Masahiko Naruse
Yoshiko Sejima gets a call from a man claiming to be from her husband's company. He tells her that he will come to pick her up on behalf of her husband. It turns out that he's a kidnapper and takes Yoshiko to a hotel, and proceeds to rape her. This man Fuji Nakatogawa calls Yoshiko's husband but doesn't request a ransom. He's just bent on humiliating Yoshiko to submission to be his sex slave.
A beautifully told story of a woman hardened by marriage to a man she doesn't love, after giving herself to another. She dedicates herself to her work, designing and creating plaited cords for kimono.
Takeo (Kiniya Kitaoji), son of a wealthy car industry executive, is unhappy with his job and goes to Singapore to become a fisherman. At first ridiculed by the local fishermen, he eventually gets their respect but his rebel temper pushes him to find new adventures in Alaska.
Tobimaru is the young emperor of Japan. He meets a mysterious woman named Tomamo. After successfully seducing Tobimaru, she brings great misfortune onto the land. Tobimaru soon discovers that Tomamo is actually a kitsune, and now has the task to unmask and kill her to save his land.
Kitagawa is an engineer charged with construction of a gigantic tunnel through the Japan Alps for the transportation of equipment in the building of the massive Kurobe Dam. The tunnel crosses an earthquake fault and Kitagawa is beleaguered not only by cave-ins and flooding, but by strife between management and the workers's union. Adding to Kitagawa's stress is the knowledge that as his attention is pulled inexorably toward the tunnel construction, his youngest daughter is dying from leukemia.
Following the journey of a caterpillar along the Japanese islands from Nagasaki to Hokkaido, this allegorical and oblique first feature film by Kuroki depicts in exquisite images a series of encounters and life's turning points.
A cynical samurai is left as the sole survivor to fulfil a plot to assassinate the puppet of a villain intent on usurping the shogunate in the 17th century. A Shogunate Elder connives to rule Japan by making his puppet, the Shogun's brother Tsunashige, the next Shogun. The best strategist in Japan, Yamaga, leads a plot to stop the Elder, but his cabal is betrayed and most of the conspirators are captured and tortured.
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...
His ideals challenged by life as a conscript in war-time Japan's military, a pacifist faces ever greater tests in his fight for survival.
Two young crooks who scam betters in the race track are employed by a yakuza gang called the Shigemori Syndicate to steal a shipment of handguns from a rival gang. Somewhere in the process they find themselves on the run from their own gang and one of them becomes himself romantically entangled with the boss's girlfriend. An ambitious underboss of the gang offers them a way out if they murder the previous boss but things don't turn out as planned (for everyone).
A poignant story about a young couple, Setsu and Chozo, who are torn apart to save Setsu's father's restaurant.
An elderly woman, Ume Matsumoto, complained to the First Investigation Department that her son Hirasaka, who runs a shoe store, had disappeared. The ominous foreboding of the First Investigation Department hit the mark, it turned out that the discovered unidentified body of the drowned man was Hirasaka. Moreover, the land in front of the station, owned by Hirasaka, was sold by someone. Suspecting that this is a planned murder, the Investigative Group, fearing the escape of the criminal, begins to act secretly, without creating an investigation headquarters. The 14th work from the popular series "Keishicho Monogatari", which documents the activities of the First Investigation Division of the Capital Police Department.
The sixth and last Moonlight Mask film in the original series produced by Toei in the 1950s.
Based on Matsumoto Seicho's classic mystery novel of the same name, the story centers around a group of detectives who are determined to find the truth behind an apparent double suicide.
A sensitive young woman aged 22 fell in love with a middle aged man who was troubled by his unfaithful wife.
Junai Monogatari AKA Story of Pure Love is about two poor youths, Mitsuko and Kando, rebelling against society in various ways, who are desperately trying to be together despite tortuous circumstances. The film depicts their lives as thieves, menial laborers who can get little pay, society outcasts, and of course, lovers. Junai Monogatari depicts, mostly, their struggles within the Japanese reformatory system and Mitsuko's worsening sickness.
In the War's closing days, when a conscience-driven Japanese soldier fails to get his countrymen to surrender to overwhelming force, he adopts the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk.
