Mieko Takamine
Based on the "2.26 Incident", an attempted coup d'état in Japan 1936, launched by radical ultra-nationalist parts of the military. Several leading politicians were killed and the center of Tokyo was briefly held by the insurgents before the coup was suppressed.
University student Akira meets the lovely 14-year-old Yumi, whom he had tutored years ago. Her mother is told by her doctor that the schoolgirl has leukaemia and has only 6 months to live.
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.
Set in Japan's Tenpyou era (729-749 CE), four young monks are sent to China to study Buddhism and bring a high priest back to Japan with them. The film tells the tale of the four monks' youth and the life and times of the high priest Ganjin.
This extraordinarily complex film is not only a send-up of every samurai film ever made, it is also an extrapolation of the value of life. The Yamatai, represented by Prince Susano-O and elderly advisor Sumuke, hire Yumihiko of Matsuro to hunt the phoenix so that Queen Himiko, sister of Susano-O can have eteranal life.
When a tycoon passes away, he unexpectedly leaves the family fortune to outsider Tamayo on the condition that she marries one of the grandsons, pitting blood against blood.
A melodrama about a talented singer who finally makes her debut. A remake of the 1939 film of the same name.
An uplifting drama about the bond between a group of high school seniors and their kind-hearted teacher, Mr. Yabuki. Faced with the rigors of growing up in modern times, students often look to Mr. Yabuki for advice and guidance. But when Mr. Yabuki’s career is threatened as a result of a false accusation from the school’s PTA, the students band together to stand up for their beloved teacher and help him to save his good reputation and job.
A resolute young man searching for his mother, whom he was separated from as a child, defies a family who mistreat the poor and homeless.
On the day of college graduation, Mieko (Sayuri Yoshinaga) stood on stage as the valedictorian for the Department of English. During her university years she made sure that she would always come out on top, and she did. With a victorious graduation behind her, she plans out the next chapter of her life: become a successful novelist and go out with a classmate she's been secretly eyeing for the past couple of years.
The basic story in Love under the Crucifix is about Ogin, daughter of a tea master, who are both Christians in feudal Japan. Ogin falls in love with a feudal prince, also a Christian who is already married, and that creates problems. Further, when the Shogun bans Christianity, the situation worsens.
In 17th century Japan, Young Lord Masato returns after years abroad to find everything changed: his peace-loving father has died in what he soon finds to be mysterious circumstances, and his mother's married to his uncle, whose ruthless ambition is causing turmoil in the kingdom. Not knowing who to trust, Masato feigns madness, vowing to get to the truth, even though his act causes distress to the girl he loves, who's waited for him all these years. The ghost of his father turns up now and then to show him the way. Meanwhile a peasant revolt is brewing... It all ends tragically.
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.
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.
Based on the famous novel by Yamagami Itaro, this is the story of a group of ronin living in abject poverty in the latter days of the Edo period. Starring the great Konoe Jushiro, Ronin Gai is populated by an ensemble of colorful characters, social outcasts who patronize a restaurant and bar on the outskirts of Edo. Among them are masterless samurai reduced to drunkenness and debauchery. One disgraced and disillusioned former warrior gets a chance at redemption when he is hired to retrieve a famous knife from a corrupt lord. This is the third version directed by Makino Masahiro and is considered a true classic.
A sensitive young woman aged 22 fell in love with a middle aged man who was troubled by his unfaithful wife.
An Ishiro Honda film. The second part of A Rainbow Plays in My Heart released the same day as the first film.
An Ishiro Honda film. The first part of A Rainbow Plays in My Heart released the same day as the second film.
After killing the deceiver, the Masa gambler comes to Ina. There is a horse market in Ina, and the landowner Tamegoro, plans to steal the proceeds from the sale. Tamegoro steals money and blames the Masa for this crime. Masa has to go on the run, because now he is wanted for a crime that he did not commit...
A film about the struggle of an officer from Edo, Toyama Saemon, with a lightning-fast gang of thieves.
This period film is inspired by one of the most notorious scandals to have taken place in Edo-period Japan. The heroine, Ejima, was a lady of the Ooku, the harem of Edo Castle in which the Shogun’s mother, wife and concubines resided, forbidden from contact with any other man except in the presence of the Shogun. The institution played a key role in the Byzantine world of Japanese court politics during the Edo era. In 1714, Lady Ejima was sent to pay her respects at a Buddhist temple in the city, and chose to pay an unauthorised visit to the kabuki theatre – a violation of protocol that was to have tragic consequences.
A student at a woman's university takes a controversial action against the school's old-fashioned doctrines.
Ten years into a marriage, the wife is disappointed by the husband's lack of financial success, meaning she has to work and can't treat herself and the husband finds the wife slovenly and mean-spirited: she neither cooks not cleans particularly well and is generally disagreeable. In turn, he alternately ignores her and treats her as a servant. Neither is particularly happy, not helped by their unsatisfactory lodgers. The husband is easily seduced by an ex-colleague, a widow with a small child who needs some security, and considers leaving his wife.
Wataru Naohiko who has the prosecutor general as his father became a young composer and its symphony "saint" invoked the world echoed. But his disciple Uchiyama and his best friend prosecutor Daisuke Toki accused his music as a sesame of pause-only technique, not a truly heart-hungry art.
The troubled relationship between a writer and his ballet teacher wife, who has for years loved another man, finally leads to the breakup of the family.
Ikeuchi was captain of the K - University ice hockey team. The daughter Shikotsuko of Ginza 's western restaurant "Piccolo" was also a female student at K University and was a figure player. They had a dream of being dispatched to Oslo in the Olympic Games and were struggling in each way. Mizuno who runs a sports equipment store in Ginza, showed the geisha by guiding the junior's Ikeuchi and others to the shop of Shimbashi one day.
A platonic love story, the protagonist continues to love the woman he fell in love with when he was a boy for the rest of his life.
A hospital melodrama where the conflict between love and friendship rules the faith of the protagonists.
A romance with political overtones about the relationship of a sheltered bourgeois woman and a doctor who devotes himself to caring for the poor. Over a ten-year period - from 1936 through the war - they find each other and are separated again by the events of those tumultuous days.
Amusing masterpiece from director Yoshimura Kazusabu divided in two parts taken from the newspaper serial novel of Shishiko Shishi. Like in "Warm Current", Shin Saburi, Mieko Takamine and Mitsuko Mito are appearing, but this is a fresh comedy very unusual for wartime.
An older sister and brother (Mieko Takamine and Masayoshi Otsuka) come to visit their grandfather (Takeshi Sakamoto) who lives deep in the mountains. As for their parents, father was serving in the South Seas and mother died of illness on her way home. So, the brother, who is still young, will live alone with his grandfather whilst the sister goes away to study to become a teacher.
In 1701, Lord Takuminokami Asano has a feud with Lord Kira and he tries to kill Kira in the corridors of the Shogun's palace. The Shogun sentences Lord Asano to commit suppuku and deprives the palace and lands from his clan, but does not punish Lord Kira. Lord Asano's vassals leave the land and his samurais become ronin and want to seek revenge against the dishonor of their Lord. But their leader Kuranosuke Oishi asks the Shogun to restore the Asano clan with his brother Daigaku Asano. One year later, the Shogun refuses his request and Oishi and forty-six ronin revenge their Lord.
Hana wa itsuwarazu (1941) is the second directorial work by Shochiku's Oba Hideo. Oba had previously worked as an assistant director to Shimizu Hiroshi and penned films for Shimazu Yasujiro. In this early effort, he is not stylistically very far from either, but then again all Shochiku directors resemble each other to a point. The film is an everyday romance for younger audiences, full of clean, ideal human beings.
After the death of her husband, Mrs Toda and her youngest daughter receive a frosty welcome from the extended family.
A pair of blind masseurs, an enigmatic city woman, a lonely man and his ill-behaved nephew—The Masseurs and a Woman is made up of crisscrossing miniature studies of love and family at a remote resort in the mountains. With delicate and surprising humor, Hiroshi Shimizu paints a timeless portrait of loneliness and the human need to connect.
Shigeo is an aspiring writer living with his girl friend Minako and hoping for success and a better tomorrow every day. Both live on what Minako earns from working in a café. Shigeo is not happy with the situation and neither is his family who do not approve of Minako. Especially his uncle tries to convince him to leave Minako, even using his influence behind the scenes. Things start to change when Shigeo's sister pays the young couple a visit, being the first member of Shigeo's family to actually get to know Minako in person.
The story is about love and friendship of young girls who are naive and delicate.
Pre-war Asakusa was a riotous district of cabarets, dance-halls and brothels - a striking backdrop for Shimazu's story of innocence and experience. Pretty, young Reiko is the new dancer in an infamous theatre troupe, and her fellow performers try to protect her virtue in a land of vice. Meanwhile, an ageing actor wants to be a hero off stage as well as on, and the troupe matriarch Marie has to keep them all together.
A businessman’s daughter falls in love with one of her father’s employees.
Three men vying for the same job end up chasing the same girl in this comedy-drama from noted Japanese director Yasujiro Shimazu.
A penniless orphan loses the woman he loves, when her family arranges a marriage to a wealthy playboy. He believes she was blinded by greed, and becomes a miser.
