Hideko Takamine
A man whose son has been murdered pushes to create laws to financially protect victims' families.
A Japanese businessman is sent to Sri Lanka and meets a beautiful Japanese woman with a past. They befriend an old Japanese-Indian widow who has an estranged son in Japan.
Great story about a woman who looks after her father in law. Takamine Hideko is so beautiful and powerful in this role!
An abandoned temple in the mountains outside of the old capital city of Kyoto is the scene of a fated meeting between a traveling priest, two women, and a vicious killer. Bloody violence erupts whenever strangers approach the temple. Can the traveling priest bring his belief in the Buddha and rid the three temple residents of the devils that hold their souls?
The disturbing story of a physician who conducted the first operation with general anaesthetic, and the women in his life who are both so determined to win his love that they volunteer as subjects for his experiments
When an only child is struck by a car and dies, the child's mother (Hideko Takamine) seeks vengeance against the driver in this thrilling drama. The car was driven by the wife of a company president who is having an affair. The woman's husband manages to buy silence about the incident, but the victim's mother discovers the identity of the driver. After she secures a job in the home of the company president and his philandering spouse, the woman plans to murder the couple's son when he reaches the age of her late son.
Young widow Ine is suffering under the harsh treatment of her mother in law. As a former Geisha, Ine had struggled to be accepted into the well-established Rokujo family from the beginning. With the support of Jiro, a young man Ine's late husband had saved from homelessness as a young boy, Ine tries to keep the family's heritage of silk processing alive. Their close relationship soon causes gossip among the villagers and threaten Ine's position in the family even further ...
A woman remember's her own marriage when dealing with the love life of her son.
Drama about the lives of the five daughters and daughter-in-law of a store owner.
A demobilized soldier becomes a day laborer with a road construction gang, and his wife goes to work to bolster their income. Their modest dream is to see their son grow and to be happy as a family.
Considered one of the finest late Naruses and a model of film biography, A Wanderer’s Notebook features remarkable performances by Hideko Takamine – Phillip Lopate calls it “probably her greatest performance” – and Kinuyo Tanaka as mother and daughter living from hand to mouth in Twenties Tokyo. Based on the life and career of Fumiko Hayashi, the novelist whose work Naruse adapted to the screen several times, A Wanderer’s Notebook traces her bitter struggle for literary recognition in the first half of the twentieth century – her affairs with feckless men, the jobs she took to survive (peddler, waitress, bar maid), and her arduous, often humiliating attempts to get published in a male-dominated culture.
In 1919, a group of Japanese immigrants arrives in Hawaii. Among them Yoshio Inoue and his wife Kishimo and Sumi, a young woman ready to get married soon. With the soil that is hard to work and the subtroipical climate, the immigrants have to cope with a hard life. But after years of hard work, Yoshio finds work as a teacher while his wife manages to open a small grocery store. But with the war around the corner, life becomes more and more complicated for the Japanese immigrants in a foreign country.
His ideals challenged by life as a conscript in war-time Japan's military, a pacifist faces ever greater tests in his fight for survival.
The story is of two people. One is deaf, the other deaf and dumb. They marry after meeting at a school reunion, and the film follows their trials and tribulations ... and joys.
The year is 1932, and a woman, whose tenant-farmer fiancé is fighting in China, is raped by the landowner's son, who has returned from the war with a crippling injury, and then forced into marriage with him. In four more chapters, presented over three decades, their children undertake their own searches for love, while the parents try to make each other as miserable as possible.
In "The Other Woman" the children of a distinguished professor find that the woman they have come to regard as their racy and slightly disreputable Ginza aunt is really their mother.
In a time of continuous civil wars ravaging the fields of feudal Japan, the eldest son of a very poor peasant family, living alongside the bridge over the Fuefuki river, decides to serve a warlord to escape his miserable condition, being soon followed by his younger brothers. Although not all the men of the family take this tragic path of death, women of the family will be doomed to endure the pain of loss during the next five generations.
This film features a large extended family (and associates) even more extensive than the one portrayed by Ozu in "End of Summer". The central character is Setsuko Hara -- a poised middle-aged woman, whose wealthy (and prestigious) husband dies at the outset of the action, leaving her widowed but holding the proceeds of a million yen insurance policy. Being childless, her former in-laws have no objection to her return to her own family.
Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her demanding mother and brother, and knowing she's growing older. She's of an age when she must choose: to seek marriage (difficult given her tarnished occupation), to be a kept woman, or to borrow money to buy a bar of her own. Each route has dangers, including investors demanding a return on their loans. Keiko has a quiet dignity that attracts men, but are they what they seem? Does she actually have choices?
The story of Muhōmatsu, a rickshaw man who becomes a surrogate father to the child of a recently widowed woman. 1958 remake of a 1943 film (same title, same director)
The plans of a trio of burglars are continually thwarted by the arrival of visitors to the house they plan to rob.
The story of the trials and tribulations of a lighthouse keeper and his wife.
A woman marries, gives birth to a stillborn child, and divorces, falls in love with a hotel-keeper, only to find herself subordinated to his drive for success, takes up with a tailor who cannot console himself with her strong personality.
Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mothers trade in the late days of Geisha. But Otsuta will not give up. This film portraits the day time life of geisha when not entertaining customers.
Kiyoko (Takamine Hideko) and her husband want to open a coffee shop. She becomes increasingly close to the bank clerk (Mifune Toshiro) she's asked for a loan.
A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.
A young widow, made world weary by her abusive, neglectful husband, finds herself in a minor scandal when she's seen with her intense, no-nonsense childhood sweetheart.
Schoolteacher Hisako Oishi struggles to imbue her students with a positive view of the world despite the fact that war is looming.
A student at a woman's university takes a controversial action against the school's old-fashioned doctrines.
This drama of middle-class life in postwar Japan tells the story lower-middle-class workers in the city of Kawasaki, and their troubles and travails.
A young woman, who must support her father as a middle-aged man's mistress, finds herself falling in love with a student closer to her age.
Gosho’s most celebrated film both in Japan and the West, Where Chimneys Are Seen is perhaps the most compelling example of his concern for, and insights into, the everyday lives of lower-middle-class people. Based on Rinzo Shiina’s novel of the absurd, the film depicts the lives of two couples against the backdrop of Tokyo’s growing industrialization during the 1950s.
Atsuko is an office secretary who is also her family's primary source of income and caretaker in postwar Japan.
Buntaro, the president of a food trading company got tired of the day-to-day routine of life. The new secretary, Nobuko, suggested her "shacho-san" (the president) run away from the job. Nobuko took Buntaro to her home and introduced him to her own family as friend, "Sachio-san"...
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.
The Ueki family may not be wealthy, but smiles are never in short supply. The father is awarded prize money for 25 years of service to his workplace, but has it stolen on the way home from the ceremony...
A girl who'd left her hometown for the exciting adventure of the big city returns home years later for a visit, soon somehow causing scandal.
Setsuko is unhappily to Mimura, an engineer with no job and a bad drinking habit. She had always been in love with Hiroshi but both of them failed to propose when Hiroshi left for France a few years ago. Now he is back and Mariko (Setsuko's sister) tries to reunite them. She too is secretly in love with Hiroshi.
Director Hiroshi Inagaki's early version of the life and death of famed swordsman Sasaki Kojiro.Otani Tomoemon gives a brilliant performance as Sasaki Kojiro, who rises from humble beginnings to national fame, and a young Toshiro Mifune appears as the legendary master swordsman Miyamoto Musashi for the first time and essentially sets the standard for future portrayals.This masterpiece is based on the original story as written by noted author Murakami Genzo and is far superior to any other versions. Following Kojiro from his earliest days through his fateful meeting with Musashi, this movie is filled with exciting and dramatic moments culminating in the best version of the final duel ever seen on film.
Shizuko Kasagi and Hideko Takamine star as young women who try to raise money for a needy old friend by becoming wandering singers who work for tips in Tokyo's Ginza nightlife district.
Reputedly based on Frank Capra’s 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, A Descendant of Tarô Urashima is about a repatriated soldier who becomes populist politician in the Japanese Happiness Party.
Two sisters, one a dancer and the other a script supervisor at a big movie studio, become embroiled in union activities when a strike is called in sympathy with striking railroad workers, one of whom boards with the sisters and their parents. The girls' father argues with them about their strike, but finds his views changing when he himself loses his job.
The story of an airport and its air traffic control crew in a remote and northern Japanese town. Three of the air traffic controllers are female with one of them working with her dead fiancé's sister. The engaged man had gone to war and never returned.
Based on a short story by Dazai Osamu, produced under the national film law. The film's hero falls in love with the youngest daughter of a family he is visiting to arrange an engagement for his friend who has been drafted to fight in the war.
Hanakosan (1943, TOHO, MAKINO Masahiro), a thoroughly light and joyful musical comedy, influenced by Busby Berkeley films, against the national policy under the wartime, was made into a film from comic serials by SUGIURA Yukio published in a magazine.
The Opium War is a 1943 black-and-white Japanese film directed by Masahiro Makino. "Ahen senso" in Japan refers to the First Opium War. The story of the film concerns this war.
A bizarre murder at a hot springs resort threatens to disrupt an Edo detective's (Hasegawa) vacation. When his hot-blooded wife (Yamada) starts snooping around, however, he finds himself reluctantly drawn in to the case.
What is marriage? Young couple in match-making wanted to know before they decide. They visited married couples of sisters and brothers. Love comedy in 1942.
A "slice-of life" film about a group of high school girls in 1940s Japan.
Hideko, a young Baseball fan, determined to cheer for her favourite baseball team by creating a new song for them.
A legendary pre-war comedy operetta starring Enomoto Kenichi, Hideko Takamine and Li Xianglan. The Sanzo Ikkou continues its westward journey, on a mission to prevent a demonic resurrection. As Genjo Sanzo, Cho Hakkai, Sha Gojyo, and Son Goku (Kenichi Enomoto) fight their way to their goal, their path is fraught with internal strife.
My Daughter's Only Wish tells the story of a poorly paid and clumsy office clerk, played with much comedic talent by Atsushi Watanabe. His biggest problem: His daughter Hideko is too clever and is expected by her teachers to enter the school for higher girls after graduating from primary school. But how is our poor clerk supposed to pay the school fees? How does poor Hideko feel about the situation? How can they cope with the envious colleagues who have less brighter daughters? And - an important question for Hideko's mother - what will the neighbours think? What's the point about getting a good education for girls anyway?
A forceful indictment of the devastating effects of war and nationalistic fanaticism on the average man, who, in the face of the absurdity of violence, is reduced to apathy or victimhood.
A half brother and sister work at a hotel in Hakone respectively as a porter and a souvenir shop clerk. They are close. One day a woman named Hasegawa checks into the hotel in order to recuperate in a calm environment with fresh air. She is the mother of the store employee. The mother and daughter were separated due to the Kanto earthquake. The girl was practically raised by her older half brother.
A colourful study of theatrical life. Two acting troupes vie for the Kyoto market during the Genroku Era. Tojuro, an extremely popular actor, feels the limits to his acting when he sees his rival troupe put on a new type of play featuring its star, Nakamura. He has the famous Chikamatsu write a new play but cannot get used to the character he is to play in it.
Three men fall in love with the same young girl who works in a tonkatsu restaurant in the Shitamachi district of Tokyo.
Kayo and Kuniko graduated from girls' school together and are as close as sisters. Kuniko's fiancé, Minakami, feels something that attracts him deeply towards Kayo. On the other hand, Kayo prays for the happiness of her best friend and marries a very ordinary man. However, at one point, this mediocre but increasingly ferocious husband died in an accident ... A triangular love story develops depicting a woman's heart that sways between love and morals. Based on a novel by Nobuko Yoshiya, there were originally two parts to the film (If Spring Comes & Fall Once Again), both supposed to be 85 minutes, but apparently what we have now is this 103-minute amalgam of the two.
Hide-chan (Hideko Takamine) and her family are on a trip to Tokyo. While visiting a fairground, a pickpocket (Kamatari Furukawa) steals the father's wallet. While everyone is trying to hunt down the thief, Hide-chan decides to make the most of it and enjoy her stay, while the thief and his main pursuer (Akira Kishii) play hide-and-seek among the funfair's spectacles and freakshows
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.
Part two of Shimizu's major silent Seven Seas, a family drama of the intertwining fates of the rich, decadent Yagibashis and the far less prosperous Sone family.
The film is a lengthy work interweaving characters from different backgrounds and social strata in a narrative centered around the experiences of its heroine, Yumie Sone. Over two hours long, Seven Seas was released theatrically in two parts, with the first part entitled "Virginity Chapter" coming out in December 1931, while the second part, "Chastity Chapter," followed in March 1932. Near the beginning of the narrative, at a garden party given by the wealthy Yagibashi family in Tokyo, Yumie meets Takehiko, the Yagibashis' playboy son and the brother of Yumie's fiancé, Yuzuru. Yumie, a young middle-class woman, lives with her ailing father, a retired ministry official, an older sister, and a younger sister still a child (played by a very young Hideko Takamine). Takehiko, who has just returned from a trip to Europe, is attracted to Yumie and contrives to have her stay overnight at his family's mansion where he takes advantage of her.
Mr. Omura, a teacher, leads a group of male students in an outdoor drill. One slight, comic young man, Shinji Okajima, has no shirt under his jacket; he scratches at fleas and makes faces behind Omura's back. Jump ahead several years, Shinji is married with three children. He sells insurance, and on the company's annual bonus day, he protests when an older worker is fired. Shinji loses his own job as a result, and he and his wife must find ways to cope. Lassitude, pride, the demands and needs of young children, and relationships from bygone school days all play a part in the outcome of their struggle.
