Meiko Kaji
Kakei Shiro is a lawyer who works at a small law firm. He is a good cook and a meticulous and thrifty person who keeps the monthly food budget to 25,000 yen. Shiro’s daily routine is to leave work on time and head to a discount supermarket nearby. His partner Yabuki Kenji is the affable hairdresser. The two of them share a two-bedroom apartment and the finer points of two men living together comes up at the dining table every day.
Kamiwatari Kotone is a geisha in Kyoto. While she is sleeping after a night of drinking, her fellow geisha is killed. Kotone Kamiwatari is falsely accused of her murder and is sent to prison. There, she is bullied by other prisoners, but Kotone relies on her training from senior geishas to persevere. She also learns why she was framed for murder and sent to prison.
Are bad girls casualties of patriarchy, a necessary evil, or visionary pioneers? By tracing the concept of the bad girl in Japan as a product of specific cultural assumptions and historical settings, Bad Girls of Japan maps new roads and old detours in revealing a disorderly politics of gender. The essays explore deviancy in richly diverse media. Mountain witches, murderers, performance artists, cartoonists, schoolgirls, and shoppers gone wild are all part of the terrain.
In the Edo period of Japan, a samurai’s life belonged to his lord. On the battlefield or in the home, a loyal samurai must always obey his lord’s commands. This is the tragic story of one such loyal samurai, whose love for his family forced him to make the ultimate choice of disobeying the wishes of his lord.
"Kekkon Shinai" follows the lives of single people in their 30's and 40's.
Detective Onihei better known as "Heizo the Demon" heads a group of skilled officers, however, one of those special officers got himself into a web of betrayal and deceit, and become the very thing Heizo the Demon investigates daily.
Hasegawa Heizō, the head of the special police has jurisdiction in Edo to keep the city free of crime. Nicknamed "Onihei" or the "Heizō the demon," he leads a band of samurais and cultivate reformed criminals as informants to solve crimes.
Heizo "The Demon" deals with an arson thief gang known as "Bungoro" the fire thief who leaves a calling card as evidence. As a street notice, showing the thief of Ohno shop, but it is not Bungoro, it's the quick work of a solo member. Heizo Hasegawa with his hands full may have caught a break, it may be a falling out among the thieves.
Edo town thief called "Acrobatics boy" has been rampant in town, just that time, spy, Goro of Otaki will see a woman who had been an inside contact of the Yataro by chance. Also, Heizo is worried about the child of Inoue Tatsuizumi, who decided to ask for help for Gen'an.
Heizo "The Demon" investigates the shop of Toshimaya the swordsmith, where 280 ryo was stolen and twelve people murdered. This particular group of theives are most dangerous because of the willingness to kill for money, but what about this mysterious unibrow, who is he? What is he up to?
An old thief, Kuhei Sagiwara, used to visit his hometown at the foot of the Kurikara Pass in Kaga Province. Hiding from the rain, he overheard a secret conversation between three men, just like him, hiding from the rain. These three conspired to kill Heizo Hasegawa, the head of the arson and robbery police squad, and the head of these three is the outrageous villain, thief and murderer Jingoro Amikiri...
It is the Edo period during the ninth Shogun Ieshige's reign. Orin's father was falsely accused of attempting to assassinate the former Shogun Yoshimune and in accordance with her father's wishes, Orin joins the secret assassination group Tegusari-nin, headed by Uemura Doestsu. In the organization, Orin fights through many dangers. But one day, she realizes she is being used by Doetsu in order to advance his ambition.
Heizo's cousin Senemon Misawa and his son Katsuzo visited Heizo's home. Heizo learns that Senemon has fallen in love with Katsutoshi, a woman who works at the Yamabukiya Tea House, and has asked her to marry him. Heizo decided to visit Yamabukiya, saying "I will try to find out if this woman is a bodhisattva or a demon." After meeting Katsutoshi Heizo, felt embarrassed and ordered Gorozo to inquire about her just in case. Gorozo, in turn, sends secret detective Rihachi to Yamabukiya with the task of keeping an eye on Katsutoshi...
Master swordsman Akiyama Kohei’s simple life in retirement is jarred into violent sword action when he meets an elderly fencing instructor who may be the target of a group of thieves planning a major armed robbery. At the same time dojo master Daijiro saves the life of man who, although skilled in archery has an aversion to killing and a woman artist comes into town where she is in danger of being raped by one of the thieves. From the pen of noted author Ikenami Shotaro, creator of such classics as Bandit Ve. Samurai, Hunter In The Dark, The Last Samurai, and Hissatsu-The Professional Killers! Brilliant storytelling that leads to superb swordsmanship!
The samurai Akiyama Daijiro is asked to help a young boy who tries to bring the man who murdered his father to justice. In the course of their quest they uncover a plot by one of the clan officials that could change the course of history.
Azusa the wife, Otaro the husband, and their only daughter Suzu. They live in a little public dwelling in Tokyo. They're a fairly ordinary family of three living a normal but happy life. That is, until they move into that house. Then all sorts of frightening experiences escalate and involve the entire family, developing into incidents that will give goosebumps. Would you be able to defend your precious family if a major disaster should suddenly occur? The topics in this series are family and life itself, the ultimate topics for everyone. This drama uses the form of a horror suspense show to depict the bonds within a family. --Fuji TV
Zeno: Kagirinaki Ai ni is a movie about life and work of Brother Zenon Żebrowski, a Polish missionary in Japan. Brother Zenon was known for his charity work for victims of war and the poor in Japan.
A criminal syndicate wants detective Onihei dead, but the resolute hero proves to be hard to kill.
Takahashi Hideki stars as Muyonosuke, the one-eyed ronin who makes his living as a bounty hunter who is on a never-ending quest to find the man who murdered his father. The usually aloof Muyonosuke, who never would pause to help the common man winds up befriending an orphan boy and a mysterious woman, and getting involved in a feud between two families, but finds out there is a high power behind the curtain who pulls their strings.
The tale of Ogami Itto and his son Daigoro has come full circle with the greatest sword actor of all time, Wakayama Tomisaburo now playing Lone Wolf's mortal enemy, the evil Lord Yagyu Retsudo, who masterminded Ogami's fall from grace. Brilliant sword actor Takahashi Hideki takes over as the former shogunate decapitator, and his stunning swordsmanship is second to none! The story of Lone Wolf and Child has been told many times, but never before like this. With the magnificent sword skills of Takahashi Hideki as Ogami Itto, the Shogun's Decapitator and Wakayama Tomisaburo as the power hungry Lord Yagyu Retsudo the story has come full circle.
President Ito, a major apparel maker, was poisoned in the president's office. Kenzo (Baku Ohwada), who happened to be interviewing nearby, rushes to the site. According to his secretary Masae, Ito's ex-wife's younger brother Yoshimoto visited and he started arguing with Ito, but he suddenly escaped. Kenzo asks Kyosuke Kozu (Masaomi Kondo) to investigate. It turns out that Ito's son Takashi, who was killed, is enrolled in Kyosuke Kamizu's university. When Kyosuke Kamizu met at the university, his mother-in-law, Yoko, aimed at his father's fortune and said, "I think he teamed up with designer Kawahara ." Yoko has a relationship with Kawahara, and Ito, who died, was confused because she had an affair with her secretary, Masae. Takashi is said to have already left home and is living on his own.
Haru, an aging scriptwriter, has isolated himself somewhere in the woods of Nagano to work on his first novel. As the last surviving member of his kin, he intends to chronicle the family he grew up in.
An award-winning Japanese film about a child's experiences during the Second World War.
After 2 years of completely isolation in mountains, Musashi comes back in order to live a normal life. However, after his duel against Kojiro Sasaki he has many enemies who want to kill him...
The 224-minute compilation edition Battles Without Honor and Humanity The Complete Saga compiles these five movies : Battles Without Honor and Humanity 1 (1973) Battles Without Honor and Humanity 2: Deadly Fight in Hiroshima (1973) Battles Without Honor and Humanity 3: Proxy War (1973) Battles Without Honor and Humanity 4: Police Tactics (1974) Battles Without Honor and Humanity 5: Final Episode (1974)
Suicide has long been used as a form of social protest in Japan. In this film, set in 1703, samurai culture is being transformed by the emergence of a new merchant class. Elements of the social contract are beginning to unravel, and some unscrupulous people took undue advantage of these changes before the social order was re-created. In this story, a rich merchant gives his clerk an I.O.U. instead of wages. When the impoverished clerk presents the paper to the merchant at the agreed upon time asking for payment, the man flies into a rage and pretends he never wrote it and claims the clerk is trying to defraud him. Then he sets his henchmen on the clerk to administer a beating.
In the early hours of April 13th, a five year old hemophiliac child was kidnapped by someone from Tanemura General Hospital in Tokyo, Setagaya. Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Inspector Kitahara, who received the report, goes quickly to the Tanemura home, along with other police to speak to the family of the child. Then, suddenly, the phone rings. The kidnapper wants money.
The story of an orphan girl, brought up in naive, rustic innocence by an elderly relative, who is suddenly exposed to the brutality, greed and deceptiveness of the outside world when her grandmother dies. Notwithstanding her healthy distrust of all strangers, which her upbringing instilled in her, it is not long before a cunning racketeer finds her weak point, that temptation which she cannot resist, that weakness, different as it may be, that each of us has, and brings her into his power. What follows is a depiction of her cruel descent into the depths of moral decay, as she becomes a collaborator in a system of exploitation, unbridled lust, vanity, and greed, in which she and other victims are always the losers.
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.
The seventh in the shocking "Jingi Naki Tatakai" movie series, which exposes the true lives of the yakuza that is hidden by a mask of "jingi". The next stage of this continuing drama is the Kanmon Channel where the Owada and the Kyoei groups are battling for territorial rights and drug smuggling. The Owada sends their man, Tetsu, and his friend Shuji to kill the Kyoei boss. With the promise of fame and riches, Shuji takes the fall and goes to jail for 7 years. But when he's released, he discovers that he and Tetsu have been all but forgotten by the Owada. Feeling betrayed, Shuji takes natters into his own hands and becomes an unsuspecting pawn in an internal conflict and an assassination attempt on the Owada boss. And now angered, Shuji seeks revenge...
Akiyama is an intern, disgusted with the noise pollution caused by the bullet trains and the heart attacks that noise has been causing in older hospital patients, plots to disrupt and, in ten days, destroy a unit of the operation. He warns the Japan National Railway, that, if nothing is done to reduce the noise, he will derail a bullet train. Takigawa is the police detective sent to stop him.
Lady Snowblood is caught by the police and sentenced to death for her crimes. As she is sent to the gallows she is rescued by the secret police who offer her a deal to assassinate some revolutionaries.
The Homeless is a picaresque tale in the truest sense of the word. Two inmates are simultaneously released from jail, but go their separate ways, only to cross paths again in the nearest brothel. There they make the acquaintance of a would-be prostitute with a childlike mind and serious problems with the yakuza. They help her escape from the mob-infested cathouse and decide to guide her on her quest for sunken contraband somewhere off the coast, whose location only she knows, but which the yakuza are very eager to learn about. It is a remake of the French film The Last Adventure (1967).
Hijiriko makes off from the bar she works at with money and a car that isn't hers. Meanwhile, Jiro Katagiri is up to no good with his gangster friends and ends up making off with all their ill-gotten gains, much to their disapproval. The two misfits end up meeting after a car crash and soon end up on the road together in (another) stolen car. It's not long before the police take an interest in the crimes, and of course the gangsters are hot on Jiri's heels; meaning the two must scarper across Japan by any means necessary.
Following her successful prison break, Scorpion begins this third episode in the series hiding out in a brothel. Her prostitute friend tries to keep her identity secret, but the brothel's madam discovers that Scorpion is the ex-girlfriend of the vice officer who killed her lover.
Nami (Meiko Kaji) is once again on the run from the law but is saved by an old classmate who works at a strip club. Through a subsequent conversation they discover they both have a score to settle with a particular crooked cop. However, Nami has doubts about ever trusting a man.
Yuki's family is nearly wiped out before she is born due to the machinations of a band of criminals. These criminals kidnap and brutalize her mother but leave her alive. Later her mother ends up in prison with only revenge to keep her alive. She creates an instrument for this revenge by purposefully getting pregnant. Yuki never knows the love of a family but only killing and revenge.
Repeatedly beat to a pulp by gamblers, cops, and gangsters, lone wolf Shoji Yamanaka finally finds a home as a Muraoka family hitman and falls in love with boss Muraoka's niece. Meanwhile, the ambitions of mad dog Katsutoshi Otomo draws our series' hero, Shozo Hirono, and the other yakuza into a new round of bloodshed.
Matsu, known to the prisoners as Scorpion, is locked away in the bowels of the prison as revenge for disrupting the smooth operation of the prison and for her disfiguring attack on the warden. Granted a one day reprieve due to the visit of a dignitary, she takes advantage and attacks the warden again. This leads to more brutal punishment and humiliation. But the punishment gives her an oppurtunity to escape along with six other female prisoners. Their surreal flight from prison pits the convicts against the guards, the warden and each other.
Gang leader Nami (cult film legend Meiko Kaji) kills a member of a yakuza group and goes away to prison. Upon her release three years later, she’s a shamed woman confined to living in the shadowy world of sex clubs and street gangs. She returns to the city to live with her uncle, a billiard-hall owner, and after befriending pimp and ne’er-do-well Ryuji (Tsunehiko Watase), she gets a job working at a hostess club in the chic Ginza neighborhood, where the expensive shops and neon lights conceal a dark world of crime and sexual slavery. But when a rival gang attempts to muscle in on the club, Nami becomes enmeshed in a violent struggle that forces her to wield a skilled pool cue to defend her uncle’s business, and eventually a short sword to wreak bloody vengeance upon her enemies.
Meiko Kaji reprises her role as Nami, a vengeful female gang leader, in the second installment of this high-action series that casts a new actor -- martial arts legend Sonny Chiba -- in the role of Nami's loyal friend Ryuji. This time around, Nami is looking for Hoshiden, the man who murdered her father and shattered her once-hopeful childhood. But living under an assumed name, Hoshiden could stay hidden forever.
After being cruelly set up by a crooked detective named Sugimi (Isao Natsuyagi), whom she loved, Nami Matsushima (aka Matsu the Scorpion) (Meiko Kaji) is sentenced to do hard time in a women's prison, which is run by sadistic and horny male guards. There are 700 other prisoners, making Matsu number 701. Her crime was making a failed attempt to stab Sugimi on the steps of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters because he used her to win favor with the Yakuza. While in prison she meets inmates like Yuki Kida (Yayoi Watanabe) who was committed for fraud and theft, Otsuka (Akemi Negishi), jailed for burglary and extortion, and Katagiri (Rie Yokoyama) who has been impounded for arson and illegally disposing of a body.
The film follows a hippie community lead by Yoshitaro. They decide to leave their trailer in Shinjuku and travel to countryside by bicycle to save their friend Furiko who has been falsely accused for murder. The real killer – although it was mainly self defense – is Furiko’s boyfried Takaaki who is being controlled by his politician father. Takaaki would rather live free as a hippie, but his father is forcing him to become a businessman.
2 years ago, Kumi broke up with Shuhei and decided to forget everything about him for good. However, after being told that her younger sister, Junko, fall in love with a man and is currently living with him. She was determined to discover who was the man who won her sister's heart. But what will happen when she found out that the man in question is Shuhei, her first love?
The Akiba and Shimura crime families run the streets of “K City”. With the construction of new buildings and new factories underway, the city has sprouted into a boomtown and business is good. Two of the most infamous mobs of Tokyo want a piece of the pie. As out-of-town yakuza flood the city overnight, the crime boss of the Akiba family, Tezuka (Joe Shishido), is released from prison after a five year sentence. He does not like the "change" he sees.
The first part of the Nora-neko rokku ("Alley Cat Rock") series was originally Nikkatsu Studios' answer to the rivaling Toei Studios' Delinquent Boss series, but spawned four sequels thanks to its popularity. Onna banchô, the first movie in the series, takes place in Shinjuku, Tokyo where rivaling youth gangs are constantly trying to one-up each other in toughness. An all-girl gang led by Mei (Meiko Kaji) gets involved in dangerous circles when Mei's boyfriend Michio (Kôji Wada), wants to join a powerful yakuza organization called Seiyu but inadvertently loses the gangsters' money in a fixed boxing match. Of course, Mei's gang is not going to leave him to the gangsters, especially when helped by an enigmatic and independent female biker called Ako (Akiko Wada).
A group of five friends, also known as the Pelican Gang, spends time hanging out in the city, driving around in their all-terrain buggy car and listening to psychedelic jazz fusion when one of them is approached by a mysterious horse-riding girl named Asako (Bunjaku Han) who suggests they rob 30 million yen from a religious movement called Seikyo Gakkei. The Pelicans – C-ko, Taki, Ganishin, Jiro and Debo – accept the challenge, but things are not as easy as they may initially seem.
Two Japanese men help a Vietnam war deserter escape from Japan for Sweden. They plan to fund the escape by selling LSD pills. After word of the drug deal gets spread around they find themselves fending off rival gangs.
Mako and her girl friends enter a dispute with rival street gangsters The Eagles, a band of racist macho pigs led by the evil Baron, who hate half-breeds (descendents of afro-American and Japanese couples). When one of the girls start dating a half-breed, they start a terror campaign to take all of them out of town. Mako and her gang fight back, helping their new friend Kazuma find his long gone sister.
In a small town on the Kasumigaura coast in the early Showa period, the Masukawa clan from Tokyo is trying to take away the interests of the local Isetoku family. Setsuko, the adopted daughter of the Isetoku family, falls in love with Seijiro, a travelling raven she meets on a whim. However, Koide, a businessman connected to the Masukawa clan, wants Setsuko to become his mistress... Setsuko puts aside her love and her regrets and bets on the greatest female challenge of her life!
Yūji, fresh out of prison on parole, meets a stranger named Nao that asks for his assistance...
Akemi is a dragon tattooed leader of the Tachibana Yakuza clan. In a duel with a rival gang Akemi slashes the eyes of an opponent and a black cat appears, to lap the blood from the gushing wound. The cat along with the eye-victim go on to pursue Akemi’s gang in revenge, leaving a trail of dead Yakuza girls, their dragon tattoos skinned from their bodies.
The disbandment of the Tanno clan left gang member Tetsu to stray from the crime family's fold. He roamed the streets as a one man band, wearing a denim jacket and long hair with sunglasses to cover his piercing eyes. Befriending a like-minded lone wolf by the name of Gebasaku, Tetsu builds a coalition against higher forces. A graphic portrayal of irrepressible anger and a friendship worth dying for.
A film about a Yakuza woman played by Hiroko Ogi.
About the floating world of the bar hostess and the pimps and the con-men who operate behind them.
The love story between a traveling guest and a geisha who inadvertently becomes the leader of her father's yakuza clan, after his death.
Two years before they collaborated on the immortal Stray Cat Rock series, director Yasuharu Hasebe and soon-to-be-superstar Meiko Kaji teamed up for this potent gangster flick that also stars the great Joe Shishido (Branded to Kill) and Akira Kobayashi, who would shortly thereafter star in Kinji Fukasaku's epic yakuza series Battles Without Honor and Humanity. Emerging from a stint in prison, yakuza lieutenant Sumukawa (Kobayashi) discovers that his gang has disintegrated while he was in the pen. An ambitious type, he quickly hooks up with another gang (led by Shishido) who promise him a prominent position if he helps them deal with a rival family. But bonds are made to be broken, and pledges of loyalty soon give way to competition, betrayal and — naturally — retaliation. Tough, cynical and violent, Retaliation cheerfully overturns romanticized notions of underworld honour, paving the way for Fukusaku's revisionist yakuza pictures of the 1970s.
Goro (Tetsuya Watari) wants to put his dark past behind. He heads to Hirosaki City to offer his condolences to Yumeko and to reunite with Yukiko (Chieko Matsubara), but finds that Yumeko is fatally ill. Although Yukiko was taking care of her, she is pressed for money. Goro wants to help and knows that there is only one way to come up with fast money.
A unique youth masterpiece depicting the awakening of male and female sexuality with a refreshing touch of the breath of youth.
When Toru Sagara (Yujiro Ishihara) returns home from a foreign cargo route, he proposes to his beloved girlfriend Akiko (Ruriko Asaoka). She joyously agrees, promising a life together. On the day they were to be joined in matrimony, Akiko suddenly goes missing. Toru waits hours for her to show, but he is only greeted by the darkness of night. Four years later, his fiancée turns up at a night club in Yokohama with another man.
Ginjiro was born to a family of nobility, though he yearned for freedom. To earn this freedom, he affiliates himself with the worst of the worst. Swearing his allegiance to the notorious Kuroiwa crime syndicate, the yakuza family known for its thirst for blood, Ginjiro equips for battle. When a rival family raids their gambling parlor, he slashes a masked henchman. Unbeknown to him, his victim was no henchman.
Kenichi (Ken Yamauchi) and Satoru (Mitsuo Hamada) join up with three other electric music lovers to form their own band, "The Young and Fresh."
The rehabilitation of a delinquent on leaving reformatory. Her redemption comes through a boy in a wheelchair; by his rehabilitation, growing comes in courage along with her patient, she grows by finding meaning in her own existence. She finally sees a new world before her and has the determination to lead a normal life.
In 1943, Japan is amidst the Pacific War. Sobei Sonoda is one of the wealthiest landowners of the San'in region. His land spread for miles, as far as the eye can see. People treated him with respect. But even the richest must think about the future. One day, he decides to arrange a marriage between his only son, Junkichi and the daughter of an even more powerful family. Sobei, hoping to benefit from this union, soon discovers that his son was in love with a lower class girl.
A brave warrior fights to restore peace to a town riddled by crime, one sword at a time, in this historical action saga.
A former gang leader and lone wolf who has left the organization works behind the scenes in a new city to take revenge on a giant alliance of organizations.
Eiji Akutsu (Shun Oguri) is a newspaper reporter. He is working on unsolved case that took place 30 years ago.The case involved a group of people extorting several companies for money. The group sent cassette tapes to the companies. Eiji Akutsu comes across a mysterious cassette tape. Meanwhile, Toshiya Sone (Gen Hoshino) lives in Kyoto and runs a tailor shop. He discovers a cassette tape among his late father's possessions. He plays the cassette tape and hears his voice from his childhood days. --asianwiki
Film adaptation of the TV series of the same name, set to release in 2021.
