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Kwaidan
Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.
Masaki Kobayashi
Casts & Crew
Michiyo Aratama
Misako Watanabe
Rentaro Mikuni
Kenjirō Ishiyama
Ranko Akagi
Fumie Kitahara
Kappei Matsumoto
Yoshiko Ieda
Otome Tsukimiya
Kenzô Tanaka
Kiyoshi Nakano
Tatsuya Nakadai
Keiko Kishi
Yûko Mochizuki
Kin Sugai
Noriko Sengoku
Akiko Nomura
Torahiko Hamada
Jun Hamamura
Katsuo Nakamura
Tetsurō Tamba
Takashi Shimura
Yoichi Hayashi
Eiko Muramatsu
Kunie Tanaka
Kazuo Kitamura
Ichirô Nakatani
Masanori Tomotake
Tokue Hanazawa
Shizue Natsukawa
Shin Tatsuoka
Makiko Kitashiro
Masakazu Kuwayama
Mutsuhiko Tsurumaru
Akira Tani
Yôsuke Kondô
Kiyoshi Yamamoto
Kinji Omino
Atsuo Nakamura
Ginzô Sekiguchi
Akio Miyabe
Gen'ya Nagai
Toru Uchida
Hikaru Jinno
Toshio Fukuhara
Kirô Abe
Toshiro Yagi
Yuriko Abe
Yuri Satô
Kyôichi Satô
Nobuo Aikawa
Taiji Kodama
Nobuaki Maeda
Teruhiko Shibata
Haruo Kaji
Michio Gina
Seiji Tabe
Mitsuko Narita
Noriko Mikura
Aiko Nagayama
Michiko Nakahata
Kan'emon Nakamura
Osamu Takizawa
Haruko Sugimura
Ganjiro Nakamura
Noboru Nakaya
Seiji Miyaguchi
Kei Satō
Shigeru Kōyama
Jun Tazaki
Junkichi Orimoto
Akiji Kobayashi
Yoshirô Aoki
Isao Tamagawa
Hideyo Amamoto
Also Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
One of the major documentaries on a specific chapter in modern Japanese history, this look at the trial of Japanese militarists accused of war crimes is excellently handled by director Masaki Kobayashi. Kobayashi and his assistants had to plough through 30,000 reels from the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal which took place between May, 1946 and November, 1948. It took two days to read the charges against the 100 alleged war criminals in the docket (only 28 top officials are actually in the courtroom, which was limited in space), and the final judgment took one week to read.
A botanist woos the secretary of an industrialist whose company threatens the local water supply.
This drama is adapted from a Japanese television mini-series. In the story, an industrialist learns of a medical condition which will greatly shorten his life. He is on a trip to Europe at the time, and a glimpse of a Japanese woman in that setting causes him to fantasize about her as the personification of his impending death. As his dialogue with his imagined mortality continues, he actually meets the living woman who is the template for his fantasy, and together they tour rural churches. Gradually he comes to some kind of peace about the diagnosis. When he returns to Japan, he is met with a series of challenges which profoundly test the lessons he has learned
An unusual request for ritual suicide on a feudal lord's property leads to the unwinding of a greater mystery that challenges the clan's integrity.
As a conscript in war-time Japan's military, a pacifist struggles to maintain his determination to keep his ideals.
A talent scout moves sharply, dead-set on signing a promising athlete to the team the Toyko Flowers.
The story takes place in feudal Japan, when any commerce with the rest of the world was strictly prohibited. An idealist suddenly appears in an isolated inn (the one that the title refers to), the head-quarters of a group of smugglers, with stolen money intended to ransom his loved one who is forced to work in a brothel.
The story follows a university student who moves into an apartment building and becomes involved with a waitress. The landlord then attempts to evict the tenants and sell the building through illicit means.
This mammoth humanist drama by Masaki Kobayashi is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three installments of two parts each, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition, adapted from Junpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji—played by the Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai—from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet prisoner of war. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals to be an impediment rather than an advantage. A raw indictment of Japan’s wartime mentality as well as a personal existential tragedy, Kobayashi’s riveting, gorgeously filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best.
This mammoth humanist drama by Masaki Kobayashi is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three installments of two parts each, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition, adapted from Junpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji—played by the Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai—from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet prisoner of war. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals to be an impediment rather than an advantage. A raw indictment of Japan’s wartime mentality as well as a personal existential tragedy, Kobayashi’s riveting, gorgeously filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best.