Chieko Higashiyama

Adaptation of the Shôji Yuki novel.

Yuji, a budding writer, meets and starts falling in love with his best friend’s girlfriend, Natsuko. The attraction is mutual but due to the circumstances, they try to not act on their attraction. However, as time goes by, they realise that, perhaps, they cannot be without each other. Will the forbidden love affair move forward and can they finally be with each other?

6.6/10

A dynamic woman who aspires to be a writer, living a wild life in constant search of freedom while indulging in lust with four men.

A survivor of the tragic mass suicides on Tokashiki Island in 1945 falls in love with a near-mute motorcycle engineer.

In the year 1786, Shogun Ieharu Tokugawa selected beautiful Ochisa to be his concubine. It causes other concubines to become very jealous and mean. When the Shogun passes away, his concubines are forced to become nuns, which they are not happy to be. The subject is life inside a shogun's harem, and the treatment is again more restrained than in most of the historical pinku eiga films being produced by independents at the time, but the tone of this middle installment in the trilogy is decidedly more grim than that of its predecessor. There's a good deal of abuse and violence on display, as the shogun dies and his concubines are sent to a remote convent to become buddhist nuns. the hysterical nuns are being punished for their transgressions and committing suicide in grand exploitation fashion.

Epic saga of an idealistic land-owning family dealing with militarism, war, social change and economic reform.

6.7/10

One day a company executive learns that his younger brother, whom he recommended, embezzled company funds. To save the situation he withdraws his life savings and gives money to his younger brother. He then suddenly disappears…

6.5/10

In the fourth installment, Musashi's potentially greatest opponent Kojiro jumps in and out of the story at the oddest and most coincidental moments. As his great love Otsu has succumbed to madness. Musashi then sets off to beat the functionaries of a treacherous clan in an arranged duel. 73 against one. Boastful Kojiro watches, secure in the knowledge that only he is a worthy opponent.

7/10

A story about four best friends and their lives inside and outside college. Then suddenly one of them receives a surprising offer to be a movie star.

6.2/10

Two obaachans become fast friends listening to music in front of a record store. They both boast about their loving sons but in reality, one had just escaped a retirement home and the other was looking for an escape from her son and daughter-in-law. With nowhere to go, the two wander around, befriending a cosmetics salesman and a kind waitress who give them beer. This biting social satire starring two memorable grandmothers, scripted by Yôko Mizuki, picked up on Japan’s aging population problem far ahead of its time.

7.7/10

Utsugi, a seventy-seven-year-old man of refined tastes who is recovering from a stroke, discovers that, while his body is decaying, his libido still rages on -- unwittingly sparked by the gentle, kindly attentions of his daughter-in-law Satsuko, a chic, flashy dancer with a shady past. Pitiful and ridiculous as he is, Utsugi is without a trace of self-pity, and his diary shines with self-effacing good humor.

7.1/10

Japanese drama.

Hikaru and Ichiro are close friends in high school. Hikaru's elder brother Tadashi fell in love with Ichiro's elder sister, Mikako at first sight. Although she gave the cold shoulder to Tadashi, she gradually became fond of Tadashi.

6.8/10

One of many adaptations of "Onna no isshō", this time by Yasuzo Masumura as a starring vehicle for famed actress Machiko Kyo.

A case of mistaken identity in which a woman assumes the role of widow to a man killed in a train accident.

6.6/10

Pu Zhe , the younger brother of the Emperor of Manchukuo, Pu Wen, marries Ryuko the daughter of a long-established aristocratic family - all in the interest of the Japanese rulers , which legitimizes the relationship between Japan and its Chinese puppet state. To the surprise of all , a deep love between Pu Zhe and Ryuko develops. It is put to the test when Japan loses the war, Manchukuo is dissolved and the imperial court must flee. The lovers now have to separate: Pu Zhe tries to escape to Japan with his brother , while Ryuko flees with her daughter Eisei over the country. A film on the relationship between Pujie (1907-94) , brother of the " last emperor " Puyi and his second wife, Marquise Hiro Saga (1914-87).

7.1/10

When a wealthy, selfish family decides to take care of an elderly hobo who collapsed near their home, they are beset by visits from his numerous friends.

6.9/10

After surviving the double suicide pact she made with her lover, a woman gives birth to their child.

7/10

lchiro, the president of Mihara & Co., is henpecked by his wife Momoko, a clever and beautiful woman, but prattling and intrusive. She makes her younger sister Nashiko marry lchiro's younger brother, Jiro, manager of his company and now plans to marry her youngest sister Kyoko to her husband's youngest brother, Saburo. This means her domination of the Miharas and their business, a fine triple play which would gain her the title of "The Most Valuable Madam." However, in opposition to Momoko, Kyoko boldly declares that she will never marry Saburo. However Saburo is a most attractive young man and attracts Kyoko. Will she or her elder sister be able to win the title of "The Most Valuable Madam"?

7.5/10

Yuko is sent to the coastal regions to be raised away from the rest of her sophisticated family where she finds out from her ill grandmother that she is not who she thought she was.

7.1/10

Based on the original work by Shuji Hojo, Itohan Monogatari depicts the fate of a clumsy and kind-hearted woman in the Taisho era.

4.8/10

Adaptation of the novel by Kan Shimozawa.

A young woman decides to leave school in order to help her sister.

8.5/10

A film about the Ghost of Okiku that's based on the kabuki play Bancho Sarayashiki.

5.5/10

A student at a woman's university takes a controversial action against the school's old-fashioned doctrines.

6.9/10

Directed By Keigo Kimura

10/10

This film stars Tanaka Kinuyo as the mother of the heir to the Hosho name, a famous lineage of Noh actors. The heir, Hosho Yagoro, is played by Hasegawa Kuzuo who went on to become familiar among Ichikawa Kon fans as Yukinojo in An Actor's Revenge, which was also co-written by Ito, adding to the relatedness of An Heir's Place.

The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.

8.2/10
10%

Director Noboru Nakamura depicts the romance of men and women against the backdrop of the great outdoors of Hokkaido.

A young student falls into a hopeless romantic attraction to an invalid girl whom he can only see from afar.

6.9/10

A Japanese soldier who died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Hawaii entrusted Henry Gray with an unfinished score and promised to complete it.

Carmen falls in love with an artist in this sequel to Carmen Comes Home. The film is noted for being entirely shot with canted (Dutch) camera angles.

6.4/10

Kameda, who has been in an asylum on Okinawa, travels to Hokkaido. There he becomes involved with two women, Taeko and Ayako. Taeko comes to love Kameda, but is loved in turn by Akama. When Akama realizes that he will never have Taeko, his thoughts turn to murder, and great tragedy ensues.

7.3/10
7%

Genji, the illegitimate offspring of a Japanese potentate, goes by the philosophy of "love 'em and leave 'em" as a matter of course. Only when his heart is broken by Awaji does Genji realizes how much pain he himself has caused.

6.6/10

A fishing union depends on two brothers to make up the losses caused by the dishonest captains they replaced.

6/10

Noriko lives in postwar Tokyo with her extended family. Although she enjoys her career and her friends, her more traditionally minded family worries about the fact that she's still single at the advanced age of 28. When 40-year-old business associate Takako proposes marriage, Noriko's family press her into accepting. But when her widowed childhood friend Kenkichi returns to the neighborhood, she finds her heart leading in another direction.

8.2/10
10%

Woman melodrama by Shiro Toyoda

The Angry Street includes a great deal of location shooting in the rebuilt city, including downtown streets, residential neighborhoods, the campus of the University of Tokyo, and the high life of jazzy dance halls. Sudo (Hara Yasumi) and Mori (Uno Jukichi) are two university students who make money by picking up rich girls in dance clubs and conning them into giving them cash. Mori is the brains of the operation, and Sudo is the suave dancer who picks up the girls. Over the course of the film, Sudo becomes involved with three different girls and is drawn into the gangster milieu, which he seems unable to resist even though he is responsible for his mother, grandmother, and sister, Masako (Wakayama Setsuko). In this world of bad boys and girls, Masako is the pillar of strength and moral virtue who finally enables Mori to straighten out.

6.9/10

A village struggles to survive when the nearby lake becomes barren of fish.

Japanese mystery thriller.

Early Kon Ichikawa movie

6.3/10

A young woman from a wealthy family that has fallen on hard times seeks out the president of a car factory for a husband.

7.2/10

When the future of his construction company falls into danger, a controlling father pushes his children into unsatisfying marriages and careers in order to regain financial stability.

6.9/10

The mistress of a crook real estate broker comes to terms with her soulless existence after an artist paints her portrait.

6.5/10

A teacher at a Japanese school tries to hide his outcast upbringing.

6.3/10

1947 Toho film directed by Tadashi Imai

The stage director Shimamura, who is bringing western theatre to Japan, falls in love with the outspoken actress Sumako Matsui, and leaves his family to be with her, while trying to keep his Art Theatre solvent.

6.9/10

In postwar Japan a young woman is unable to marry her sweetheart because her family's in difficult circumstances and needs her income to keep afloat.

6/10

A young man who is unable to tell his childhood friend how he feels makes a pledge with her to reveal all of their secrets during the upcoming festival.

6.7/10

Three IJN flyers Mikami (Susumu Fujita), Kawakami (Masayuki Mori) and Murakami (Akitake Kono) are good friends, and they are all renowned for their torpedo techniques. Mikami is posted as a staff officer at a base on an island in the Pacific. Kawakami and Murakami later joins him as the base squardron is reinforced. The enemy task force approaches the island and all three of them attack the fleet, killing themselves in the process.

4.8/10

The sweet but naive denizens of a charming port town are hoodwinked by a couple of con men at the outset of World War II. But the hustlers’ plan backfires when they come down with severe cases of conscience. Keisuke Kinoshita’s directorial debut is a breezy, warmhearted, and often very funny crowd-pleaser that’s a testament to the filmmaker’s faith in people.

6.4/10