Zeko Nakamura
Comic artist Gengo Kotaka lands a job with the World Children's Land amusement park. He soon becomes suspicious of the organization when a garbled message is discovered on tapes. Godzilla and Anguirus quickly decipher the message and begin a plan of action.
A young woman, an experienced gambler, enters a nunnery to atone for some of her father's crimes. When the nunnery runs into debt, she resorts to gambling and challenges the racketeer threatening to sell the place to a game.
Hoodlum group helps fishermen against firm polluting their fishing ground.
Former inmate Katsuji gets involved in the horse gambling business while lending a helping hand to a ranch operator.
A young composer falls in love with the beautiful daughter of a wealthy company president and flies to Paris when he learns she is studying music there. But, when he finally wins her after many difficulties, he somehow feels empty, because his spirit has always been aroused against barriers before him.
Nobuko and five male friends graduate from a high school, promising to remain friends forever. One year later, Nobuko is working as a mediocre actress for TV commercials, and the five men are wearing beards and have formed a psychedelic rock band. One day, Nobuko meets Jun, who draws cartoons based on his experiences.
A comedy about Hikoichi, a mediocre train conductor who falls in love with a beautiful widow Sayuri.
Bungo is released from prison to find his son Kenichi in the care of strangers. Teruko, the woman originally looking after the boy, was forced to leave town and sell herself into prostitution. Bungo and Kenichi, in their search for Teruko, arrive in a new place and find work running a peddling stall for the upright Tatsumaki family. However, the drifting father and son soon find themselves caught up in a struggle for territory. Boss Negishi, the head of the yakuza family responsible for the death of the former Tatsumaki leader, will stop at nothing to take over the marketplace. Sickened by the injustice, Bungo takes on the rival boss knowing it might cost him his newly acquired freedom..
A gang lord hires Kamimura, a hit man, to take out a rival boss who's gotten greedy.
A song drama based on the autobiographical song "The sun is laughing" by composer Endo Minoru. It tells the story of a young man who moves to Tokyo with a big dream of becoming a composer, and despite the unfamiliar city life, sticks to his original intentions with the gentle encouragement of his young wife, and takes the music world by storm.
The fifth and final installment with the build up of the epic battle between Sasaki Kojiro and Miyamoto Musashi. With all the familiar characters making appearances: Otsu (Musashi's great love), Akemi, Matahachi (his former fellow soldier), old lady Osugi (still doggedly trying to defeat Musashi), and even the return of Priest Takuan (the man responsible for his journey towards enlightenment). But most of all, the boastful, long-haired and long-sworded Sasaki Kojiro.
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.
A seamstress seeks the love of her life while helping a troubled couple.
A young man with a strong sense of justice is torn between two girls: the flighty Taneko and the serious Suzuko. With wisdom, courage and honor in a Japanese spirit of manliness he wins the day.
Many outlaws are gathered at the front line of the Japanese Army in a shock troop.
Shinko Terasawa was always considered to be the odd ball of the bunch. At a time when romance was against school regulations, Shinko was the first to take a bite out of the forbidden fruit. Expelled from her former school, she finds herself in an all-girls school in Jokamachi, where rumors fly. One day, Shinko delivers an anonymous love letter addressed to her English teacher, Ms. Shimazaki. Convinced that the students are playing a prank, Ms. Shimazaki is adamant about getting to the bottom of this "problem”.
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.
A wandering vagrant, Hantaro, risks his life to save a beautiful blind girl and her father from con artists.
The story is of two people. One is deaf, the other deaf and dumb. They marry after meeting at a school reunion, and the film follows their trials and tribulations ... and joys.
A semi-documentary story about the vicissitudes in the life of an elderly fisherman.
Umon’s services are called upon when innocent bystanders, Kayo and Minokichi, along with the ronin, Gontaro are mistakenly identified as suspects in several recent murder cases. To prove their innocence and uncover the truth, Umon launches his own investigation.
Love story between a student and girl whose parents are itinerant entertainers. Set in Japan in the 1920's.
The mythical adventures of the legendary Chinese trickster Monkey, who must outwit a variety of wily demons who stand in the way of him and his fellow Buddhist travelers. Though portrayed as a literal, if rather anthropomorphized, monkey in the original legends, this film substitutes the spindly comic actor Norihei Miki, sans makeup.
Kiku and her brother Isamu are social outcasts, children of a prostitute mother and black GI father, in postwar Japan.
Alongside Tokyo's Sumida River is a ragpickers' settlement known as Ant Village. One night, a young Catholic girl, Satoko Kitahara, who has been baptized under the name of Maria, comes to offer her services. However, Ant Village is not just an ordinary vagrants' community but a fine autonomous organization, and as the municipal authorities have long been demanding that the people of Ant Village leave the site, Satoko is utilized to publicize the Village and win public sympathy. While being utilized in this manner, Satoko is nevertheless glad to be able to help the people of Ant Village, especially the children, and when the summer vacation comes she decides to take the children on an excursion to Hakone. To raise funds for this purpose she becomes a rag-picker herself.
In this Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign-Language Film, director Heinosuke Gosho -- a master chronicler of Japanese middle-class life -- presents the story of Kiyoshi Yoshida (Koji Shitara), who feels estranged from both parents after his father returns from war. How the boy adapts to life with the virtual stranger his father has become is the film's focus. Chikage Awashima, Yûnosuke Itô and Yoshiko Kuga also star.
Tane, the lady proprietor of an inn for amorous couples, lives there with her three children. When her eldest daughter loses her fiancé due to the fact her mother is a mistress, her despair drives her to become a cabaret hostess.
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.
The story follows a university student who moves into an apartment building and becomes involved with a waitress. The landlord then attempts to evict the tenants and sell the building through illicit means.
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.
An Inn at Osaka, rarely seen outside Japan, follows the story of an insurance company executive from Tokyo, Mr. Mito, who is demoted to the Osaka office. He takes a room at a small inn and tries to rebuild his life. Notable for its exquisite framing and cinematography, An Inn at Osaka allows its complicated plotlines to disappear behind the minutiae of penury and humiliation that Mito and others suffer during the post-war economic and social reconstruction.
Three young women make a suicide pact, but they grow to have a better understanding of themselves.
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.
A married couple looking for an apartment move in with the husband's co-worker, a widower. The husband becomes jealous of the widower and his wife.
Atsuko is an office secretary who is also her family's primary source of income and caretaker in postwar Japan.
Okaasan is the story of a poor, working class mother with a sick husband who sacrifices herself to support her family in suburban Tokyo. The film defines "Shomin Geki," a Japanese film genre that features realistic depiction of the economic underclass, told with elements of light comedy and melodrama. Okaasan is the best-known work of director Mikio Naruse, hailed by Japanese film historians as an equal of Kurosawa, Ozu and Mizoguchi, but under-appreciated in the West
Period film about the legendary detective Umon
Five women classmates from a college in Tokyo are on the first stretch of a walking tour when one of them, Masako, falls ill at a railway station. Osen, a middle-aged maid from a nearby inn, takes her in and nurses her, assisted by Dr. Minami, a young physician who diagnoses her illness as a mild case of pneumonia. With Masako in good hands and needing a few days to recuperate, her classmates continue their tour. Masako’s recovery, however, is hampered by her spoiled and immature nature and her determination to punish the world for the loss of her mother.
Yuzo and his fiancée Masako spend their Sunday afternoon together, trying to have a good time on just thirty-five yen. They manage to have many small adventures, especially because Masako's optimism and belief in dreams is able to lift Yuzo from his realistic despair.
Enoken no wanwan taishô AKA Wanwan Taisho AKA Bowwow General directed by Nobuo Nakagawa
This film depicts a troupe of wandering kabuki players traveling through rural Japan.
Enoken plays both Kondo Isami and his deadly enemy Sakamoto Ryoma in this comedic, song-filled vision of the Meiji Restoration.
Enoken plays a magician real powers come from his magical hat. A jealous theater owner sends girls, then goons, to keep Enoken from performing his grand show!
