Choichiro Kawarazaki
After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, a writer remembers travelling with his family to bury his brother after World War II.
The ukiyo-e (woodblock print) artist Sharaku is an enigmatic puzzle in the world of Japanese art. Working at an age when such masters of the trade as Hokusai and Utamaro were at their zenith, Sharaku suddenly emerged out of obscurity and produced roughly 140 strikingly brilliant portraits of Kabuki performers, only to disappear just as suddenly. To date, no one knows about his true identity or about his post-ukiyo-e career. Veteran director Masahiro Shinoda tries to fill in the blanks with this lavish period production. Set in the 1790s, the film centers on Tombo (Hiroyuki Sanada), a lowly Kabuki player who gets dumped from his troupe after breaking his foot. He joins a ragged traveling outfit run by former courtesan Okan. While not on-stage, he takes up drawing, for which he realizes he has considerable ability. His talents are noticed by Tsutaya Juzaburo, a ukiyo-e publisher who is desperate for a replacement after his star artist Utamaro defected to his rival's stable.
Yukiko (Wakui Emi) has been living in Tokyo for three years. Inside her heart, she believes that this beautiful city will certainly bring her happiness. This belief starts to realise one day when she has a chance encounter with Masashi (Karasawa Toshiaki) while welcoming her brother, Kikuo (Kishitani Goro), at a railway station. As Masashi is the son of a very rich businessman, and Yukiko is only an ordinary girl from the countryside, their together is highly obstructed by lots of barriers. However, Yukiko's kind-hearted personality finally wins Masashi's love, and he takes out his courage to turn down marrying his rich fiancee. --Snowflakes
The story centers on an elderly hibakusha, who lost her husband in the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, caring for her four grandchildren over the summer. She learns of a long-lost brother, Suzujiro, living in Hawaii who wants her to visit him before he dies.
A story of childhood life during wartime Japan. Takeshi, the intelligent son of a fisherman, is the schoolyard bully. When his cousin comes to stay with his family to avoid bombing raids, Takeshi at first treats him well, then begins bullying him too. Takeshi eventually loses his position of leadership.
After the death of her mother a young woman wants to meet her real father
A dog Shiro often swims 2 miles to meet a dog Marilyn. Owners of these dogs fell in love.
During the winter in Toyama in 1962, Tatsuo Mizushima is fretting about his feelings for his classmate Eiko Tsujisawa while agonizing about his upcoming high school examinations. When he was little, he and Eiko had heard that in April of a year when the winter has been very harsh, any couple finding fireflies together needs to get married. However, his family's situation does not allow Tatsuo to continue his worrying about such things for very much longer.
Benio, a peppy tomboy, is surprised to learn that she has been secretly betrothed by her grandfather to a young officer named Shinobu Ijuin. Because of his family’s noble status, Benio must first undergo rigorous training to learn how to be a proper bride and wife before she can marry. However, because of her vivacious personality, this proves to me more challenging than anyone imagined.
The tragic story of Gonza, a handsome ladies man, set in the Tokagawa Period, a time in which appearences are very important. Gonza competes with Bannojo for the honor to perform the tea ceremony to celebrate the birth of an heir to the lord of their clan. To see the sacred tea scrolls Gonza promises to marry the daughter of the family which possesses them, even though he is unofficially engaged to another. When studying the scrolls with Osai, the mother of the house, Bannajo sneaks into the house and steals their obis and runs through the town proclaiming the two as adulterers.
Momoko Watanabe—a student who, upon visiting a shrine in order to wish good luck on a friend of hers, witnesses a murder in the forest...and she knows the culprit! Unfortunately, she doesn't have it in her to tell anybody about it, and to make matters worse, said aforementioned friend gets accused of the murder.
Based on the life of Japanese serial killer and thief Kiyotaka Katsuta.
While trying to search for her missing father, Atsuko Moriya (Noriko Watanabe) meets a group of outcasts that help her. Having only an encrypted disk in her possession and while being chased by unknown people, Atsuko tries to solve the mystery of her family origins...
Nakata, an author, resides utilizing the painful memory regarding the death of his partner, whoever life had been cut short a few many years earlier. Ended up being it a crash or ended up being it suicide? Doubt persists. In order to escape his guilty Nakata, conscience gives up on marriage and fatherhood. Hence freed, he embarks on an obsessive intimate records and jeorney his activities in a book, "The Dark Room". A philisophical essay on sexuality, reproduction and the fate of mankind.
Fictionalized account of 20-year-old Noriko Tsuji, a real-life victim of a severe birth defect which afflicted 8,000 Japanese, children whose mothers took the sedative thalidomide during pregnancy. Tsuji has stunted flipper-like arms amputated at the behest of a father who deserted her soon after her birth. Nonetheless, the resourceful Noriko uses her feet to accomplish most of the tasks others would do with their hands.
The film depicts carnivalesque atmosphere summed up by the cry "Ee ja nai ka" ("Why not?") in Japan in 1867 and 1868 in the days leading to the Meiji Restoration. It examines the effects of the political and social upheaval of the time, and culminates in a revelrous march on the Kokyo, which turns into a massacre. Characteristically, Imamura focuses not on the leaders of the country, but on characters in the lower classes and on the fringes of society.
A couple originally from Okinawa run an inexpensive restaurant in Kobe, with their grade-school daughter, Fuuchan. The movie depicts the warm interaction between her and adults that grew up with the rough history of Okinawa and discrimination from the mainland. Shots partly on location at beach of Itoman, Yogi Park and Hateruma Island. This is the movie version of the well-known novel by Kenjiro Haitani.
A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu is on the run from the police.
Yuichi prides himself on the fact that he is a family man but contrary to his conception of an ideal family life, at age 24, his wife has already run out on him. In utter confusion, he tries to reason out where he had gone amiss that such a thing should happen out of the clear blue sky. About this time, Yuichi helps Ayako, a young girl, embroiled in trouble. She returns Yuichi's kindness by making off with his precious camera. Then she returns and since his wife has washed her hands of him, he forces himself on Ayako who acts as if she had been waiting for him to enter her. Suddenly, Yuichi's wife returns...
Sayoko is desperate to bear a child of her own, but her live-in boyfriend Shinsaku strenuously objects to the idea. One day, someone leaves behind a six-year-old child at their door, claiming that Shinsaku—or four other men—is the child's father! Sayoko and Shinsaku set out on a journey to find the real father.
A parable about the inefficiency and anachronism of the Japanese educational system, which places an unusually large amount of importance on cramming for university entrance examinations, Panic High School is about the suicide of a high school student and its ensuing fallout at his school. When one of his classmates becomes frustrated with the math teacher's lack of sensitivity to the suicide, the student steals a rifle, returns to school, aerates the teacher's chest and then holds members of his class captive. This leads to an aggressive standoff with the police and lots of shots of his parents crying and bowing in shame, totally mortified.
A film that portrays the youth and fragile love of a transportation worker in Tokyo.
Hirobe is a lonely man. After witnessing her girlfriend die with a terminal illness, he wanders through the city like a shadow. One day, he meets Masako and they begin an affair. Masako is in an unhappy marriage with Yazawa, who is also cheating on her with a younger lover. The tension builds up to an unforgiving, yet quiet climax...
Mainly the story of Shinsuke and his stepmother, ranging from Shinsuke's infanthood to his mid-teens. Coal workers and the mines dominate nearly every aspect of the life of the characters. Shinsuke's father dies while bravely using dynamite to rescue a group of trapped Korean miners. Several older men attempt to help he and his mother cope, including a kind Korean and a Harley-riding yakuza.
Two semi-slackers with an ultra-intimate friendship work, slack and drink in a freezing Hokkaido town.
A beautifully told story of a woman hardened by marriage to a man she doesn't love, after giving herself to another. She dedicates herself to her work, designing and creating plaited cords for kimono.
A survivor of the tragic mass suicides on Tokashiki Island in 1945 falls in love with a near-mute motorcycle engineer.
Set at the end of the feudal period. A woman spends most of her early life in prison, incarcerated by political opponents of her father. When she is released at the age of 44, the power struggles of her clan continue to disturb her life and the man whom she loves.
If You Were Young: Rage highlights the other side of post-war Japanese prosperity, focusing on the throngs of young people who missed out on the boom. We follow a group of young men that can't seem to get ahead, despite their willingness to try. Then one hits upon a plane - to work together to save for a dump truck and thus become independent contractors and be their own bosses at last. Ultimately life presents obstacles: jail for one, violence at the hands of the police for another and a girlfriend and subsequent children for the third. An early Kinji Fukasaku gem that imports the freewheeling style of the French New Wave and the hip detachment of American noir.
Michio Yamada, a recent school graduate, is sent to Tokyo to work as a fruit-packer in a department store as part of a government programme. He takes a gun from a house on an American base and uses it to kill several people. The scene changes to Yamada's childhood. Yamada is born the child of a reprobate and a weak-willed woman. As a boy Yamada, experiences poverty and the rape of his sister at first hand.
Tsutomu Yoshioka, a Tokyo office worker, is enaged to Mariko, the niece of his company's president. But Yoshioka has a crisis of consence when he remembers his former love Mitsu, a rural girl whom he met and later left while in college. Shimako, a former friend, persuades Yoshioka to meet with Mitsu while she plots to blackmail Yoshioka by photographing the meeting to break up Mariko and Yoshioka.
The fifth and final installment with the build up of the epic battle between Sasaki Kojiro and Miyamoto Musashi. With all the familiar characters making appearances: Otsu (Musashi's great love), Akemi, Matahachi (his former fellow soldier), old lady Osugi (still doggedly trying to defeat Musashi), and even the return of Priest Takuan (the man responsible for his journey towards enlightenment). But most of all, the boastful, long-haired and long-sworded Sasaki Kojiro.
Three stories revolve around independence, a man searching for his wife, and a poor craftsman trying to make money.
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.
The Yagyu Family have been teaching the Shinkage style of fencing for generations. Now a new fencing school has opened in Edo, claiming to be the true Shinkage style. Yagyu Jubei faces his biggest challenge yet when the master of the new school claims he is the legitimate successor of Shinkage and tries to take the Yagyu's political power.
A cynical samurai is left as the sole survivor to fulfil a plot to assassinate the puppet of a villain intent on usurping the shogunate in the 17th century. A Shogunate Elder connives to rule Japan by making his puppet, the Shogun's brother Tsunashige, the next Shogun. The best strategist in Japan, Yamaga, leads a plot to stop the Elder, but his cabal is betrayed and most of the conspirators are captured and tortured.
Four ninja are hired to fight against the Shogunate’s plot to abolish the Gamo Clan, the regional barons struggling to reinstate their young heir Tanemaru as their Lord.
A headstrong young man seeks to join the Shinsengumi, but while his determination impresses his superiors, questions begin to arise as to his true identity and intentions.
Richshaw man Tatsu has wandered to Osaka from Tokyo. He has quarrels with Kimiyakko, a geisha, and throws her into the river. But later, he falls in love with her. Yasaburo, the oyabun of the Nishikawa Gang, loves her very much too. However, as he likes Tatsu's dynamic personality, he volunteers to become a go-between for their marriage. Yasaburo gets tipped off by Yajima who wants to take over the territory of the Nishikawa Gang, and is arrested and imprisoned. After his release, Yajima tries to kill him. Ginjiro, a lover of Tamaryu respects Kimiyakko as an older sister and a follower of Tatsu, is murdered. After the third marriage ceremony just between Tatsu and Kimiyakko, Tatsu goes off to the place of fighting.
A sadistic Daimyo (feudal lord) rapes a woman and murders both her and her husband, but even when one of his own vassals commits suicide to bring attention to the crime, the matter is quickly hushed up. Not only will there be no punishment, but because the Daimyo is the Shogun's younger brother, he will soon be appointed to a high political position from which he could wreak even more havoc. Convinced that the fate of the Shogunate hangs in the balance, a plot is hatched to assassinate the Daimyo. The two most brilliant strategic minds of their generation find themselves pitted against each other; one is tasked to defend a man he despises, and has a small army at his disposal. The other is given a suicide mission, and has 12 brave men. They are the 13 Assassins.
In the third installment of Yoshikawa's novel Musashi, things continue from the 2nd film at the end of battle, where Miyamoto continues on a mission of learning; with the introduction of his arch-rival Sasaki Kojiro; and lastly the large cast of characters rendezvouses for a fateful finale.
Osaka in the early 1600s, aftermath of the historical Battle of Sekigahara; a group of orphan children are wandering through the battlefield scavenging for armour when they encounter a young boy named Sasuke with magical powers he says came from a meteor that crashed onto the Earth…
With her family suffering from extreme poverty, Yuko, as the eldest daughter, is sold to a successful brothel in Kyoto. There she is assigned to serve Takamatsu, one of the brothel’s top customers. But while Takamatsu falls madly in love with Yuko, she finds herself attracted to a young priest named Kunugida. Torn by jealousy, Takamatsu hatches an evil plan to tear them apart.
Gambler Hantaro risks his life and reputation to save young Onaka from a shady lifestyle.
Movie adaptation of the 1959 ninja novel. With war against Korea looming on the horizon, Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the 'Taiko' becomes the target of an assassination attempt to be carried out by the Iga Clan of ninja spies. Master spy Juzo Tsuzura (Ryutaro Otomo) is assigned the task, but first he must defeat a former Iga spy who has become a traitor, and outwit the treacherous woman that is trying to seduce him.
After a salary-man's fiancée attempts suicide, he recounts his gruesome family history, which sees generations of his ancestors sacrificing themselves for the sake of their cruel lords. hey were samurai, the military nobility caste who carried out acts of violence at the behest of feudal lords, but suffered evenmore so under their cruelty, often forced into ritual suicide (seppuku). The women were under constant threat of kidnapping and rape,and the men subjected to arbitrary disfigurement and homosexual slavery...
Period piece about a young man who, because of his hard life alone in the world, has become a yakuza. When he hears that his mother may be living in Edo (Tokyo), he travels there, intent on finding her and leaving the swordsman's life behind. But a team of rival gangsters is hot on his heels.
In the year 1637 in Shimabara of Tokugawa-era Japan, oppressed peasant Christians revolt against the shogunate with the aid of a charismatic Christian rebel leader Shiro Amakusa.
In this tale of bravery and honor among the roving gamblers of old Japan, the heroic Jirocho, Boss of the Tokaido is called upon to help a young yakuza named Eijiro after he runs afoul of the new samurai officials who have taken over his hometown. Expertly portrayed by Kitaoji Kinya (son of the all-time great star Ichikawa Utaemon), this young man stands up for the townspeople and puts his life on the line. Jirocho, played by superstar Nakamura Kinnosuke, a boss known for his honor and valor soon finds himself involved in the feud which will only end in a brutal showdown.
The remake of Yoshikawa's novel continues with the second installment in which Takezo, soon to be Miyamoto Musashi, emerges from the Himeji Castle after three years of intense contemplation and philosophical study and starting on his epic quest to complete his skill in the Way.
Adventures of famous yakuza boss Jirocho and his disciples who settle in Kofu.
A carpenter, Shigetsugu, learns a lesson of love and humanity from five orphaned children and an affectionate woman named Oritsu. It's a winning combination of drama and humor. The warm friendship that grows between the carpenter, the woman and the children making this into a true masterpiece.
An injured Edo official is rescued by a vassal whose appearance is exactly like himself, and swears to sweep out the criminals from the town on his behalf.
A court fortune-teller loses his mind after a conspiracy leads to the death of his lover. Hope appears to be on the horizon after he becomes romantically involved with his dead lover’s twin sister, but more complications arise thanks to a chance encounter with a clan of shape-shifters.
A group of pirates led by the evil Gondaiyu and his wizard, Genkuro, capture the Golden Peacock Castle and massacre the peaceful clan that lives there. The few survivors that manage to escape plot their revenge and wait for the timing to be right for an attack. The struggles of the Golden Peacock Clan continue as they seek to reclaim their home and prevent the evil Gondaiyu from taking their most prized treasures.
Young lord Saburo Nobuyasu struggles to find comfort in life. His arranged marriage to Tokuhime, daughter of one-time family enemy Oda Nobunaga, provides little happiness. His manipulative mother adds further complications through her constant interference and attempts at defeating the Nobunaga family.
A story of an orphan boy who wanted the love of parents so badly, another orphan sincerely pitied him to the point he gives his secret birthright as an illegitimate son to a Shogun as a "gift of hope" to the sad boy. As the orphan boy grew up, his loving heart became bitter and he saw the opportunity to take advantage of this birthright with the help of a man who wanted to use this orphan's desire to be loved, for seizing power in the shogunate by using the imposter. Many obstacles to hurdle along the way of deception, however, will they succeed or will he be exposed?
