Hanjirô Nakazawa
The story of Shinsuke, a young man who lives through a stormy life as a poverty-stricken coal miner. Ranging from Shinsuke's infanthood to his mid-teens. Coal workers and the mines dominate nearly every aspect of his life. Shinsuke's father a group leader at the mine, 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 friendly Harley-riding yakuza boss. This movie has it all, drama, romance, sex, yakuza and violence! It is based on a story by Hiroyuki Itsuki that was originally serialized in the magazine Shukan Gendai in 1969-70.
When a young soldier is killed while trying to prevent his younger sister, Kaoru, from being sold into a life of prostitution, his commander, Col. Miyagi, tries to honor his dying wish to rescue his sister. Upon finding Kaoru at a party working as a geisha and later rescuing her from committing suicide, Col. Miyagi allows her to move in with him. Over time, the two grow close, but in spite of Kaoru's growing feelings for him, Col. Miyagi is unable to bring himself to return her love. On the night of his deployment to war, Col. Miyagi finally admits his feelings for Kaoru, but will they ever be able to enjoy a peaceful life together now that a very violent and bloody military revolt is under way...
This is the story of "The Forty-Seven Ronin." Based on historical events in 1701-2, the movie tells the tale of the Asano clan's downfall and the revenge of its former samurai on the perpetrator of the catastrophe. Lord Asano was goaded, or tricked, into drawing his sword inside the Shogun's palace -- a crime which carried the death penalty. The newly installed Shogun was furious at Asano and ordered all his clan's assets seized, meaning some 20,000 samurai and commoners were unemployed and landless at a stroke. Forty-seven of these ronin (masterless samurai) banded together to take attempt revenge on Lord Kira, who had goaded Asano into drawing his sword.
Kanno (Ken Takakura) is a Yakuza. He had to kill Matsuoka who betrayed their boss. Kanno knew Matsuoka had a 3-year-old daughter named Youko. Before he gave himself to the police, he asked his trusted man to take care of her. While in prison, Kanno kept sending letters to Youko, disguising as an uncle in Brazil. 15 years later, Kanno is released. He is determined to live legitimately, however... the Yakuza has not forgotten his wicked deed!
In a rural village with a poorly understood but long standing curse from the Dog God, outsiders from a major Tokyo mining corporation scouting for uranium destroy a small shrine and crush a dog under their jeep wheels. After one of the mining company employees marries the daughter of a prominent member of the village, the Dog God’s wrath boils over and people start to die. The village girl and mining company employee start a new life in Tokyo, but the Dog God possesses her and she is deemed mentally ill. The couple returns to the village to perform an exorcism, but it is unsuccessful. As the body count accumulates, the cause of and remedy for the curse becomes more opaque.
Yasuaki Kurata plays a masked ring brawler who is out for revenge against an evil, megalomaniac entrepreneur played by Japan's most reliable bad guy of the '70's, Masashi Ishibashi.
A karate master played by Sonny Chiba is attacked and left crippled and blinded in one eye. He trains his daughter (Etsuko Shihomi) with the intention of her avenging not only himself but a murdered friend.
A look at the life of renegade yakuza, Rikio Ishikawa, particularly the years from 1946 to 1950 when his violent antics get him in trouble with his own clan, Kawada, and then with the clan of his protector, Kozaburo Imai. In these years, he can rely on Chieko, a young Tokyo courtesan who gives him shelter. He's banished to Osaka, where he picks up a drug habit. Through it all, he keeps his friends and enemies off balance with unpredictable behavior - and he seems indestructible.
The first of many movies featuring the lighthearted adventures of two truck drivers. Momojiro and his best friend Kinzo take to the road on their cargo trucks impressing each other with their skills in driving fast and evading the police while transporting commodities throughout the country. Chance encounters with people along the way help them to come to terms with events clouding their past and offer them a shot at redemption.
Set in Shibuya in 1949, this is another film based on real life former yakuza boss Noboru Ando's memoirs.
Based on Kazuo Taoka's autobiography, this film follows a Kobe gangster as he builds the small Yamaguchi-gumi into Japan's largest criminal clan.
This biopic of notorious yakuza-turned-actor Noboru Ando focuses on the days leading to his arrest after the shooting of businessman Hideki Yokoi.
Nami (Meiko Kaji) is once again on the run from the law but is saved by an old classmate who works at a strip club. Through a subsequent conversation they discover they both have a score to settle with a particular crooked cop. However, Nami has doubts about ever trusting a man.
When a rebellious roughneck enlists in the Navy and goes on a rampage against his superiors, he is sent to the Yokosuka Naval Prison.
Set loose in a postwar world with no rules, an ex-juvenile delinquent begins building the most powerful gang in Tokyo's glittering Shibuya ward.
After a desperate gang of ex-soldiers and gamblers meet in a fistfight in occupied Ginza and decide to make the neighborhood their own.
A con man sets up a consulting firm where he poses as a doctor specializing in curing people of their sexual problems and hang-ups.
Gang leader Nami (cult film legend Meiko Kaji) kills a member of a yakuza group and goes away to prison. Upon her release three years later, she’s a shamed woman confined to living in the shadowy world of sex clubs and street gangs. She returns to the city to live with her uncle, a billiard-hall owner, and after befriending pimp and ne’er-do-well Ryuji (Tsunehiko Watase), she gets a job working at a hostess club in the chic Ginza neighborhood, where the expensive shops and neon lights conceal a dark world of crime and sexual slavery. But when a rival gang attempts to muscle in on the club, Nami becomes enmeshed in a violent struggle that forces her to wield a skilled pool cue to defend her uncle’s business, and eventually a short sword to wreak bloody vengeance upon her enemies.
The great Bunta stars as a gangster who is sent to jail for the sake of his gang, but when he’s released he finds everything completely changed and his gang has swept him aside for being too violent. He tries to start a new life with his two ”brothers” but can’t seem to escape old affiliations
After serving time, a defiant street thug is incensed to find his town overrun by two yakuza factions. He gathers his crew and takes them on.
After being cruelly set up by a crooked detective named Sugimi (Isao Natsuyagi), whom she loved, Nami Matsushima (aka Matsu the Scorpion) (Meiko Kaji) is sentenced to do hard time in a women's prison, which is run by sadistic and horny male guards. There are 700 other prisoners, making Matsu number 701. Her crime was making a failed attempt to stab Sugimi on the steps of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters because he used her to win favor with the Yakuza. While in prison she meets inmates like Yuki Kida (Yayoi Watanabe) who was committed for fraud and theft, Otsuka (Akemi Negishi), jailed for burglary and extortion, and Katagiri (Rie Yokoyama) who has been impounded for arson and illegally disposing of a body.
The local yakuza gangs dominating the port of Yokohama do not take well the invasion of their territory by a daring biker gang, led by a girl in black leather outfit and cowboy hat - reminiscent of the earlier war victors. Old and new grudges lead the two girl gangs to clash in several fights. However, when one of the leaders dies, the girls end up by uniting against the male gangsters that had been using them as puppets - and it all ends in a great finale mixed battle by the seashore.
A yakuza gang gets driven out of Yokohama by a big gang from Tokyo. They relocate to Okinawa to violently start over.
Comedy about a car salesman who invents a condom against premature ejaculation.
It takes place in the sunset days of the yakuza in the 1970s. The postwar turmoil that created the black market and lubricated illegal business opportunities was giving way to Japan Inc. A young Bunta Sugawara takes over as the oyabun of a crime syndicate in Yokohama, where he is struggling to keep operations at the port there alive. As his syndicate is eroding quickly, a major heavy industries company offers his gang the chance to chase some vagrants out of a shantytown where they are squatting on land where a factory is to be built. The job would secure steady profits for Bunta's crime ring for years to come. However, Bunta and other members of his outfit grew up in the shanty, and they would be muscling their friends and neighbors. This sets the stage for an internal struggle that complicates the violent struggle with a rival mafia organization in Tokyo.
An honorable yakuza syndicate deeply rooted in Kyoto fights for survival when a new breed of gangsters threaten their very existence.
Coming out of jail and hoping for a quiet life, Yokohama yakuza has to take the lead of his gang after the death of his boss. His small group is is taken in a crossfire between a big yakuza group from Osaka at war with the Tokyo alliance for the control of the city. He tries to keep to the old yakuza code but he is no match for the new thugs who live and fight without honor.
Kazuo, a Japanese army intelligence agent, reveals a foreign intelligence network in Japan and then sent to Borneo Island with a special mission.
The film is dedicated to the souls of flight school graduates killed in World War II. Young boys dream about becoming pilots and apply to flight schools. However, they were forced to become suicide bombers and give their lives for their homeland.
The 11th and final film in the Gang series. Most of the films had different directors and cast, and were only connected by the title and Toei's marketing department. Unlike the early entries, which were jazzy capers, this final entry is a prototype jitsuroku yakuza film. Just back from the war, Noboru Ando leads a gang of war vets turned gangster in the US occupied streets of Tokyo. They get into a conflict with a Chinese gang as well as the military police. Tetsuro Tamba appears as a police chief trying to bring peace to the streets; 1st wave pinky violence star Masumi Tachibana is a girl grieving his dead gangster father.
Easily bored, but still innocent and naive countryside girl (Mako Midori) discovers partying in Tokyo is a ton of fun. Yakuza-to-be (Ichiro Araki) is an acquaintance who tries to rape her, and the typically bland but very-good-here (Hayato Tani) the first boyfriend. Director Yasuo Furuhata (his first picture) lets his camera roll in trendy clubs amongst partying youngsters in a way that could've been out of 60s England or a Nikkatsu film if it wasn't shadowed by dated 60s Toei conservatism.The resulting film is a bit confused, either a rebellious youth tale chained by moral concerns, or something conceived as a morality tale trying to break free from its chains.
A young yakuza man who respects obligation and humanity must face cruel and heartless turf wars leading to a fight to the death with his own brother.
Gisuke Hayashida is an illegal dentist during the day and a burglar by night. One night during a burglary he witnesses a train derailment. Some communists are found guilty of causing the incident, but he knows it wasn't them. He can save innocent people but for that he must confess his own crime.
Three robbers escape with loot from a heist before one of them shoots the others. Their corpses wash up near the aftermath of a maritime calamity, provoking a policeman's interest.
The Wayside Pebble is an effective drama about the hardships of a childhood spent with a brusque, cold-hearted father and a submissive mother. The year is 1910 and the place is a small Japanese village. Goichi is suffering because he wants to go to school, but his family is too poor to afford that luxury. Even when a kind friend agrees to help out, Goichi's father refuses to give in to his son's request for an education. Instead, he sends Goichi off to work as an indentured servant for a cold-hearted merchant and his family. As tragedy strikes and the suffering of the young boy increases, he begins to look for some way out of his bleak situation.
This time, the investigation division is investigating the case of a man who confessed to killing a woman in a labyrinth 2 years ago, adhering to the constitutional provision that "confessing a suspect is not a crime." The 20nd work from the popular series "Keishicho Monogatari", which documents the activities of the First Investigation Division of the Capital Police Department.
A 16-year-old high school student Midori Matsumoto was found dead on the banks of the Tama River. The only clue is shoe marks on rubber soles. From the interview of witnesses, it became clear that Midori was walking with a guy last night. In addition, it turned out that Midori was close to a college student Kimoto, and a high school student Miyazaki. According to his friends, Miyazaki had an alibi, but Kimoto did not. A unique work in which the problems of teenage sex are considered from the point of view of the murder of a girl. The 21nd work from the popular series "Keishicho Monogatari", which documents the activities of the First Investigation Division of the Capital Police Department.
The First Investigation Department is investigating a murder case that took place at a government agency, with particular attention to finding an alibi for the suspects. A security guard was killed in the building, the safe was broken into, but nothing was stolen. The three suspects have alibis, but who then killed the guard and broke into the safe? The 15th work from the popular series "Keishicho Monogatari", which documents the activities of the First Investigation Division of the Capital Police Department. Sonny Chiba's first film role as one of the seven detectives.
Detectives of the First Investigation Division of the Capital Police Department are investigating the murder of a 15-year-old girl, whose strangled corpse was found in the bay of the Tama River. As usual, the film runs only one hour and doesn’t depart too far from the usual formula; however, it greatly benefits from frequent outdoor locations that were missing from the previous film. It also touches far more serious topics, such as child abuse and mental insanity. 16th work from the popular series "Keishicho Monogatari", which documents the activities of the First Investigation Division of the Capital Police Department.
A human drama of crew and passengers on a special express train named “Sakura” from Tokyo to Nagasaki...
Young boys learn survival skills on a remote island and rescue a girl abducted by a gang of foreigners.
Onna Hitori Daichi wo Yuku (A Lonely Woman in a Lonely Land, Kinuta Production, 1953) was the second feature film directed by Kamei Fumio, who is known as a master of documentary films, and followed his “Haha Nareba Onna Nareba(Become a Mother, Become a Woman)” (1952).
A period film about a peasant revolt in the region near Mount Fuji, occasioned by high officials' depriving the farmers of their water rights.
