The present invention addresses the problem of reducing a circuit scale without causing a reduction in processing efficiency. This multi-stage filter processing method measures, at each stage, either the number of input data or the number of intermediate data that is generated by filter calculation processing during the stages before the final stage is reached. Coefficient data regulating for each stage the number of data sufficient to perform the filter calculation processing is held. Input data or the intermediate data that is generated in a current stage is held in a memory until the number of data reaches the number of data sufficient to perform the filter calculation processing in the current stage, on the basis of the coefficient data. When the number of data has reached, the filter calculation processing for the current stage is performed on the input data or the intermediate data that was held.