Born in Tokyo, Shibuya attended Keiō University but left before graduating. He joined Shochiku in 1930 and worked as an assistant under Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse, and Heinosuke Gosho, before making his debut as a director in 1937. Shibuya "worked with equal facility in comedy and melodrama and made his mark as an ironic but compassionate chronicler of the difficulties of the early postwar period".
