[2] While lesser-known internationally than contemporaries such as Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujirō Ozu, he was a household figure in his home country, beloved by both critics and audiences from the 1940s to the 1960s.

[3] Without a university education, however, Kinoshita was not allowed to work as an assistant director and had to start as a photographer; he applied to the Oriental Photography School and graduated before he was finally admitted into Shochiku.

The final scene, with the remaining family greeting the rising sun, was demanded by the American censorship board against Kinoshita's objections.

Early on, Kinoshita gathered a steady group of co-workers around him: Takamine, Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiko Kuga, Keiji Sada and Yūko Mochizuki had repeated starring or bigger supporting roles, while his brother Chuji (also credited Tadashi) scored, and cinematographer Hiroshi Kusuda photographed many of his films.

[16] The mid-1950s marked the release of two of Kinoshita's most acclaimed films, Twenty-Four Eyes (1954), a portrait of a school teacher who sees the dreams of her young pupils fall apart due to economical constraints and the war, and You Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (1955), a Meiji era period drama about the unfulfilled love between two teenagers.

[7][17] Also highly popular was the lighthouse keeper drama Times of Joy and Sorrow (1957),[18] which was repeatedly remade in later years, including one version by Kinoshita himself.

[19] The Ballad of Narayama (1958), a highly stylised period drama about the legendary ubasute practice, was entered into the 19th Venice International Film Festival, but met with very mixed reactions.

Film historian Donald Richie saw the period war drama The River Fuefuki (1960) and The Scent of Incense (1964), which follows a troubled mother-daughter-relationship over a span of 4 decades, as the director's last notable works.

Screenwriter and frequent collaborator Yoshio Shirasaka recalls the "brilliant scene" Kinoshita made with the handsome, well-dressed assistant directors he surrounded himself with.

Working less on an analytical but an intuitive level, Kinoshita's films showed, according to Alexander Jacoby, an occasional simplicity and naivety, yet in the cases of Twenty-Four Eyes and You Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum, they were among the most purely moving of Japanese cinema.

[28] Although he often adapted literary works from writers like Tōson Shimazaki, Kunio Kishida and Isoko Hatano, many of his screenplays were based on his original idea.

He used expressionist camera angles in Carmen's Innocent Love,[7] daguerreotype-like framing of images in She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum,[30] or partial tinting to evoke the impression of Japanese woodblock prints in The River Fuefuki.

[35] In 1946 Masaki Kobayashi became Kinoshita's assistant[36] and later formed with him, Akira Kurosawa, and Kon Ichikawa a directors group called Shiki no kai (The Four Horsemen Club).

[37] Director Tadashi Imai was an outspoken admirer of Kinoshita's work,[38] and Nagisa Ōshima named The Garden of Women as the film which led to his decision to become a filmmaker himself in his 1995 documentary 100 Years of Japanese Cinema.