Kazuko Shirakawa
Tokyo is a mere five-hour flight from Hong Kong but it is a totally different world. Sarah (Josie Ho) has come to Japan seeking to buy an investment property and to have a brief and restful holiday after a bad break-up with her boyfriend. Everything has been precisely arranged in advance; from the schedule, to the hotel, to the real estate broker and the site visits. Immediately after her arrival, things start to go terribly wrong.
Haruo Izawa is 45 years old and the floor chief of the local grocery store “Umeya”. He is highly trusted by Store Manager Ueda and the part-time ladies and the Ohara branch is the only place where he has been working for 25 years. Although he says that he doesn’t fit to be a store manager, he is still concerned about HR and career advancement. That’s why Ueda’s praise "command center" is his only treasure. Besides, he is also a husband of his wife Ritsuko, and a father of two daughters and a son, Koume, Kanako, and Ryota at home. Humor and pathos are said to be only a fine line, but Haruo’s fruitless actions of paying attention to the human relationships and atmosphere and overthinking never stop.. Where is this middle-aged man’s turmoil going??
A psychological drama about the consequences of a 15 year old girl's gang rape.
A glimpse into the lives of three prostitutes in the Ikebukuro district of Tokyo and the clients who solicit them.
Yuki is a 2nd year high school student. She volunteers at a paediatrics ward for her summer vacation, because she wants to witness the moment a person dies. She got that thought after feeling envious of a transfer student's story of seeing a friend's dead body. Yuki has friend named Atsuko. She was bullied in the past and has anxiety issues. She volunteers at a nursing home for her summer vacation, hoping that she will gain courage if she sees the moment a person dies.
Death-row inmate Sudo (Pierre Taki) sends a letter to magazine reporter Fujii (Takayuki Yamada). In his letter, he states that a man named Kimura (Lily Franky), also known as "teacher," committed numerous murders for insurance money. While checking out the story, based on Sudo's tip, Fuji becomes convinced that the letter is correct. But, a lot of time has passed from the incidents and Sudo's testimony isn't clear. Due to the persistance of Sudo, who is a former yakuza, and Fuji, the police begin to move.
24-year-old OL Chie Ikeshita's (Yuriko Yoshitaka) motto is to try various things to enjoy life. Chie spends her time accordingly to her motto. Chie Ikeshita then starts to date 5 different men and adjusts herself to the different situations. Up to this point, Chie never thought about marriage. She changes her thought after her friend Toshiko Hamaguchi (Anne Watanabe) gets married. Chie takes the advise of Toshiko and decides to marry one of the 5 men. She must now whittle down her choice to one man.
Fifty elderly women are abandoned to die on a snow covered mountain, but instead wor together to build their own village named "Dendera." Some of the women wants to live their remaining days in peace, but others seek revenge against the villagers and their own families who left them to die.
Sayaka is a sexually frustrated housewife whose husband rarely talks and is always busy with work. But she soon finds an antidote to her loneliness and boredom in the form of a door-to-door salesman in this erotic drama.
A film about family life in Osaka. Following the death of their father, three boys struggle to find their own identity with the help of their outgoing mother and weak-willed uncle.
Existential study on a misplaced workers and ex-prisoner who moves through the city and his influence on other characters' lives.
Sachi Hamano's Yurisai (Lily Festival) is about a man (Mickey Curtis) in his seventies who comes to live in an apartment building that also houses seven elderly women. The film examines the ladies' sexual desires as the man proceeds to woo each of them. Kazuko Yoshiyuki portrays one of the female residents. The film was adapted from a novel by Houko Momotani and was screened at the Montreal World Film Festival.
A drama depicting the world of the female writer Midori Osaki in three parts: the dramatic creation of her masterpiece, "Wanderings in the Realm of the Seventh Sense," her unknown years spent in poor health and poverty, and the present-day world from which we see her work.
After death, people have just one week to choose only a memory to keep for eternity.
In 1995, a mental hospital is erected near the Japanese Ministry of Finance, located adjacent to the grave of Taira no Masakado. A young male nurse by the name of Jin’ya Yanase is obsessed with the legend of Taira no Masakado and more importantly, the spirit of his evil subordinate Yasunori Kato. Slowly, he becomes possessed by Kato's spirit, who wants to use him as a new host to revive in the modern world. Keiko Tatsumiya (the heroine of the original story), is an old woman living homeless on the streets of Tokyo. When she senses the presence of Yasunori Kato, she must regain her resolve to face the demon-god and vanquish his spirit once and for all.
Broke, his vintage Nash convertible repossessed, private eye Mike Hama is reduced to combing the mean streets of the Yokohama waterfront on a borrowed bicycle. But when Lily, a beautiful stripper from out of Hama's past, returns to town, the fuse is lit on a criminal powder keg set to blow the lid off the Yokohama underworld.
Koji Wakamatsu adapted the Kouhei Tsuka's play of the same name into a human comedy about the members of a traveling acting troupe.
One day after school, Kaoru glances at Sonoko at the pool side. He falls in love with her at first sight and decides to join the swimming team even though he cannot swim.
The story of the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing, based on Masuji Ibuse's novel.
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...
A sendup of the stereo-typical Japanese family: dad is a salaryman jerk, unable to relate to anyone; mom is a hopeless housewife; the older son is a moderate academic success; but the younger son is a rebellious goof-off for whom a tutor must be hired. The tutor, played by the prototypical bad-boy actor Matsuda Yusaku, proceeds to blow the entire family apart.
A photographer who takes pictures of a rendezvous between a politician, company president and yakuza boss is later found dead and the film missing.
A man and a woman drift ashore after a typhoon. The man, dead, is an escaped perpetrator, and the woman, alive, is a hairdresser Masako. A detective in charge of an embezzlement case is tracking the whereabouts of disappeared money and suspects Masako. One year later, a real estate company president dies a suspicious death in front of Masako at her beauty salon. Was it an accidents or murder?
Yukio is an ex-farmer working as a dump-truck driver in Kashima. Haunted by the drowning of his two young sons, whose names he has had tattooed on his back in penance, and locked in a sibling rivalry with his traditional but urbane younger brother who lives in Tokyo, Yukio has become an amphetamine-addicted loner at odds with his family, friends and colleagues.
Saito Masao reminisces on the days of his youth more than 50 years ago and his forbidden love of his older cousin Tamiko. When he was 15, Tamiko moved in to take care of his sickly mother. The two quickly fell in love with each other but were inevitably forced by their family to live separate lives.
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.
Director Yanagimachi's second film The 19 Year Old's Map follows the story of a 19-year-old newspaper delivery boy who begins collecting information on the households in his neighborhood and keeping a journal of why he doesn't like them. Declaring himself a 'right-winger' and calling in bomb threats against the neighbors he doesn't like, the 19-year-old begins a war of psychological terror against the families in his neighborhood.
A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu is on the run from the police.
Shinji, a leather jacket man on a Harley Davidson, meets Megu, who is a queen bee with followers while stopping the fight between two female groups. Megu fell in love with Shinji, but he has his eye on cute Mayo.
In the year 1873, a Japanese woman is sold as a mistress to an American diplomat stationed in Japan.
Though his parents help him run the family business, Jun still feels persecuted by their love; when they bar him from meeting with his girlfriend, tensions increase.
A young outlaw can’t escape his rebellious past despite connections to a well to do family.
This Roman Porno melodrama from Nikkatsu in-house luminary Chusei Sone concerns a married woman (Junko Miyashita) whose husband’s infidelity drives her to sleep with both of her sisters’ lovers. Kazuko Shirakawa, in one of her final appearances before her highly publicized wedding, plays the husband's combative mistress.
Ichijo Sayuri, once the legendary queen of Osaka strippers, has retired to run a sushi shop. She is awaiting her day in court after having been arrested for indecency at her farewell performance. While she was active, she was both the rival and the model for many young strippers. Harumi was one of them. Ichijo Sayuri was the real-life queen of Osaka strippers who was arrested on her final performance.
For a girl who works in a 3rd rate bar, Ayuko is full of vanity. Nomura, her patron, is besotted by her and it is their habit that they cannot reach a climax unless they peek at a couple, across the way, making love. Intent on climbing up in the world, Ayuko uses all her wiles to get her patron, who is putty in her hands, to move her from her grubby apartment house to a dreamboat of a place. She then tries to find a place to work more befitting her new home but all the elite night clubs will have nothing to do with her and with time heavy on her hands, the devil finds mischief for idle hands to do...
Yukie is a young woman who works at her father's flower shop. She uses her job to hide from her problems including a marriage troubled by her sexual frigidity. Her husband and her best friend engage in an affair, and Yukie goes to her father for advice on how to save her marriage.
Yasuko's husband Junichi works overseas, she becomes intimate with another guy called Takuji in his absence. One day her husband returns and she begins to suspect he has another woman. She follows him to a hotel but sees him dressed in female clothing. Junichi offers her and Takuji to join him for some shady parties.
Reiko is an adulterous housewife whose lover is a foul-tempered yakuza gangster. After one of her husband's friends spies the amorous duo at a no-tell motel, the stage is set for murder.
Shuichi and Nobuko are an ordinary, young couple, a promising company employee and his pretty wife. They think nothing can mar their peaceful life but nothing is permanent in this world and Shuichi's company goes bankrupt. Shuichi feels lost. He misses the good times he had at bars and cabarets, especially Hiromi, a hostess. Nobuko offers to work while he hunts for a job and finds an opening at an advertising company. But as Nobuko makes the rounds of restaurants and cabarets, she finds she cannot get ads just by dint of hard work alone. All the shop owners and managers expect her to sleep with them for each big ad they buy. At first, Nobuko is shocked but, to eat, she must meet their demands.
A working-class housewife is sexually unsatisfied by her husband. When she seeks extramarital relationships, her affairs are discovered by a brothel-owner who then blackmails the woman into working as a prostitute for her.
Kazuko Shirakawa plays a girl who left home to satisfy her inner lust. Her passion turns to despair when she looks at her miserable life and sees the loss of her one true love and eventually becomes a prostitute. Everything is masterminded by her jealous sister, who hopes to bed her husband. She eventually gets her wish.
In a complex story, various sexual escapades-- heterosexual and lesbian-- take place at a hospital.
A short history of the Japanese 'Pink' movie, focusing on the output of the Nikkatsu studio.
