC released it on VHS on December 21, 1996,¹¹ it received its first Blu-ray release in May 2015,¹ and as of 2026 it streams on services including U-NEXT and Prime Video.¹²

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026