Kumeko Urabe
A lonely high schooler suddenly meets the love of his life out of thin air. Is she a real person or a figment of his imagination?
Out of the blue, a bourgeois family on the Sea of Japan finds an unconscious woman on the beach and decides to let her board.
When Tora-san's infatuation with his nephew's school teacher causes family turmoil, he leaves on his travels again. When he returns, he falls in love with the teacher's mother.
Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director (Aru eiga-kantoku no shogai) is a 1975 Japanese documentary film on the life and works of director Kenji Mizoguchi, directed by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba). It runs 150 minutes and can be found on the second disc of the Region 1 Criterion Collection release of Ugetsu (1953).
When his pistol is stolen, police detective Murakami is humiliated, especially when the gun is later implicated in a crime. Working with his superior, Chief Detective Sato, Murakami works feverishly to trace the location of his pistol, ultimately clashing with a gang of youthful Okinawans.
The girl students of rival junior high schools stage duels and show a curious interest in sexual pastimes.
Mamoru Hirayama, the sales manager of Clover Shoji, a women's underwear manufacturer, was selected by President Usui to be the manager of the foreign affairs section newly established in the sales department. Masaaki Sakata, Yasushi Inoda, Osamu Yamabe, and Jiro Oi were assigned to this foreign affairs section. Hirayama, a former soldier, is suddenly enthusiastic when the company orders him to join the Self-Defense Forces. One day, in the library where the records of the former army are displayed, Hirayama recalls his memories of that time. It turned out that the bundle of bills that the captain had made a mess of was packed in a box and buried somewhere.
A young man leaves his widowed mother on her improverished farm and makes his career in the Japanese navy.
An inspirational teacher is the focus of this Japanese drama. After his friend kills himself, Natsuki takes a teaching job on an isolated island. His new students, the children of ignorant fishermen, can see no value in education; therefore, they have no desire to learn. Natsuki then introduces the children to volleyball. The kids are immediately fired up by the game. After winning the island tourney, they go on to win the national championship. Suddenly learning has taken on a whole new dimension. Meanwhile Natsuki gets married. Unfortunately for his wife, he refuses to leave the island.
An absolutely astonishing art house ninkyo yakuza film. Wandering gambler runs into a young swindler woman working with old man. They are both arrested by detective. A year later gambler is staying with gangster boss when he comes across that woman and her partner again. Boss lusts for both her and his own daughter, while the boss's crazy yakuza brother loves his daughter, who, in turn, watches the player and wants to destroy the people standing in her way. And here lies one of the film's remarkable departures from the standard ninkyo efforts: it doesn't have a third party villain, nor a clear distinction between good and evil. It's bursting with romantic emotion and wrenched with gritty realism, shot with striking black and white compositions, and explodes into shocking carnage. It has lengthier, more detailed gambling scenes than any other yakuza film I've seen. And it has a heartbreakingly beautiful score. You could call it the Ashes of Time of ninkyo yakuza films. A masterpiece!
A man is involved in a fatal car accident, and though he is blameless, his company transfers him to a remote branch in a small town. Before he leaves, he gives the man's widow a large sum of money that she uses to move back to her hometown.
Bungo becomes a single parent when his wife leaves him because of his drinking and gambling. Deciding to quit his vices, he works menial jobs, drifting from city to city. However, not completely losing his gambling tastes, he became a hunted man and must escape to Tokyo after he was found cheating at dice. Bungo and his son Kenichi comes upon the Kizaki Family in Asakusa, where more troubles are awaiting them...
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.
Ayako, a young woman from a rural fishing village is sold by her family into a brothel when her father takes ill. There she quickly is stripped of her innocence and illusions.
In a village subsisting on its herring fishery, a one-eyed criminal named Jakoman terrorizes the inhabitants. One of them, the son of the head of one of the fish companies by the name of Tetsu, decides to overthrow Jakoman and his cohorts.
Yutaro Kida, a worker at the Sasebo Naval Arsenal, volunteers for the navy but finds himself a cook's mate in the galley of a gunboat. But his dream is eventually realized when he is transferred to the new and powerful destroyer Yukikaze which he helped to build. When the Pacific War breaks out Yukikaze performs valiantly in the South Pacific, and while on shore leave, Kida meets and falls in love with Yukiko, younger sister of his commander.
Nishina Saburouta is powerful but corrupted priest. One night, an old samurai who couldn't bear him any more, attempts to kill him, but without success. Saburouta is rescued by his niece, Keisuke at the last moment. Keisuke is a a good-for-nothing. Since that event, he always turns to his uncle when he needs money. Recently Keisuke feels his uncle isn't as generous as he used to be, he suspects that Saburouta has found out the illicit relation between Keisuke and his uncle's young mistress, Ohasu.
Experienced shipyard worker Shimazaki gets an offer of free lodging from his employer in the company seaside rest house if he agrees to see to its running. After moving in, Shimazaki finds out that this will also mean taking care of a flock of youngsters, and he soon becomes their none-too-successful warden. At work the boys are disciplined, as soon as they return to their dormitory however they turn into an unmanageable mob.
Two obaachans become fast friends listening to music in front of a record store. They both boast about their loving sons but in reality, one had just escaped a retirement home and the other was looking for an escape from her son and daughter-in-law. With nowhere to go, the two wander around, befriending a cosmetics salesman and a kind waitress who give them beer. This biting social satire starring two memorable grandmothers, scripted by Yôko Mizuki, picked up on Japan’s aging population problem far ahead of its time.
The days leading up to a toddler's second birthday are seen alternately from the child's point of view as well as that of his parents.
Ushimatsu's father told him never to reveal his lower-caste heritage; years later, he now contemplates confiding in an activist fighting against such discrimination.
One night, three wives, Matsuyo, Keiko and Mari, receive a mysterious telephone call. The voice tells them that she has their husbands with her and invites them to " P " Hotel to see for themselves. They have been married for many years and are bored with their husbands, and are about to secretly carry on affairs with the other's mates.
The first story concerns an attractive young woman who works in a Tokyo nightclub. Her plan for a solid financial future has a double whammy. In the second story, a beautiful young woman is employed by an unscrupulous real estate agent to convince male clients to invest in worthless property. The last story is about a widowed geisha who has no real financial worries and who falls in love with a forger.
Detective Katahachi meets a young and beautiful pickpocket and doesn’t arrest her because she was not in the act. Instead, he listens to the story about her parents who killed himself and died for overwork to feel sorry about her.
A troupe of travelling players arrive at a small seaport in the south of Japan. Komajuro Arashi, the aging master of the troupe, goes to visit his old flame Oyoshi and their son Kiyoshi, even though Kiyoshi believes Komajuro is his uncle. The leading actress Sumiko is jealous and so, in order to humiliate the master, persuades the younger actress Kayo to seduce Kiyoshi.
A lifetime story of a woman who stubbornly lives in a poor mountain village in post-war Japan.
The story tells of Tsuchiya, a university professor and a widower who is in love with a widow who runs a small restaurant, and his son is in love with a runaway girl who turns out to be the leader of a religious sect. Kusano is the henpecked proprietor of a rice biscuit shop who dreams of owning a bird and dog shop and his daughter is in love with a boarder, employed by the private detective agency searching for the runaway girl. The agency head has his own dream of arranging thirty marriages and has already accomplished twenty-seven. Tatsumi is a newspaper reporter who dreams of a big scoop to enable him to marry a girl TV producer and his friend a mountain climbing enthusiast who dreams of joining a Himalayan expedition but is opposed by his wife. His love of the mountains is shared by a boarder in their home and by a fishmonger's son.
Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot take the truth of being abandoned as a child.
It's a man's world. Shimamura, an artist, comes to this snowbound town to rejuvenate himself. He connects with Komako, a geisha he met on a previous trip, and it seems like love. She's the foster daughter of a local family, almost engaged to the family's son Yukio, now dying of consumption. He's tended by his sister Yuko who's angry at Komako for abandoning her brother. Shimamura returns to Tokyo but promises he will be back soon. In anticipation of his return, Komako breaks with her patron and her family loses their home. Complications arise when Shimamura doesn't come back as promised. Then Komako discovers that he and Yuko knew each other in Tokyo. Can Komako escape destiny?
The story of a young couple deeply in love with each other but, because of complications and misunderstandings created by the people surrounding them, they find it very difficult to achieve happiness.
Pierre Marsac, a French engineer working for the Nagasaki shipbuilding yards, has fallen in love both with Japan and a charming Japanese girl named Noriko. But Françoise Fabre, a French journalist and Pierre's former lover, contacts him while visiting the Land of the Rising Sun. They meet again, find out their love might not be dead. Meanwhile, Pierre gradually becomes estranged from sweet, humble Noriko. One day, a typhoon strikes Nagasaki...
Based on the original work by Shuji Hojo, Itohan Monogatari depicts the fate of a clumsy and kind-hearted woman in the Taisho era.
A sensitive young woman aged 22 fell in love with a middle aged man who was troubled by his unfaithful wife.
Poor social conditions badly affect the relationship between a married couple, when the husband, who is desperately searching for work, fails to notice the terrible sacrifices made by his wife when she accepts a job at a local inn.
A young salary man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital affair.
Gangsters Ken and Maki are rivals in the ticket-scalping game. They make an uneasy truce, but Ken wrecks the truce by agreeing to fix a boxing match in which Maki has an interest in one of the fighters. After a terrible brawl, the two gangsters discover that they have both been played for suckers by their bosses. They join forces to turn the tables on the bosses.
Now an old man, Masao returns to his childhood home and begins to recall his upbringing in this abandoned sector of Japan.
Schoolteacher Hisako Oishi struggles to imbue her students with a positive view of the world despite the fact that war is looming.
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.
Tokyo, 1890. Through avarice, a series of misunderstandings, and failures of courage, the engagement of Kan-ichi (a student) and Miya (the daughter of Kan-ichi's debtor) is canceled to enable Miya to marry Tomiyama, a wealthy banker's son. In bitter despair, Kan-ichi breaks with his friends, drops his studies, and declares he has ceased to be human. He apprentices to a money-lender, and he's soon ruthless and wealthy. Several years later, Miya's in misery, her husband mistreats her. She goes to Kan-ichi to beg forgiveness; he pushes her away. He's now pursued by Akagashi, herself a cold-hearted loan shark. Can anything free Kan-ichi's hard heart from the golden demon
The eldest daughter of a rural family Mon returns home from Tokyo pregnant after an affair with a college student Kobata, which causes a scandal that will threaten the marriage prospects of the younger sister San, in her cash-strapped family. The ill-tempered eldest brother Inokichi decides to take on the role of disciplinarian, with harrowing results.
This film stars Tanaka Kinuyo as the mother of the heir to the Hosho name, a famous lineage of Noh actors. The heir, Hosho Yagoro, is played by Hasegawa Kuzuo who went on to become familiar among Ichikawa Kon fans as Yukinojo in An Actor's Revenge, which was also co-written by Ito, adding to the relatedness of An Heir's Place.
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.
This early gem starring the great Mifune Toshiro tells the tale of Katakana Yonetaro aka "The Shark," a rough-and-tumble horse trader in Japan's rugged northernmost territory of Hokkaddo.. ...
Hamako has just started working for her personal hero, Madame Yuki. Her romanticized view of the Madame is broken immediately, though, as she is introduced with a ever-growing list of the Madame’s personal problems.
A bar girl tries to pass her three children, each from a different father, to rural relatives.
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.
When a young woman is named as the prime suspect in a murder, her girlfriend and her girlfriend's boyfriend set out to prove her innocence. Their investigation leads them to an isolated, creepy house in the middle of nowhere, where sinister goings-on abound.
Fusako, a drug dealer's young mistress in postwar Japan, loses her tenuous grasp on life upon learning about her lover's affair.
A hospital melodrama where the conflict between love and friendship rules the faith of the protagonists.
A band of guerrillas fight against occupying British forces in Malaya.
MINOWADA has his own theory of education and the daughter of his linguistics teacher becomes drawn to him. Strong-willed Kayo, a doctor is also attracted to him. A mediator tries to arrange a marriage but just at that point MINOWADA receives military call-up papers.
A story of a servant girl whose life is upturned by her doomed love for a spineless young man.
Taki no Shiraito is a very independent young woman with a famous water juggling act in a travelling carnival troupe. She falls in love with an orphaned carriage driver Kinya Murakoshi, and pledges to put him through law school in Tokyo. She always encloses money in her letters to him, until one hard winter there is no work to be found.
A sad love film where the action takes place in Kyoto, in a trading house.
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. Released in 2 parts. His only release of 1931
Tōjin Okichi is a 1930 film by Kenji Mizoguchi based on the novel by Gisaburo Juichiya. Only 4 minutes have survived. The fragment has been published on DVD coupled with The Downfall of Osen (1935) by Digital MEME in 2007.
The 7th work of Song of the Night series, which was adapted and directed by the combination of Masashige Narizawa and Ryuichi Takamori of "Yoru no Kayo Series Minatomachi Bruce" based on Kohan Kawauchi's original "Rogue". Hanjiro Nakazawa is in charge of shooting.
