Accomplished in a wide range of genres, Kinoshita made satiric comedies, stirring social dramas and the visually compelling, Kabuki version of "The Ballad of Narayama" (1958). He is probably best known, however, for his numerous sentimental romances of the 1950s and 60s, such as "She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum" (1955). "Carmen Comes Home" (1951), about a big-city stripper who shakes up her home town during a short visit, was Japan's first film to be released in color and one of the director's best.

Kinoshita's brother Chuji scored a number of his films, as well as Masaki Kobayashi's epic, "The Human Condition" (1958-61); his brother-in-law Hiroyuki (Hiroshi) Kusuda was the cinematographer on many of his films.