Kei Satō
An actor named Kosuke plays the role of Iemon in a stage version of Yotsuya Kaiden and his new lover Miyuki plays Oiwa. However, as they delve deeper into their respective performances, the line between fantasy and reality becomes obscured until the murderous, vengeful themes of the play bleed into their own relationship.
Itou Kaiji is a bum who steals car emblems and slashes tires on what seems to be a regular basis. This routine changes one day when he is paid a visit by a man in a trench-coat. Once the two get talking, it seems that the visitor (Calling himself Endou) is a debt collector. The reason for his visit is an unpaid loan which kaiji had previously co-signed for a work-mate (Furuhata Takeshi). The original loan was 30000 yen and once Takeshi had disappeared, the loan then fell on Kaiji. Kaiji is then told of a way to clear the interest compounded debt (which stood at 3,850,000 yen), which involved getting on a boat with others in his position. Once on the boat the debtors would then have to gamble with loaned money, which would end with a few winning, and others getting into deeper debt and having to work to pay of their debts. After some coercing kaiji accepts a position on the boat, in order to clear himself and make a bit of money as well...
Too shy to speak out the word of appreciation, too busy to show that you care... Many excuses lie between each and every couple, when they look back the distance created during the long years in which they took each other for granted... Love Letters sent from husbands to wives and from wives to husbands, quietly voice their unspoken appreciation for each other over the years that they have shared. The original idea comes from the postcard project "Love Letters at Sixty" which has brought a wave of sympathy to the precious emotions shared by many married couples.
Rou returns to the rural monestry where he studied as a boy and was molested by priests. Rou has recently had a history of violence, and he brings this anger to the seminary, triggering a series of atrocities within the seemingly peaceful retreat. As he listens to the whispering of the Gods through his germanium radio, Rou defies God in every which way and puts religion to the test. Much of Whispering consists of sequences of sexual perversion that allow mori to comment on the cycle of abuse and how the distortion of sexuality and spirituality can create hell on earth
Schoolgirl Kuniko is kidnapped by a middle-aged man Iwazono when she is jogging. He tells her that he had a failed marriage which leaves him a deep and everlasting scar in his mind. He kidnaps her in search of a perfect marriage and intends to lock her in the room and 'educate' her to perform perfect sex where body and soul are united.
The wife of a lawyer and her twice-divorced sister-in-law scheme to break up her brother's marriage in this hard-edged drama of misdirected passion. The quirky characters who fill out the cast include a youthful entrepreneur and the heroine's father, a police officer who would do anything to make his daughter happy.
The continuing adventures of Matsuzaki (Eiji Okuda), a racing tipster for a sports paper. In this sequel to 1993's The Wicked Reporter, Matsuzaki befriends a mysterious old bettor at the track named Tokudaiji (Kei Sato). The man turns out to be a well-connected millionaire and invites Matsuzaki to his home... While the sequel covers the familiar territory of gambling and gangsters, Mochizuki also attempts to tactfully approach such subjects as gender dysphoria, transvestism, and infidelity.
A black comedy about a former Rock'n'Roll singer, who becomes the mayor of Tokyo.
Rie and Kishi runs a detective agency in Paris. Fallen flooding not directly and they supplement their budget with guiding Japanese tourists. This takes over when the crime boss Okuyama gives them the assignment to shadow his French mistress. Kishi falls head over heels for her while Okuyama has something weird in sight.
The classic tale of the shogun's illegitimate son Aoi Shingo is told in three parts as he strives to become the greatest fencer in Japan, while his father Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune seeks to reunite with his lost son. When the secrets of Shingo's birth are revealed to him, it sets off a series of events that bring him to cross swords with members of the shogun's inner circle in a series of duels that could change the destiny of Japan.
This film describes how the Hopi and Navajo tribes in the southwestern United States have responded to the resource colonization of their lands that have been repeatedly plundered for plutonium and uranium, or—in their words—“carving out the earth’s vital organs.”
The Man Who Assassinated Ryoma is a movie about a haunted blood-thirsty Bakufu officer who might have killed Ryoma Sakamoto.
A story of the skilled brain surgeon, Todo, whose talent and ambition are put to test through a series of high risk surgical procedures.
Byakkotai was part of Aizu's four-unit military, set up in the domain's drive to finalize its military modernization, in the wake of the Battle of Toba-Fushimi. The other three units were Genbutai, Seiryūtai, and Suzakutai. Each of the four was named after the protecting gods of compass directions. Byakkotai was meant to be a reserve unit, as it was composed of the young teenage 16 to 17 year old sons of Aizu samurai in a group around 350, who fought in the Boshin War (1868–1869)
While her husband is in prison doing time, Tamaki, the wife of a yakuza capo, runs her spouse’s gang with an iron hand. Meanwhile, Makoto, her younger sister, marries a member of a rival band after being raped by him. The two sisters, united by blood ties but married to enemy yakuzas, will ultimately have to decide whose side they’re on.
Originally released in Japan as "The Return of Godzilla" in 1984, this is the heavily re-edited, re-titled "Godzilla 1985". Adding in new footage of Raymond Burr, this 16th Godzilla film ignores all previous sequels and serves as a direct follow-up to the 1956 "Godzilla King of the Monsters", which also featured scenes with Burr edited into 1954's "Godzilla". This film restores the darker tone of the original, as we witness the nuclear destruction of giant lizard terrorizing Japan.
A man returns to his seaside roots to confront a yakuza boss. Along the way, he charms young men, softens a hard woman and busts a few heads.
On the night of August 19, 1980, a bus was set on fire by the vagrant Hirofumi Maruyama at the Shinjuku West Exit Bus Terminal. In the burning flames, Mitsuko, who was exhausted by her affair, suddenly thought of suicide. As a result, she escaped too late from the bus and suffered a serious injury. From there, she was hospitalized for a long time. As she gradually recovered, the wife of her affair partner, Soroku Sugihara, died of cancer. Soroku proposed to Mitsuko again, and they lived together. Due to Soroku's mounting debt, they decided to flee to Tojinbo. With the desperate persuasion of her acquaintances, Mitsuko regained her desire to "live again."
This story is based on the novel "Jo no mai" by Tomiko Miyao which is based on the life of painter Shōen Uemura (1875–1949), the first woman to be awarded the Order of Culture. The title refers to the masterpiece bijinga ("picture of a beautiful woman") that Uemura painted at the age of 61. The main character, Tsuya Shimamura, is born in Kyoto as the second daughter of a tea trader who dies before her birth. Tsuya, who loves painting more than anything and is hopeless at housework, attends art school and at age 15 receives the name Shōsui (from the characters for "pine" and "green") from her teacher. The crown prince of England purchases one of her works, propelling her to fame overnight. The novel portrays the remainder of her stormy life, during which she is impregnated by her teacher and raises a fatherless child; through it all she devotes herself to her painting, undaunted.
After a fishing boat is attacked by a giant monster, the sole surviving crew member realizes the monster is a new Godzilla. A reporter's efforts to bring the story to light are thwarterd.
A lower-middle-class policeman lives decadently, chasing cheap beer and girls at the same time he's running from loan sharks and his personal expectations.
One of the major documentaries on a specific chapter in modern Japanese history, this look at the trial of Japanese militarists accused of war crimes is excellently handled by director Masaki Kobayashi. Kobayashi and his assistants had to plough through 30,000 reels from the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal which took place between May, 1946 and November, 1948. It took two days to read the charges against the 100 alleged war criminals in the docket (only 28 top officials are actually in the courtroom, which was limited in space), and the final judgment took one week to read.
Eiji, also known as Choji, quits the shipyard to start Izakaya [Snack Bar] Choji with his wife Shigeko on the outskirts of Hakodate. Eiji once had a girlfriend by the name of Sayo, but she is supposed to be happily married to a pasture owner in the countryside. Then, suddenly one day Sayo shows up at Choji before opening. Sayo is still in love with Eiji. The story expressively portrays the lives of random Choji customers and the daily interaction between Eiji and Shigeko, while also focusing on the feelings between Eiji and his past girlfriend Sayo.
Loosely based on a 1926 short story by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, the film opens as an artist and a young woman are in a dentist's waiting room. Though he is attracted to the woman, he says nothing to her. They are later in the same examining room. When he is given an anesthetic, he begins to imagine a series of scenes in which the woman undergoes various forms of sexual abuse, including rape and torture. When the artist recovers from the anesthetic, he finds clues showing that he may not have been hallucinating.
A lavish retelling of the true story of the final voyage and ultimate destruction and sinking of the battleship Yamato, Japan's greatest flagship during the Second World War.
A policeman is murdered and his gun, stolen, used to commit the next crime. Detective Kashiwagi, who is leading the investigation, learns that the author of the killings “walks like a dead man”. Kashiwagi runs into Date, a former correspondent in the Vietnam War. There, Date discovered hell and something snapped in his mind.
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...
A seemingly run-of-the-mill corporate salaryman leads a double life as a vicious criminal by night. In a delicious scheme of payback, he seeks to dominate the corporation that employs him by day.
A motorcycle cop and a freelance photographer, having learned the location of 1 billion yen's worth of the Imperial Navy's gold, team up to salvage it.
A high-school teacher builds an atomic bomb to hold Tokyo hostage, then cannot decide what he wants.
Elite college graduates commit perfect financial crimes though loopholes in the law during the 1950s.
Mika Hino is a sharp-shooting investigator that belongs to the infamous "Gator Branch.” When an executive board member of a trading company is accused of being involved in a bribery, Mika is assigned to keep watch over him. A few nights later her target is found dead outside of his 30 floor office building. With an apparent suicide note as evidence, local police conclude the case as a suicide. Mika’s assignment may have ended in failure, but her mission has just begun...
The third movie in Tôru Murakawa's Game trilogy about a hitman. Narumi is set up by a mysterious woman. Abducted and tortured, Narumi is forced to take on a difficult job. The target is a veteran killer as good as him.
At a seaside city somewhere in the Tohoku area, the corpses of Nozomi, daughter of an affluent family, and Yamazaki, son of an engineer at the local nuclear power-plant, are found tied-to on a beach, as if they intended to commit double suicide. Nogami, a reporter, begins to investigate.
The second movie of Tôru Murakawa's "Game" trilogy. After making a sensational hit, a hitman has gone into hiding for five years. When he comes back he bumps into two women that he has spared five years ago. Two rival yakuza bosses hire Narumi to kill the other. Will Narumi's sense of chivalry entrap him again?
The three-film saga comes to a conclusion as three leaders of the underworld battle it out to determine who will become Don of Japan.
Terrorists hijack an oil tanker and threaten to blow it up unless Japan meets their demands.
A police investigator cracks down on yakuza business, but once he realizes the police are in negotiations with certain factions, he sides with his own syndicate of choice.
Japan, 1948: Hiroki Matsukata stars as a man facing a nine year prison sentence. He incites prisoners of Shimane Prison to the biggest riot in jail history. A fighter by heart, he sees a way out of any situation, but will he survive this, the gutsiest assault ever attempted?
Thriller about hijackers taking control of an oil tanker and threatening to blow it all up in Tokyo Bay.
Deep in the mountains of feudal Japan, a group of children endure cruel and unorthodox training in order to become the Shogunate's most secret and deadly weapons - the Demon Spies! Their true identities are hidden - even from each other. Behind their demon masks, they are educated in the deadly arts of infiltration, espionage, assassination - and seduction! If they survive to become strong enough to kill their teachers, they will become - the Demon Spies! Sent on a suicide mission to uncover a deadly conspiracy, five inexperienced Demon Spies must infiltrate a powerful fief, discover the location of its secret arsenal, and destroy it. But Lord Shogen, the Demon Hunter, plans to brutally interrogate, ingeniously torture, and cruelly execute - the Demon Spies!
Zatoichi, the famed blind swordsman, returns to his home village for the first time in many years. He is befriended by Omiyo, who had the same wet-nurse as Zatoichi. He also encounters a boyhood friend, Shinbei, who now is wealthy and appears not to remember Zatoichi. Shinbei seems to be interested in repaying the villagers' debts, but is in reality manipulating the ownership of a now-valuable rock quarry. Zatoichi learns of the subterfuge and confronts his old friend, who has a score of yakuza swordsmen backing his play.
An assassin is mistaken for a doctor and threatened by a band of masterless warriors, but they realize their mistake and retreat into the darkness. Days later, he is asked to kill the doctor's brother. What secrets are these men hiding?
Against the backdrop of the Edo treasury devaluing currency and driving many into poverty, Hanzo Itami enforces the law without regard to status. He shows inadequate respect to the treasurer, who wants him dead.
Kingoro Tamai moves with his wife and son to the port city of Wakamatsu. He organizes the Tamai-gumi, a stevedore group, to vie for work with two other powerful groups. Gingo is Tamai's chief rival who falls in love with the latter's wife and tries to kill Tamai.
Sunaoko come to Okinawa to find his brother Tsuruo. Her searching is not very painless because it tears up old wounds in complicated relationships, some of which date back to the horrors of war.
The story of the desperate struggle between the police and a large crime syndicate.
A ryokan maid is on trial for pushing a familiar guest off a cliff to his death. An eager attorney offers to take the case to gain notoriety.
After going to prison for killing the boss of the Kanno gang, Seji Iwahashi (Tatsuya Nakadai) gets released early -- only to find that his former gang has merged with the Kannos. But with bitter resentments lingering on both sides, how long will it be before the bloodshed begins anew? Set in 1926 Japan, this serpentine crime thriller from director Hideo Gosha also stars Toshio Kurosawa and Isao Natsuyagi as Iwahashi's closest ally.
Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades.
The story takes place in feudal Japan, when any commerce with the rest of the world was strictly prohibited. An idealist suddenly appears in an isolated inn (the one that the title refers to), the head-quarters of a group of smugglers, with stolen money intended to ransom his loved one who is forced to work in a brothel.
Murase is a bodyguard of yakuza group. Ochiai is a police officer who once was a student activist. When they meet, they are surprised how identical they look.
Michio Yamada, a recent school graduate, is sent to Tokyo to work as a fruit-packer in a department store as part of a government programme. He takes a gun from a house on an American base and uses it to kill several people. The scene changes to Yamada's childhood. Yamada is born the child of a reprobate and a weak-willed woman. As a boy Yamada, experiences poverty and the rape of his sister at first hand.
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?
About 1786 the doings of a demented lord results in many masterless samurai, including Iyemon (Kei Sato) who is used to luxury and cannot adjust to the hand-to-mouth conditions & piecework of umbrella making. Having hired ruffians to make him look like a superior swordsman, he arranges for himself the opportunity of a profitable marriage. He hires the half-blind masseur Takuetsu (Sawamura Sounosuke) to seduce or rape his wife (Kyoko Mikage), so that she can be divorced or killed for adultery. But the masseur takes pity & informs Oiwa of her husband's horrid plot. Assisted by the merchant's daughter he intends to marry, Iyemon disfigures his wife attempting to poison her so he can marry higher. There's a lovingly gruesome sequence as she combs blad patches into her hair, kneeling deformed at her mirror, weeping with bitterness. She eventually cuts her own throat, swearing revenge.
This is the story of a bookstore thief named Birdy, who is led through various adventures in Tokyo's Shinjuku district by salesgirl Umeko.
Three students spend their holidays at the seaside where they are mistaken for Koreans, a minority which is looked down on in Japan. The action develops into a crime story.
Zensaku, middle-aged and deaf in one ear, learns that his son's fallen for the daughter of a war officer responsible for the maiming.
A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.
In the Sengoku period, a woman and her daughter are raped and murdered by soldiers during a time of civil war. Afterwards, a series of samurai returning from the war through that area are found mysteriously dead with their throats torn out. The governor calls in a wild and fierce young hero to quell what is evidently an Onryō ghost. He encounters the two beautiful women in an eerie, beautiful scene. After spiritual purification, he meets the demon in a thrilling fight.
Writer Jippensha Ikku hears Tsutaya Juzaburo, a wholesaler of picture books, mutter on his deathbed, "Where has Sharaku gone?" He begins to figure out the true identity of Sharaku, who disappeared after about 150 portraits of actors he created came out.
Temari, a geisha, dreams of opening a small restaurant with her little brother.
On a cold winter day, Goro Fujikawa (Tetsuya Watari) and Masahiko murder the mob boss of Meishin-Kai. The deed costs them time in prison, but Goro had no shred of regret. When Goro is released 2 years later, Masahiko is dying in prison hospital and entrusts his last wish; "find my sister and take care of her." Goro leaves as a free man with a mission, but soon finds that he might have been better off in jail.
A sex-obsessed young woman, a suicidal young man she meets on the street, a gun-crazy wannabe gangster—these are just three of the irrational, oddball anarchists trapped in an underground hideaway in Oshima’s devilish, absurdist portrait of what he deemed the “death drive” in Japanese youth culture.
The lord of the Oshi fief is killed by his trespassing neighbour, the cruel and despotic Nariatsu, son of the former Shogun. After an investigation, the Oshi clan is blamed for what happened and sentenced to be disbanded. Eleven of the best samurai of the clan refuse the sentence and are willing to give their life for justice.
A young boy joins a band of ninja during a peasant uprising, all depicted through an experimental form of filming pages from the original manga set to sound.
A man sets out to search for his brother among the survivors of Hiroshima after an anonymous letter.
Zatoichi comes upon a dying man who asks him to give a bag of money to "Taichi". Zatoichi has no idea who this is but when he comes upon a small town harassed by gangsters, he finds that "Taichi" was the man's young son. Along his travels he also met a blind monk who makes Zatoichi question his murderous lifestyle. In trying to help the town, Zatoichi kills some gangsters and becomes a hero to the boy. He must make a choice of whether to use non-violence and set a good example, or violence and set the boy on the wrong path in life.
The sequel to "Flowers and Dragons". Kingoro Tamai founded a family in the port of Wakamatsu. He unites people with his courage, and revolts against the entrepreneur Oki Nakashi, who is teeming with vices. Kingoro and his family are also forced to fight against the Ezaki-Gumi group, which is opposed by Tomoda Kizo, who is trying to control the port of Wakamatsu.
Seeking revenge against the guard who tormented him, a young man returns to the island where he was imprisoned in reform school. But his plans for vengeance are disturbed when he encounters a strange and beautiful young woman
A sequel to the popular "The School of Spies", this film continues the adventures of one of the graduates who is assigned to crack a powerful spy ring working out of Kobe. Various people are suspected but, finally, it seems that an Army captain and his geisha friend might lead them to the ring.
Ryunosuke, a gifted swordsman plying his trade during the turbulent final days of Shogunate rule, has no moral code and kills without remorse. It’s a way of life that leads to madness.
Hakuchu no Torima is the portrayal of a violent rapist as seen through the recollections of his wife and one of his victims. As the film starts, Eisuke (Kei Sato) encounters Shino (Saeda Kawaguchi), who works as a maid in a house. She is a former coworker from a failed collective farm, whose life he once saved -- only to rape her. Soon, Eisuke's criminal pattern of rapes and murders emerges as he goes on assaulting women (Shino being the witness of one of them, as Eisuke tries to violate her employer). When cooperating with the police on making a description of the rapist, Shino withholds her crucial knowledge of his identity. She prefers writing letters to Eisuke's dutiful wife, Matsuko, a schoolteacher (Akiko Koyama -- Mrs Oshima), in order to expose his true nature and perhaps induce her into turning Eisuke over to the police.
In this elegant proto-feminist shocker from Yasuzo Masumuro, a woman forced into prostitution wreaks her spidery revenge. A mysterious tattoo artist puts his masterpiece, a human-faced spider, on a kidnapped woman's back. She and her lover are then forced into a conspiracy-born nightmare, where they face the danger of becoming the very evil they seek to escape. With each new bloody incident, the spider's face seems to redden with ever-growing hunger…
A young leader of the Yamazaki family of Nagasaki, Takida (Ken Takakura) is an A-bomb survivor. He fiercely battles violent elements in southern Japan like there is no tomorrow.
After a yakuza boss is assassinated by a rival, his naval officer son returns home to take over the gang.
Hanpei is a gentle young samurai that loves flowers. One day, he witnesses an old man's quick draw of the sword. He is so impressed that he becomes the old man's pupil. Soon, Hanpei's skill of sword comes to attention of his lord. The lord orders him to assassinate a man...
Years of warfare end in a Japan unified under the Tokugawa shogunate, and samurai spy Sasuke Sarutobi, tired of conflict, longs for peace. When a high-ranking spy named Tatewaki Koriyama defects from the shogun to a rival clan, however, the world of swordsmen is thrown into turmoil. After Sasuke is unwittingly drawn into the conflict, he tracks Tatewaki, while a mysterious, white-hooded figure seems to hunt them both. By tale’s end, no one is who they seemed to be, and the truth is far more personal than anyone suspected. Director Masahiro Shinoda’s Samurai Spy, filled with clan intrigue, ninja spies, and multiple double crosses, marks a bold stylistic departure from swordplay film convention.
In turbulent 16th-century Japan, the leaders of a minor fief have their child taken from them as a political hostage. His mother and his clan endure years of tribulations until he can return.
A story of manly life and the beauty of conjugal love. A story about a man and a woman establishing a family of longshoreman, centering on their love and struggle.
Three stories revolve around independence, a man searching for his wife, and a poor craftsman trying to make money.
A corrupt businessman blackmails the lovelorn reprobate Atsushi into watching over his suitcase full of embezzled cash while he serves a jail sentence. Rather than wait for the man to retrieve his money, however, Atsushi decides to spend it all in one libidinous rush—fully expecting to be tracked down and killed.
Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.
In the fourth installment, Musashi's potentially greatest opponent Kojiro jumps in and out of the story at the oddest and most coincidental moments. As his great love Otsu has succumbed to madness. Musashi then sets off to beat the functionaries of a treacherous clan in an arranged duel. 73 against one. Boastful Kojiro watches, secure in the knowledge that only he is a worthy opponent.
Three Iga ninja are on a hunt for Chidoken, a Takeda ninja sent out to assasinate Lord Nobunaga.
While her son, Kichi, is away at war, a woman and her daughter-in-law survive by killing samurai who stray into their swamp, then selling whatever valuables they find. Both are devastated when they learn that Kichi has died, but his wife soon begins an affair with a neighbor who survived the war, Hachi. The mother disapproves and, when she can't steal Hachi for herself, tries to scare her daughter-in-law with a mysterious mask from a dead samurai.
Four ninja are hired to fight against the Shogunate’s plot to abolish the Gamo Clan, the regional barons struggling to reinstate their young heir Tanemaru as their Lord.
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.
Eight villains, former pirates, gather to attack the magistrate's office. They develop a plan and begin their actions in secret, making full use of their special abilities. In the end, their plan goes beyond what was intended and turns into a good deed for many people. A masterpiece of historical drama, full of breathtaking thrills and action.
Jubei must stop evil plot of Lord Hayatonosho who secretly plans to overthrow the Shogunate.
Osaka in the early 1600s, aftermath of the historical Battle of Sekigahara; a group of orphan children are wandering through the battlefield scavenging for armour when they encounter a young boy named Sasuke with magical powers he says came from a meteor that crashed onto the Earth…
A yakuza man is released from prison after serving a long sentence. He immediately sets about creating a new gang and attempts to pull off a huge ransom score.
Frustrated with the bad behavior of his lord, Inaba Yajuro (Otomo) declares that he is leaving the clan and sets off on a journey that leads him into a small town besieged by a violent group of brigands. In a kind of homage to Kurosawa's 7 Samurai, the townspeople have been unable to defend themselves and Inaba sets out to teach them how to stand up for themselves. Meanwhile the vile Lord Yasumasa has sent the 4 finest swordsmen in the clan out to hunt Inaba down and kill him. Led by the magnificent Ichibei (Konoe), a master of weaponry in his own right, everything points to an ultimate showdown between the former friends in a battle to the death.
In the fifth installment, Yagyu Jubei must prove the innocence of his family who is suspected of conspiring to take Shogun's life.
After a salary-man's fiancée attempts suicide, he recounts his gruesome family history, which sees generations of his ancestors sacrificing themselves for the sake of their cruel lords. hey were samurai, the military nobility caste who carried out acts of violence at the behest of feudal lords, but suffered evenmore so under their cruelty, often forced into ritual suicide (seppuku). The women were under constant threat of kidnapping and rape,and the men subjected to arbitrary disfigurement and homosexual slavery...
A wandering vagrant, Hantaro, risks his life to save a beautiful blind girl and her father from con artists.
In the year 1637 in Shimabara of Tokugawa-era Japan, oppressed peasant Christians revolt against the shogunate with the aid of a charismatic Christian rebel leader Shiro Amakusa.
A father and son are both heavy drinkers. However, the son dies in an accident at a bar, leaving behind a fiance…. A unique social satire that focuses on why people drink alcohol.
In the fourth film in this exciting series, and the first since losing his left eye, Yagyu Jubei is charged again with the task of protecting the Yagyu Secret Scrolls. The two scrolls are held in separate locations to assure their safety. Within them there is information other than the techniques of the Yagyu Shin-kage style. They contain a secret that could throw the country into turmoil. Clan founder Yagyu Sekishusai had split the scroll into two parts to prevent its contents from being known to the public. This is Jubei's toughest assignment yet as he puts his life on the line to save the nation!
On his deathbed, a wealthy businessman announces that his fortune is to be split equally among his three illegitimate children, whose whereabouts are unknown to his family and colleagues. A bevy of lawyers and associates scheme to procure the money for themselves, enlisting the aid of impostors and blackmail.
An opportunistic department store clerk gets involved with three women and attempts to manipulate them so he can move up the social ladder.
The daughter of the wealthy Soga family is kidnapped and her fiance is murdered. But the kidnappers, Tatsu and Sanko are unaware that Tatsuko is the heiress to a fortune. Two strong-arm brothers, Kosaka and Takeshi, learn of her identity and join the gang in an effort to shake down the tycoon for ten million yen. Upon joining forces, their first move is to rid themselves of the driver whose identity is known to the police because of a cap which he left behind at the scene of the crime. Upon obtaining the ransom money, the brothers murder the two kidnappers and go to the port city of Kobe. The younger brother, Takeshi, has fallen in love with the prisoner and refuses to allow her to be killed and they take her with them from one hideout to another.
Yoshida's first feature follows the lives of young students against a background of jazz, emptiness and boredom. The plot is fairly simple: a "good-for-nothing" from a poor background falls in love with the young secretary of his rich friend's father. The woman senses good in him and tries to lead him on the right path.
Nagisa Oshima’s most personal film is a reflection by the director on his own disillusionment with the revolutionary student movement of the 1950s and the failure of political radicalism. Taking its title (as a reference or homage) from Alain Resnais’ pivotal 1956 documentary Nuit et Brouillard, the film has a group of former student revolutionaries who meet again years later at the wedding of one of their classmates. Old feelings, rivalries and grudges gradually erupt to the surface as the one-time friends recall the various treacheries by which their cause was defeated. Cutting between times past and the present, and unfolding the action from each of his characters viewpoints, Oshima creates an abstract and yet engrossing study of passions past and principles eroded. —Yume Pictures
A budding gangster enthralls a freeloading young woman, soon taking advantage of her knack for hitch-hiking to rob middle-class, middle-aged men.
In Osaka's slum, youths without futures engage in pilfering, assault and robbery, prostitution, and the buying and selling of identity cards and of blood. Alliances constantly shift. Tatsu and Takeshi, friends since boyhood, reluctantly join Shin's gang. Shin's an upstart and moves his gang often to avoid the local kingpin. Hanoko is a young woman with ambitions: first she's in the blood business with her father, then she joins forces with Shin. She soon breaks off that partnership, even though she's taken the sensitive Takeshi under her wing. Double crosses multiply. Those with the closest bonds become each others' murderers.
As a conscript in war-time Japan's military, a pacifist struggles to maintain his determination to keep his ideals.
This mammoth humanist drama by Masaki Kobayashi is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three installments of two parts each, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition, adapted from Junpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji—played by the Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai—from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet prisoner of war. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals to be an impediment rather than an advantage. A raw indictment of Japan’s wartime mentality as well as a personal existential tragedy, Kobayashi’s riveting, gorgeously filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best.
This mammoth humanist drama by Masaki Kobayashi is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three installments of two parts each, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition, adapted from Junpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji—played by the Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai—from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet prisoner of war. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals to be an impediment rather than an advantage. A raw indictment of Japan’s wartime mentality as well as a personal existential tragedy, Kobayashi’s riveting, gorgeously filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best.
Arrested and interrogated by the police for a murder, Kiyoshi Ôkubo remembers his past and ends up confessing to several murders. Inspired by the true story of the serial killer who raped and killed eight women in Japan in 1971. The case moved the whole country.
