Zenzō Matsuyama
Set in Edo-era Kyoto, this drama depicts the adolescent battles and the love between parents and children who are born and raised in the same tenement house.
From the point-of-view of the children, "Mother" tells the story of the most unappreciated, loving and giving mother, who would sacrifice her own life, and sometimes the life of others, for her loved ones. In the autumn of 1955, a family of five children is living in the Tohoku area. In order to take care of her paralysed husband, the mother has to sacrifice her five children by giving them away. The children has to suffer all the loneliness and hardships that this decision has brought them. 15 years have passed, all five of them have got married. Now, they come to understand that their mother's love for them was the greatest love of all.
Fictionalized account of 20-year-old Noriko Tsuji, a real-life victim of a severe birth defect which afflicted 8,000 Japanese, children whose mothers took the sedative thalidomide during pregnancy. Tsuji has stunted flipper-like arms amputated at the behest of a father who deserted her soon after her birth. Nonetheless, the resourceful Noriko uses her feet to accomplish most of the tasks others would do with their hands.
When an American is murdered in a Japanese inn, Tokyo police detective Munesue follows the trail of the killer to New York. There he is joined by a New York City detective named Shuftan and together they sort out the crime.
Great story about a woman who looks after her father in law. Takamine Hideko is so beautiful and powerful in this role!
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.
Based on the hit song, the story involves a young boy and girl who leave their home in Hokkaido to come and live in Tokyo.
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.
Four sisters are all named after flowers. While the two youngest are married, the eldest two remain single, much to the annoyance of their long-suffering mother. The mother and her brother try various schemes to find husbands for them.
Young widow Ine is suffering under the harsh treatment of her mother in law. As a former Geisha, Ine had struggled to be accepted into the well-established Rokujo family from the beginning. With the support of Jiro, a young man Ine's late husband had saved from homelessness as a young boy, Ine tries to keep the family's heritage of silk processing alive. Their close relationship soon causes gossip among the villagers and threaten Ine's position in the family even further ...
Drama about the lives of the five daughters and daughter-in-law of a store owner.
A father and son are both heavy drinkers. However, the son dies in an accident at a bar, leaving behind a fiance…. A unique social satire that focuses on why people drink alcohol.
When two sisters fall in love with the same man, one must decide to look elsewhere.
A story about the lives of four sisters and their manipulative mother who must come to terms with each of their decisions in life.
In 1919, a group of Japanese immigrants arrives in Hawaii. Among them Yoshio Inoue and his wife Kishimo and Sumi, a young woman ready to get married soon. With the soil that is hard to work and the subtroipical climate, the immigrants have to cope with a hard life. But after years of hard work, Yoshio finds work as a teacher while his wife manages to open a small grocery store. But with the war around the corner, life becomes more and more complicated for the Japanese immigrants in a foreign country.
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.
The Human Condition is a Japanese epic film trilogy made between 1959 and 1961 The trilogy follows the life of Kaji, a Japanese pacifist and socialist, as he tries to survive in the totalitarian and oppressive world of World War II-era Japan. Taken altogether as a single film, it is 9 hours and 47 minutes long, which includes intermissions, making it one of the longest narrative films ever made. While the films earned considerable controversy at the time of their release in Japan, The Human Condition was critically acclaimed, won many international awards, and has since established Masaki Kobayashi as one of the most important Japanese directors of his generation.
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.
Gen is a lonely orphan boy. His sole sense of companionship comes from an imaginary friend, the god Prince Fudo-Myo. Prince Fudo-Myo comes to the boy's rescue in times of difficulty.
In "The Other Woman" the children of a distinguished professor find that the woman they have come to regard as their racy and slightly disreputable Ginza aunt is really their mother.
A woman and her daughter are in love with the same man, a chef at the restaurant that the mother manages. He is slightly crippled from frostbite in his years in Siberian labor camps and considers himself "already dead."
This film features a large extended family (and associates) even more extensive than the one portrayed by Ozu in "End of Summer". The central character is Setsuko Hara -- a poised middle-aged woman, whose wealthy (and prestigious) husband dies at the outset of the action, leaving her widowed but holding the proceeds of a million yen insurance policy. Being childless, her former in-laws have no objection to her return to her own family.
A Japanese pacifist, unable to face the dire consequences of conscientious objection, is transformed by his attempts to compromise with the demands of war-time Japan.
As a conscript in war-time Japan's military, a pacifist struggles to maintain his determination to keep his ideals.
This mammoth humanist drama by Masaki Kobayashi is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three installments of two parts each, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition, adapted from Junpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji—played by the Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai—from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet prisoner of war. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals to be an impediment rather than an advantage. A raw indictment of Japan’s wartime mentality as well as a personal existential tragedy, Kobayashi’s riveting, gorgeously filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best.
This mammoth humanist drama by Masaki Kobayashi is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three installments of two parts each, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition, adapted from Junpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji—played by the Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai—from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet prisoner of war. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals to be an impediment rather than an advantage. A raw indictment of Japan’s wartime mentality as well as a personal existential tragedy, Kobayashi’s riveting, gorgeously filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best.
Eight filmmakers collaborate with Teshigahara to bring a newsreel-style snapshot of Tokyo in 1957-58, when it had eight and a half million people and was the largest city in the world.
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...
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.
A botanist woos the secretary of an industrialist whose company threatens the local water supply.
A talent scout moves sharply, dead-set on signing a promising athlete to the team the Toyko Flowers.
Masaki Kobayashi directs this romantic drama concerning a family of florists.
A young widow, made world weary by her abusive, neglectful husband, finds herself in a minor scandal when she's seen with her intense, no-nonsense childhood sweetheart.
A girl who'd left her hometown for the exciting adventure of the big city returns home years later for a visit, soon somehow causing scandal.
