Minoru Yokoyama

"Biotherapy" is a fairly nasty Japanese gorefest about a group of Japanese scientists stalked and viciously butchered by a creepy-looking alien.

A genius gambler and born hunter is a Buddhist monk by occupation.

Aboard a night ferry in the Inland Sea, Masaaki Kagari (Akira Kobayashi), a young tough, who supplies hostesses to night spots, encounters Yuko, his ex-sweetheart. He considers himself a private underworld sort of policeman-in the com- munity of such women. Yuko, now a bar proprietress, is under the protection of Tahei Daigo, a sinister gang boss who in his quest for chances of good investments abroad plans to offer young girls to rich foreigners. Asked to gather attractive girls by Yuko, now Tahei's puppet, Masaaki collects many only to find them mysteriously missing...

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!

Yakuza Ryuichi, nicknamed the Dragon-killer, went on a journey with his son Tatsuo after he lost his wife. Due to Tatsuo's sudden illness, Ryuichi had money problems, and he became dependent on the head of the local tekiya and finds himself involved in the tekiya war with the Yakuza.

The love story between a traveling guest and a geisha who inadvertently becomes the leader of her father's yakuza clan, after his death.

Masaaki Kagari (Akira Kobayashi) is the recruiter and protector of hostesses at the Club Rose. One day he visits Club Aron, to complain about attempts to lure hostesses from Club Rose. Aron's madam Hisayo reminds him of a tragic experience five years before, when a lovely girl named Kumi committed double suicide with a man in a hotel. For Aron's madam is Kumi's elder sister. Kagari's friend Hayazaki introduces him to Chie, the young sister of the man who died with Kumi, who has come to Tokyo to learn the truth about her brother's death. Kagari sends them both away. But he continues to be haunted by the warmed-over memories. When Club Aron is found selling bootleg whisky Kagari learns that Hisayo has been a tool in the hands of the Akune group who are also responsible for trying to steal his girls, and that Fujikura, the public prosecutor who presided over the case of Kumi's death and ruled it suicide, is now the personal lawyer of the Akune group...

Around Ginza there is a night-city of bars and cabarets, hostesses, customers. Assisting to keep order here is Kagari (Akira Kobayashi) who specializes in the women, their problems and troubles. He has saved many a girl from blandishments of pimps, makes customers pay up and women play straight. So he is called 'the woman's police-man' and he takes his job seriously. One day, Chiyoko (Yukiyo Toake), a former hostess, comes to him. Her husband has been murdered and she wants help. The man had been a college classmate and Kagari decides to do what he can. In his investigation he overturns a whole nest of intrigue. Men he had thought irreproachable turn out to be corrupt; solid citizens are seen as the worst kind of scoundrels. Until now, Kagari has specialized in women and their problems. But, realizing the real state of affairs, he rolls up his sleeves for a good cleaning- up-at the same time discovering the murderer of his friend.

It is the end of the Taisho era (1912-1926), and at the Hanazuki-tei theatre in Asakusa, the famous performance of storyteller Koiso Kikuji and performer Kataoka Koshin is reaching its climax when the Tawaraya family interferes... This is an entertaining action film bursting with righteousness and humanity, centred on men who try to live righteously against a corrupt boss who preys on the performers.

Yakuza drama with Meiko Kaji directed by Masahiro Makino

The early years of the Showa period were turbulent times for Japan. The country suffered financial crisis and famine, women worked under intolerable employment conditions, and political corruption was a major issue. Out of fear that the great nation would soon fall, a group of young patriotic men gathered to lay out plans to assassinate the crooked politicians. One of these young terrorists was Shinsuke Kusaka. He receives orders to kill the Prime Minister.

Shimamura is a young man whose family went broke and lost their house. One day, as he returns to his former house to get a camellia blooming from the garden, he sees a beautiful schoolgirl who lives there. After they coincidentally meet again they fall for each other, but she is already engaged.

College life starts off great for Michiko. She and her friend join the Italian Culture Research Club that performs canzone, a genre they are both in love with. The only problem is that the club doesn't have enough money to buy instruments for them to play. One day, the two come across a talent show called the "Mari Sono Look-Alike Contest" that promises the winner a cash prize. And Michiko looks a lot like the star.

Ryu (Akira Kobayashi) sets foot on the Yokohama port with a suitcase filled with 300 thousand dollars. He was sent by a jewelry company in Hong Kong to retrieve a certain diamond that was stolen from them. The "Himalayan Star" is worth couple hundred million yen and unbeknown to Ryu, it now lays in the hands of Aizu (Jo Shishido), the infamous ”Pirate of the Tokyo Bay."

A young girl in an industrial town is saving her money to enter college. But her drunken father loses his job, her mother cannot make ends meet, and then the boy she likes loses everything when his factory fails. She takes all her savings out of the bank and offers them to him to make a new start. He refuses at first but eventually agrees and so she goes back to school to tell her teacher that she has decided not to continue college, that she is young and strong, and can make her own way in life.

The Sengoku Era was coming to an end. The monopoly of the ever powerful shogun, Ieyasu Tokugawa, was at a near. Only one man was brave enough to stand in Ieyasu's way - A lone wolf samurai by the name of Kagekatsu Uesugi. Inspired by Uesugi's courage to revolt, a young samurai warrior, Touzou Kuruma decides to join the fight. Their target: the Tamonyama Castle.

An original warrior directed by Toshio Takagi, directed by Eisuke Takizawa of “Kiriko's Tango” by Toshio Yasumi, a comedy, cheerful widow. The photo was taken by Minoru Yokoyama from “Asakusa no Toko Odoriko Monogatari”

Ayako (Sayuri Yoshinaga) is a free-willed college girl who shares a room with Takako and Kimie. They each have a clear vision of what they want from their career and love life. Soon, their room share takes a turn, when ideals begin to clash with reality.

A touching story of a girl who sails away from her love to keep her family together.

After getting out of prison, a young yakuza tries to find out who killed his girlfriend, attempts not to get drawn back into crime, and to find his missing sister.

Seven years ago, Ishimatsu Toshio, a talented radio producer at Zen Nihon Hōsō, witnessed a crazed drug addict murder his wife and then commit suicide, though Toshio was able to save the lives of their two children. Just transferred from Shimizu to Tokyo, Toshio hopes to produce a program that will expose the drug trade in Tokyo. One day, Toshio stops into a noodle shop where he is mistaken for a drug dealer and passed a bagful of drugs. The real dealer arrives in time to follow Toshio home. That night Toshio is attacked by the dealer, who turns out to be Kenji, one of the children Toshio had saved. Kenji can't bring himself to kill Toshio, so he runs away and goes into hiding from the mafia. While continuing to investigate the drug trade, Toshio searches for Kenji to get Kenji's testimony for his program.

College students come up with a scam to rob a gambling house. When it comes time to collect, the money isn't there, leading the young men into even more serious crime.

Nominated for Golden Berlin Bear.

A woman falls in love with her sister's fiancé.

In the War's closing days, when a conscience-driven Japanese soldier fails to get his countrymen to surrender to overwhelming force, he adopts the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk.

In the thriving Tokyo neighborhood of Ginza, a woman in the process of selling her estranged husband’s art collection attempts to identify the man who painted her own portrait fifteen years prior.

A reporter Takuo, who is sleeping in the newspaper room of the Maichō newspaper company, receives a sudden report from a reporter that the missing Akiyama JNR president was found dead.

The film is about the Yamato's suicide mission to Okinawa in March 1945 to defend the homeland threatened by U.S. bombers. Adapted from Mitsuru Yoshida's 1952 book "Requiem for the Battleship Yamato".

Based on the story of Shimizu no Jirocho.

Directorial debut by Umetsugu Inoue, the famous director of Musicals

War film by Kon Ichikawa

Romantic melodrama

Japanese "kayo" film based on the song "Ieraishan" by Yoshiko Yamaguchi.

A bar girl tries to pass her three children, each from a different father, to rural relatives.

This little seen early work by Ichikawa was produced during the director's Shintoho period (1947-51). Written by Kaneto Shindô and featuring Ryô Ikebe as a young policeman it is part crime drama, part social study. Definitely not an undiscovered masterpiece, but still a must for Ichikawa buffs.

Set against the backdrop of an imperial victory in the civil war leading up to the Meiji Restoration, Fallen Blossoms tells the story of the sorrows of women in a geisha house in Kyoto by recounting the relationships of its inhabitants.