Isamu Kosugi

It is the end of the Taisho era (1912-1926), and at the Hanazuki-tei theatre in Asakusa, the famous performance of storyteller Koiso Kikuji and performer Kataoka Koshin is reaching its climax when the Tawaraya family interferes... This is an entertaining action film bursting with righteousness and humanity, centred on men who try to live righteously against a corrupt boss who preys on the performers.

Sangoro Oiwake runs out of money. He visits rice shop, eat and drink for free, and owners send him to prison. In prison Sangoro will have a new life

Wearing a symbol of justice and brotherhood on his waist – a crimson pistol belt, Ace Joe engages in a fight with villains trying to seize the mine.

A prisoner escapes from prison to find the real criminal.

The young Takako Kuramoto has come to Tokyo to study and starts working for the rich Tashiro family as tutor of the daughter, Kumiko, while she receives attention from her two older brothers, Yukichi and Shinji. Meanwhile, the exact parentage of Shinji comes to light.

7.3/10

Japanese "kayo" film centered around the song "Tokyo gozen sanji" by Frank Nagai.

Jôji is a boxer barred from the ring; Saeko is a singer whose voice is gone. Lost souls, they meet one night by a quay; she may be thinking of suicide. He invites her to his café, and perhaps he will rescue her from the cabaret where she's under contract to a vicious mob leader. When the boss insists on her return, Jôji is bitter. He also despairs over lost dreams. His brother has gone to Brazil to purchase a farm; Jôji planned to join him but now believes his brother abandoned him. When Jôji discovers a clue about his brother, he needs Saeko's help. Like a fighter in the ring, he pursues the truth relentlessly, without regard for his own safety. Will it cost his life?

7/10

Kawai Midori's father left the family a long time ago and since her mother passed away, she has taken care of her younger siblings by herself by working with a group of itinerant camellia oil peddlers. While she is In Izu selling camellia oil, she meets a young student, Katō Yutaka, who asks her to let him take her picture. The peddlers also meet a jazz band, and when Midori sings a song, teased by the band's star singer Nanjō Haruo, the band members are enraptured by her beautiful voice. She eventually joins the band and quickly becomes a popular jazz singer.

5.9/10

A battle for a large sum of money unfolds on the docks near a steel mill in a foggy atmosphere. Manzo, an engineer on the verge of retirement, witnesses two men shooting each other and collapsing on the quay while his assistant Shinsuke is away.

A continuation of Hungry Soul, from the same year. Reiko, who tolerates abuse in her marriage to a man 23 years her senior, is friends with Mayumi, a beautiful widow. Reiko meets her husband’s business rival, a young, capable businessman, and falls for him. Meanwhile, Mayumi enters into a relationship with Shimotsuma, a friend of her late husband.

7/10

Reiko, who tolerates abuse in her marriage to a man 23 years her senior, is friends with Mayumi, a beautiful widow. Reiko meets her husband’s business rival, a young, capable businessman, and falls for him. Meanwhile, Mayumi enters into a relationship with Shimotsuma, a friend of her late husband.

6.7/10

Takes place in one place, a beer hall, over the course of one evening. Uchida employs this concentration of setting and time to fashion a microcosm for a group portrait of Japan. One by one, the regulars of the bar appear: the pianist who dreams of becoming a composer but has disappeared from the music world after a knifing; a stripper who had planned to be a ballet dancer; an elderly painter trying to make a living at pachinko, and who rues his art having been used for militarist propaganda during the war; a young waitress considering elopement; a colonel turned real estate broker who attempts to rouse the crowd in military song until he realizes the tune has been transformed by marchers in the street into a leftist chant. The "twilight" is more than just a time of day; here, it is a state of being, a suspension between past and present, between the camaraderie of the saloon and the harsh world outside.

7.8/10

A film about the rivalry and friendship between firefighter Chоji and sumo wrestler Sokichi Fudoyama.

Kindaichi challenges the mystery of an incident in which three sisters were killed one after the other according to an ancient tradition on an isolated island in the Seto Inland Sea. Kosuke Kindaichi received a will from his friend Kito, which said, "Go to Gokumon Island to save my three younger sisters," and Kosuke went to Gokumon Island. Upon arriving at the residence of Quito, there were three beautiful sisters, a crazy father, a cousin of Sanae, and Kosuke plunged into a strange atmosphere. The film adaptation of the masterpiece novel of the same name by Seishi Yokomizo. Kyozo Kataoka plays Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, and Ryutaro Otomo plays Inspector Isokawa, who can be called Kindaichi's best partner.

Jida-geki by Santaro Marune.

"Delinquent Girl" - A melodramatic love story, a would-be apprenticeship between the titular “bad girl” and the optimistic scholar returning from the big city.

Shogi, a Japanese form of chess, is a game that requires skill and determination. When poor sandal-maker Sakata decides to pursue his dream of becoming the Shogi Grand Master Champion, everything is at stake – including his family. What will it cost for Sakata to follow his passion?

7/10

A Japanese war widow recalls her love affair with her deceased husband.

7/10

Based on the comic by Yutaka Asou

Kotobuki-za is a story of the Naniwa-bushi singer Baichuken Tsurumaru.

Hisshoka is a 1945 Drama film directed by four Japanese directors.

5.5/10

Mother and younglings

Kanji is a poor peasant widower who struggles to earn a living for his daughter and himself and to pay off his father-in-law's debts.

7.2/10

"Around the time he made such remarkably ambivalent war films as Mud and Soldiers and Five Scouts, Tasaka directed this 'home front' comedy-drama which is too bizarre to be serious propaganda. [The plot revolves around a public contribution campaign to buy airplanes.] The mayor's aviator son promises to fly over the village in salute, and much of the narrative concerns the preparations for this great event. Tasaka throws in a few songs, some village humor and satire, and tremendous camera mobility, finally wringing every possible effect from his climax." John Gillett, British Film Institute

A group of Japanese soldiers land in Chinese territory. They advance on a village ; one soldier, Norimoto, is killed in the attack, but the village is captured. Norimoto’s body is recovered and buried. Over the next two days, the soldiers advance inland. Two more soldiers, Naito and Takahashi, are injured. They remain behind to recover, but vow to catch up. Their comrades march on...

7.1/10

The conquest of China via Japanese WWII propaganda.

6.6/10

One of Uchida’s early sound films, Unending Advance is based on a curious story by Yasujiro Ozu, in which an examination of the quotidian problems of a middle-aged salaryman and his family segues into an idyllic dream of an implausible future. The surviving print, although incomplete, offers an essential glimpse into Uchida’s prewar period, when he was associated more with realist dramas than with the period films that dominated his work after the war.

7.5/10

At the invitation of the Japanese Ministry of Education, the former “mountain filmer” Fanck directed this “cultural feature film” with Japanese actors in Japan, making this the first, German-Japanese co-production. The young Japanese man Teruo gets caught up in a conflict between tradition and modernism, when he returns to Japan from Germany after having spent a number of years there studying. Now, he is supposed to marry Mitsuko, the daughter of his adoptive father, to whom Teruo has long been promised. But Teruo, who has gotten to know the freedoms of the western world, would rather marry the woman he loves and behaves brusquely to Mitsuko.

6/10

Itami, a young policeman, meets his high school friend, Tetsuo, a gangster, at a roadblock. As they rekindled their friendship, a complex relationship is established between them.

7.2/10

While returning by boat to Japan, Yoshie Fujiwara meets a rich woman who suggests him to become a singer thanks to an impresario friend of hers.

5.7/10

Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi.

9.1/10

A classic melodramatic love tragedy addressing social inequality in feudal Japan, depicted in Kenji Mizoguchi's typical style. The nostalgic scenes of 1920s Tokyo provides a valuable visual experience set against the background of the title song, "Tokyo March."

6.6/10

A 1937 Japanese language film directed by Tomu Uchida, starring Ryo Akaboshi, Mitsuru Date and Hisao Furutani.