Born as Takehiko Kagoshima in Nagasaki, Shima left for Tokyo after graduating from high school. He was in the first class of the Nihon Eiga Haiyū Gakkō and joined the Nikkatsu studio as an actor in 1925. Playing mostly romantic leads, he appeared in films directed by such masters as Tomu Uchida and Kenji Mizoguchi. He turned to directing in 1939, and quickly came to prominence with films such as Kaze no Matasaburō, an adaption of a Kenji Miyazawa story, and Jirō Monogatari. After the war, he dir ...