Kotobuki Hananomoto
Near a remote Buddhist monastery, a young man falls in love with his sister and gets her pregnant. After a monk finds out, the young man becomes an assistant to a master sculptor, only to proceed to complicate matters with his affairs.
‘Tattooed Life' begins with a parasol wielding Yakuza assassin attacking a rickshaw. It almost looks like feudal Japan until somebody pulls a gun and we're reminded that it's the 20th century. Post-shooting, the assassin delivers his bounty to his brother (to pay for his art school education) before getting ambushed in one of the few rickshaw-jacking incidents in film history, and being rescued by his art-student brother. In the aftermath, one brother is marked for death by the Yakuza, and the other brother won't go to art school with blood on his hands, so they decide the perfect way to deal with such hardships is to become fugitive construction workers in northern Japan . And why not?
Black Snow tells the tale of a disturbed young man who, after spying on his mother with a black serviceman, finds himself unable to attain sexual arousal unless fondling a loaded gun. Later that night, he murders the GI before running amok through the building and finally slaying his mother's sister...
A drama depicting a girl's suffering from prenatal radiation damage caused by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Two brothers, Takamaru and Kikumaru, are living with their father, Hakuraku-Ou, until one day Hakuraku-Ou is killed by "Death's-Head" Ginnosuke, a villain skilled in the art of sorcery. Hakuraku-Ou had long been seeking a Tiger Seal which, together with the Dragon Seal in his possession, would reveal the location of a huge ancestral fortune. But on the very night that the Tiger Seal was found, it was stolen by Tomomitsu, Ginnosuke's chief. When the two brothers receive the Dragon Seal from their father just before his death they determine to go to Death's-Head Castle, in order to recover the Tiger Seal.
A playful short film made in the style of a trailer for a fictional feature film that seems to be a spoof of films that were popular in Japan at the time.
Shochiku's commemorative 3000th film production; a suspenseful period drama.
