Tomoko Mayama
Birth : 1941-01-22, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan
Two yakuza, one of whom frequently reflects on an uncomfortable past taking advantage of Korean women, meet a stowaway on Japanese soil from across the Genkai Sea.
Noshiko Shimamura
Tateo, young and neurotic, wishes to leave the village his mother has raised him in.
Utae Kakinuma (Genzô's Second Wife)
A sly gangster hatches a plot against his own wife, who works at a brothel-cum-bathhouse, with the help of the bathhouse owner’s wife.
Yasue
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.
When 150 guns are stolen from Iwakuni base and two police officers are shot dead, a detective criminal tries to find out the truth.
Osen
In this first film of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, adapted from the manga by Kazuo Koike, we are told the story of the Lone Wolf and Cub's origin. Ogami Itto, the official Shogunate executioner, has been framed for disloyalty to the Shogunate by the Yagyu clan, against whom he now is waging a one-man war, along with his infant son, Daigoro.
A fearless man confronts a yakuza organization pushing the envelope of extravagant & all sorts of violence.
Yaeko Shimotsuki
A genius gambler and born hunter is a Buddhist monk by occupation.
Shocking scenes are revealed in the Nagasaki Women's prison.
Lesser, but still modestly entertaining sequel. Wakayama is wonderfully bastardly here, but has to do without Chicago bros. Yamashiro & Watanabe and the film is just that much less fun. It's also a little bogged down by an out-of-place environmental message. In return one does get Willie Dorsey (who would go on to lose his balls in The Street Fighter) in a rather big role as Capone's right hand man. There's a legion of other gaijin as well, Osman Yusuf among them of course. The rating could be a notch higher on a good day.
Kikuchiyo
Yumi Ishikawa (Mari Atsumi) is nineteen and a popular geisha. Orphaned when a child, Yumi she was raised by Shizuko, the madame of a geisha house. Yumi is impulsive, out-going. And although she cannot claim to be good at Japanese dancing or playing musical instruments so necessary to a geisha, she is a whizz at go-go and will dance the hula at parties. But before becoming a full-fledged geisha, Yumi must go through the ceremony of the "mizuage", when a budding geisha surrenders her virginity to an experienced man who makes her a woman. Takida, a rich money-lender, is chosen for Yumi's mizuage but she offers herself first to Keiichi (Ryo Tamura), who she really loves although she knows that his world and hers are too far apart for a successful marriage.
Kikuko Takizawa
Kinuko
This Japanese melodrama chronicles the exploits of a geisha's beautiful daughter. The daughter is the geisha's pride and she spares nothing to insure that she has a bright future. But the hard-working young woman's dreams of becoming a dressmaker are shattered.... She then becomes a nightclub hostess who plays cards with male patrons using her body as the prize.
16th in the 17 film Daiei "Woman Gambler" series
Shimamura & Mineko return to Kamagasaki in Osaka. In their return Shimamura quickly finds himself defending a lady in distress. During the skirmish he bumps into his old buddies who turns him on to the "new" goings on in town, Shimamura is angered to discover a Chinese triad organization has overthrown their gang, a situation they must reverse. Now he and the old gang finds themselves putting their lives on the line defending the honor of the "Yakuza Way", the locals of Osaka, even Japan!!
Kagero
The second Bounty Hunter film, when master killer Shikoro Ichibei takes up the cause of a group of farmers being driven to despair by the vile Lord Ozeki. The villainous lord has driven them to mounting their last stand at a deserted fort against an army of attackers. Wakayama Tomisaburo is superb as an expert in killing and military tactics, who leaves his medical practice at a clinic for the poor in order to counter the vicious tactics of that vile lord.
Shinkai comes to the aid of a coastal village being held hostage by a group of political revolutionaries.
Akane
Ichibei is assigned by Shogun Tokugawa to prevent the sale of a Dutch ships-load of rifles to the hostile Shogun Satsuma. On his mission he meets a cowardly Ronin who becomes his assistant, as well as a female spy and a female warrior...
Pan Jinlian
Dark, cynical Japanese epic brought to U.S. in a dubbed version by shlockmeister Harry Novak. Still, this gory, sexy epic is made with style and interesting for to compare to "Yojimbo" and other masterworks of the form.
Obumi
When the Shogun Tokugawa III is in bed with a girl, she turns into a monster. The court believes she is Ninja Magic, used to frighten the lord off women so that there will be no heir. Tôma, a famous swordsman, is called in and exposes the Ninja, even discovering their leader, a beautiful young girl named Kagiroi. Guessing that she is the daughter of some ousted daimyo anxious to get back into favor, he is about to unmask her when he is taken prisoner...
Fusako Saotome
Saotome is a white-collar worker on the brink of a burnout who one day strikes up a friendship with Gen, a boorish drifter who approaches life one day at a time.
Kyoko
School teachers responsible for the lives of their students work to evacuate Allied bombings near the end of WWII.