Fumiko Okamura
We find Reiko Ike once again cast as a tough schoolgirl who eventually has to band together with her enemies to upset the reign of their private Catholic high school administration where institutionalized sexual abuse is endemic. Tables are turned finally on the lay principal (Nobuo Kaneko), various sanctimonious teachers as well as an American priest (who drives a vulnerable virgin to suicide when he deflowers her!). Ike teams up with another one of those goodhearted, loner yakuzas, this one a fellow who has had a change of heart after being employed by principal Kaneko in setting up blackmail schemes. He enthusiastically comes over to Ike’s side when Ike saves his life from Kaneko’s whip-wielding dominatrix assassin! Per usual, the climax sees the prinicpal and adult evildoers publicly humiliated and exposed before the entire student body
A college student comes to a wealthy family as a tutor for their son, an elementary school student, he cheerfully encourages his student, captivates him with the spirit of sports and falls in love with the daughter of the owner of the house. A masterpiece of youth drama starring the eternal idol Kazuo Funaki.
Popular geisha Shinji (Fuji Junko) must defy a gang who plot to steal a lucrative coal business from struggling miners during the turbulent Meiji Era. With a stellar all-star cast, thrilling story and Takakura Ken's violent swordplay, makes this into a classic Yakuza movie!
An uplifting drama about the bond between a group of high school seniors and their kind-hearted teacher, Mr. Yabuki. Faced with the rigors of growing up in modern times, students often look to Mr. Yabuki for advice and guidance. But when Mr. Yabuki’s career is threatened as a result of a false accusation from the school’s PTA, the students band together to stand up for their beloved teacher and help him to save his good reputation and job.
Two people disappeared, engineers of the company Yamato Matsui and Koyama. The two worked overtime, and it is proven that they consumed alcohol together. According to the sushi restaurant employee who delivered the order around 9 p.m., the two were arguing loudly. Traces of blood were found at the scene, and it looks like a murder occurred. The Investigative Department begins an investigation… The 24nd work from the popular series "Keishicho Monogatari", which documents the activities of the First Investigation Division of the Capital Police Department.
A touching story about a young boy, Genta, who bravely takes on life's challenges in hopes of finding a better life for himself and his sickly mother.
In the late 1950's prostitution was banned in Japan and if a woman was found exercising this profession they were sent to a reformatory. This is a story of one of these brave women Kuniko who is released from the reformatory and tries to build a new life.
Taisuke is kind-hearted but overall lacks ambition. Taizo is smarter, but given to fits of emotion and impulsive violence. The samurai brothers fight against corruption in a castle.
A successful textile industrialist from the provinces, who is beloved by his employees for his kindness, cannot find a wife because of a disfiguring birthmark on his face. Even the courtesans in Yoshiwara refuse to entertain him, until an indentured peasant prostitute, Tamarazu, takes the unsavoury assignment and treats him with brash tenderness.
Young geisha Kohana scrambles to realize her dream of bringing back her grandmother’s restaurant business.
Koharu, a young geisha, is in love with Kenichi, an apprentice carpenter to her father Masagoro. Their love life comes to a sudden halt after an argument between their two fathers. Can their love survive in spite of the bitterness between their two families?
A young woman tries to keep her family together after her father disowns her sister.
Airline captain saves passengers from a brutal murderer on a plane during four hours of terror.
The love between young college students Toki and the handsome Takaga is tested when Takaya's parents, who despise Toki's family's geisha house business, intervenes in their relationship.
The citizens of Tokyo panic when they see UFOs in the sky. The aliens are benign, however, and have come to warn of a meteor on a collision course with Earth. As the meteor approaches, the Earth's atmosphere begins to heat up, and mankind must race to construct a weapon to destroy it.
A handsome and pure-hearted employee who thought he was single actually has a secret child. His girlfriend, a beautiful secretary, and the high-maintenance female manager suddenly panic, and the whole company is in an uproar.
A sad and troubled man finds a new job five years after the end of WWII, where he writes love letters for other people.
Five women classmates from a college in Tokyo are on the first stretch of a walking tour when one of them, Masako, falls ill at a railway station. Osen, a middle-aged maid from a nearby inn, takes her in and nurses her, assisted by Dr. Minami, a young physician who diagnoses her illness as a mild case of pneumonia. With Masako in good hands and needing a few days to recuperate, her classmates continue their tour. Masako’s recovery, however, is hampered by her spoiled and immature nature and her determination to punish the world for the loss of her mother.
A Japanese adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's short story Boule de Suif, directed by Kimura Keigo
A young botanical researcher moves to the highlands to collect plants for research, and falls in love with a nurse there.
A hospital melodrama where the conflict between love and friendship rules the faith of the protagonists.
After Japan's loss in the war, the wealthy, cultured, liberal Anjo family have to give up their mansion and their way of life. They hold one last ball at the house before leaving. The seemingly cold, cynical son secretly grieves for his defeated father and the values that the war destroyed, while the daughter tries to prevent father from taking his life and to find her own place in the new Japan.
The few residents left on the streets in Tokyo share their individual stories and come to understand the melancholy of saying goodbye.
A wealthy family will not allow the military to grow crops on their fields due to their superstitious beliefs about their son's illness.
Inoue was something of a rarity in the sense, that he was a Shochiku house director who seems to have worked mostly in period films, often with big stars like Hasegawa or Bando. "Sumidagawa", named after the river that runs through Tokyo, is also a period film, but thematically a modern one. All the themes that you associate with the normal Shochiku women's films set in the present day are in this film, just in a different context: love, the planning of a marriage, career, family relations and societal melancholy. There is no action or swordplay.
An older sister and brother (Mieko Takamine and Masayoshi Otsuka) come to visit their grandfather (Takeshi Sakamoto) who lives deep in the mountains. As for their parents, father was serving in the South Seas and mother died of illness on her way home. So, the brother, who is still young, will live alone with his grandfather whilst the sister goes away to study to become a teacher.
Hana wa itsuwarazu (1941) is the second directorial work by Shochiku's Oba Hideo. Oba had previously worked as an assistant director to Shimizu Hiroshi and penned films for Shimazu Yasujiro. In this early effort, he is not stylistically very far from either, but then again all Shochiku directors resemble each other to a point. The film is an everyday romance for younger audiences, full of clean, ideal human beings.
After the death of her husband, Mrs Toda and her youngest daughter receive a frosty welcome from the extended family.
A follow-up to Children in the Wind, Four Seasons of Children(a.k.a. Kodomo no Shiki) is also based on a Tsubota Joji novel. The film is divided into two chapters, following the young protagonists' minor adventures and real-world awakenings over spring and summer, then autumn and winter.
Based on the original work by Fumiko Hayashi, this is a story about a woman and two men. The lust is restrained and indifferent. The story even has an elegance to it, which is the charm of the 30 year old Kinuyo Tanaka. There was a time when Tanaka was adorable... Shin Saburi was young and Chishu Ryu was young too. It is a promise of melodrama that the rival or friend is prettier than the heroine Kinyo.
A young doctor, Kozo Tsumura, falls for young nurse Katsue Takaishi. But she's got a secret: she's a widow with a son. Kozo and Katsue decide to run away to Kyoto, but her child suddenly became sick and she just missed the train and Kozo. She makes it to Kyoto finally, but is unable to meet him. Plus she isn't accepted into Kyoto society. She goes back to her hometown and tries to forget him. She quits the hospital to concentrate on her singing. She makes her professional debut with the hit "Aizen Katsura". Kozo is in the audience.
Pre-war Asakusa was a riotous district of cabarets, dance-halls and brothels - a striking backdrop for Shimazu's story of innocence and experience. Pretty, young Reiko is the new dancer in an infamous theatre troupe, and her fellow performers try to protect her virtue in a land of vice. Meanwhile, an ageing actor wants to be a hero off stage as well as on, and the troupe matriarch Marie has to keep them all together.
On vacation's eve, a boy is sent to the countryside to live with his uncle after his father is imprisoned and accused of embezzlement.
A businessman’s daughter falls in love with one of her father’s employees.
Three men fall in love with the same young girl who works in a tonkatsu restaurant in the Shitamachi district of Tokyo.
Three men vying for the same job end up chasing the same girl in this comedy-drama from noted Japanese director Yasujiro Shimazu.
A penniless orphan loses the woman he loves, when her family arranges a marriage to a wealthy playboy. He believes she was blinded by greed, and becomes a miser.
A Japanese screwball comedy about the battle between the sexes: two timid men, egged on by their wives, end up in a bitter duel over an expensive lace handkerchief.
Yuki is a young, single mother supporting herself and her son, Haru, with a job as a bar hostess.
The eldest daughter of a noble family is in love with an aviator while being courted by a fellow aristocrat she thinks is a dullard. This part is told from the perspective of Akemi.
A musical film made for the inauguration of Shochiku's Ofuna Studio, with an all-star cast of the era.
Bored in his marriage, a dentist flirts with a young woman on a train. However he soon finds himself embroiled in a series of misunderstandings with his wife, the young woman and her husband. Considered to be a lost film.
A young man falls for one of the geisha working in the house where he lives. However, the romance doesn't find favour with his father or current girlfriend. Considered to be a lost film.
A married man falls for a dancer and his wife's uncle hires a private detective to spy on him. Considered to be a lost film.
