Tabacco shop owner (uncredited)
The tragic, true story about Hachikō, an Akita dog who was loyal to his master, Professor Ueno, even after Ueno's death.
Fuki Inoue
A lonely high schooler suddenly meets the love of his life out of thin air. Is she a real person or a figment of his imagination?
Toyo
Out of the blue, a bourgeois family on the Sea of Japan finds an unconscious woman on the beach and decides to let her board.
When Tora-san's infatuation with his nephew's school teacher causes family turmoil, he leaves on his travels again. When he returns, he falls in love with the teacher's mother.
Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director (Aru eiga-kantoku no shogai) is a 1975 Japanese documentary film on the life and works of director Kenji Mizoguchi, directed by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba). It runs 150 minutes and can be found on the second disc of the Region 1 Criterion Collection release of Ugetsu (1953).
When his pistol is stolen, police detective Murakami is humiliated, especially when the gun is later implicated in a crime. Working with his superior, Chief Detective Sato, Murakami works feverishly to trace the location of his pistol, ultimately clashing with a gang of youthful Okinawans.
Erotic drama.
The girl students of rival junior high schools stage duels and show a curious interest in sexual pastimes.
Mamoru Hirayama, the sales manager of Clover Shoji, a women's underwear manufacturer, was selected by President Usui to be the manager of the foreign affairs section newly established in the sales department. Masaaki Sakata, Yasushi Inoda, Osamu Yamabe, and Jiro Oi were assigned to this foreign affairs section. Hirayama, a former soldier, is suddenly enthusiastic when the company orders him to join the Self-Defense Forces. One day, in the library where the records of the former army are displayed, Hirayama recalls his memories of that time. It turned out that the bundle of bills that the captain had made a mess of was packed in a box and buried somewhere.
A story about club hostesses in Osaka.
A young man leaves his widowed mother on her improverished farm and makes his career in the Japanese navy.
Japanese comedy film.
A man is involved in a fatal car accident, and though he is blameless, his company transfers him to a remote branch in a small town. Before he leaves, he gives the man's widow a large sum of money that she uses to move back to her hometown.
An inspirational teacher is the focus of this Japanese drama. After his friend kills himself, Natsuki takes a teaching job on an isolated island. His new students, the children of ignorant fishermen, can see no value in education; therefore, they have no desire to learn. Natsuki then introduces the children to volleyball. The kids are immediately fired up by the game. After winning the island tourney, they go on to win the national championship. Suddenly learning has taken on a whole new dimension. Meanwhile Natsuki gets married. Unfortunately for his wife, he refuses to leave the island.
Kane Sasagawa
Jiro, a smooth-talking, womanizing bartender, flees from a Yakuza boss to Yanagase.
An absolutely astonishing art house ninkyo yakuza film. Wandering gambler runs into a young swindler woman working with old man. They are both arrested by detective. A year later gambler is staying with gangster boss when he comes across that woman and her partner again. Boss lusts for both her and his own daughter, while the boss's crazy yakuza brother loves his daughter, who, in turn, watches the player and wants to destroy the people standing in her way. And here lies one of the film's remarkable departures from the standard ninkyo efforts: it doesn't have a third party villain, nor a clear distinction between good and evil. It's bursting with romantic emotion and wrenched with gritty realism, shot with striking black and white compositions, and explodes into shocking carnage. It has lengthier, more detailed gambling scenes than any other yakuza film I've seen. And it has a heartbreakingly beautiful score. You could call it the Ashes of Time of ninkyo yakuza films. A masterpiece!
Sugi
Bungo becomes a single parent when his wife leaves him because of his drinking and gambling. Deciding to quit his vices, he works menial jobs, drifting from city to city. However, not completely losing his gambling tastes, he became a hunted man and must escape to Tokyo after he was found cheating at dice. Bungo and his son Kenichi comes upon the Kizaki Family in Asakusa, where more troubles are awaiting them...
Part 3 of the 'Onna bangaichi' series
Hisako Kanematsu
When an only child is struck by a car and dies, the child's mother 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.
Tokiko Tsurukawa
She'd watched them go one by one. Friend after friend. White dress after another. Yet again, Shimako was attending another wedding reception that wasn't hers. She knew the procedure: watch the bride and groom get congratulated, smile to cover up the loneliness. But she didn't want to feel like this forever. In that moment, Shimako decided that the next wedding she'd attend had to be her own.
Ayako, a young woman from a rural fishing village, is sold by her family into a brothel when her father takes ill. There, she is quickly stripped of her innocence and illusions.
Shino
Yutaro Kida, a worker at the Sasebo Naval Arsenal, volunteers for the navy but finds himself a cook's mate in the galley of a gunboat. But his dream is eventually realized when he is transferred to the new and powerful destroyer Yukikaze which he helped to build. When the Pacific War breaks out Yukikaze performs valiantly in the South Pacific, and while on shore leave, Kida meets and falls in love with Yukiko, younger sister of his commander.
Taka
In a village subsisting on its herring fishery, a one-eyed criminal named Jakoman terrorizes the inhabitants. One of them, the son of the head of one of the fish companies by the name of Tetsu, decides to overthrow Jakoman and his cohorts.
Bar madam at Ginzan hotspring
After a bombing raid destroys the family store and her husband, Reiko rebuilds and runs the shop out of love stopped short by destruction.
Gin Ishii
Experienced shipyard worker Shimazaki gets an offer of free lodging from his employer in the company seaside rest house if he agrees to see to its running. After moving in, Shimazaki finds out that this will also mean taking care of a flock of youngsters, and he soon becomes their none-too-successful warden. At work the boys are disciplined, as soon as they return to their dormitory however they turn into an unmanageable mob.
Nishina Saburouta is powerful but corrupted priest. One night, an old samurai who couldn't bear him any more, attempts to kill him, but without success. Saburouta is rescued by his niece, Keisuke at the last moment. Keisuke is a a good-for-nothing. Since that event, he always turns to his uncle when he needs money. Recently Keisuke feels his uncle isn't as generous as he used to be, he suspects that Saburouta has found out the illicit relation between Keisuke and his uncle's young mistress, Ohasu.
Ino
The days leading up to a toddler's second birthday are seen alternately from the child's point of view as well as that of his parents.
Owner of the hotel
Ushimatsu's father told him never to reveal his lower-caste heritage; years later, he now contemplates confiding in an activist fighting against such discrimination.
Oshima
Japanese "kayo" film centered around the song "Eriko" by Yukio Hashi.
Yoshi Namikawa
A love melodrama.
Waka
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.
One night, three wives, Matsuyo, Keiko and Mari, receive a mysterious telephone call. The voice tells them that she has their husbands with her and invites them to " P " Hotel to see for themselves. They have been married for many years and are bored with their husbands, and are about to secretly carry on affairs with the other's mates.
Otani
Detective Katahachi meets a young and beautiful pickpocket and doesn’t arrest her because she was not in the act. Instead, he listens to the story about her parents who killed himself and died for overwork to feel sorry about her.
The film depicts the scarring of Yosaburo at the hands of yakuza thugs who catch him with mistress of the gang boss. Despite the physical and emotional scars he now carries with him, Yosaburo falls for a young noblewoman. The rest of the film follows the two as they fend off attacks from gangs and the police.
Old woman
The first story concerns an attractive young woman who works in a Tokyo nightclub. Her plan for a solid financial future has a double whammy. In the second story, a beautiful young woman is employed by an unscrupulous real estate agent to convince male clients to invest in worthless property. The last story is about a widowed geisha who has no real financial worries and who falls in love with a forger.
Shige
When a theater troupe's master visits his old flame, he unintentionally sets off a chain of unexpected events with devastating consequences.
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.
Otome
Story of a romance between a middle-aged journalist and a young woman.
A lifetime story of a woman who stubbornly lives in a poor mountain village in post-war Japan.
1959 adaptation of Junichiro Tanizaki's novel.
Kosaka drops to death while ice climbing with his friend Uozu to see the sunrise on the New Year’s Day. The investigators try to find the cause of the death, then discover that the cut rope was made in the factory for which Uozu’s brother works.
Proprietress of the Hotel Hizen-ya
Two detectives begin a stakeout based on the slim chance of catching a murderer whom they suspect will try to reunite with an old flame.
Grandma
A sensitive young woman aged 22 fell in love with a middle aged man who was troubled by his unfaithful wife.
Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.
It's a man's world. Shimamura, an artist, comes to this snowbound town to rejuvenate himself. He connects with Komako, a geisha he met on a previous trip, and it seems like love. She's the foster daughter of a local family, almost engaged to the family's son Yukio, now dying of consumption. He's tended by his sister Yuko who's angry at Komako for abandoning her brother. Shimamura returns to Tokyo but promises he will be back soon. In anticipation of his return, Komako breaks with her patron and her family loses their home. Complications arise when Shimamura doesn't come back as promised. Then Komako discovers that he and Yuko knew each other in Tokyo. Can Komako escape destiny?
Third sequel to "Story of Second Class Private".
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...
Okô
Based on the original work by Shuji Hojo, Itohan Monogatari depicts the fate of a clumsy and kind-hearted woman in the Taisho era.
The story of a young couple deeply in love with each other but, because of complications and misunderstandings created by the people surrounding them, they find it very difficult to achieve happiness.
While working in an education center for lonely children, a mother seeks her missing son.
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.
Otane
The lives of five prostitutes employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation is debating the passage of an anti-prostitution law.
Shige Kitagawa
A young salary man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital affair.
Grandmother
Now an old man, Masao returns to his childhood home and begins to recall his upbringing in this abandoned sector of Japan.
Adaptation of the novel by Bunroku Shishi.
Nobuko's mother
Okimi
Gangsters Ken and Maki are rivals in the ticket-scalping game. They make an uneasy truce, but Ken wrecks the truce by agreeing to fix a boxing match in which Maki has an interest in one of the fighters. After a terrible brawl, the two gangsters discover that they have both been played for suckers by their bosses. They join forces to turn the tables on the bosses.
Shige, Ryoichi's stepmother
This drama of middle-class life in postwar Japan tells the story lower-middle-class workers in the city of Kawasaki, and their troubles and travails.
Schoolteacher Hisako Oishi struggles to imbue her students with a positive view of the world despite the fact that war is looming.
Japanese war film.
Tose
Tokyo, 1890. Through avarice, a series of misunderstandings, and failures of courage, the engagement of Kan-ichi (a student) and Miya (the daughter of Kan-ichi's debtor) is canceled to enable Miya to marry Tomiyama, a wealthy banker's son. In bitter despair, Kan-ichi breaks with his friends, drops his studies, and declares he has ceased to be human. He apprentices to a money-lender, and he's soon ruthless and wealthy. Several years later, Miya's in misery, her husband mistreats her. She goes to Kan-ichi to beg forgiveness; he pushes her away. He's now pursued by Akagashi, herself a cold-hearted loan shark. Can anything free Kan-ichi's hard heart from the golden demon
Otsune
A young woman, who must support her father as a middle-aged man's mistress, finds herself falling in love with a student closer to her age.
Riki - the Mother
The eldest daughter of a rural family Mon returns home from Tokyo pregnant after an affair with a college student Kobata, which causes a scandal that will threaten the marriage prospects of the younger sister San, in her cash-strapped family. The ill-tempered eldest brother Inokichi decides to take on the role of disciplinarian, with harrowing results.
Kiyo
1953 Toho adaptation of Natsume's novel.
This film stars Tanaka Kinuyo as the mother of the heir to the Hosho name, a famous lineage of Noh actors. The heir, Hosho Yagoro, is played by Hasegawa Kuzuo who went on to become familiar among Ichikawa Kon fans as Yukinojo in An Actor's Revenge, which was also co-written by Ito, adding to the relatedness of An Heir's Place.
Kayo Nojima
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.
Osei
The story of Kiyoko, a young woman who has successfully managed to make a break with her dysfunctional family who have been trying to arrange a marriage for her with a disagreeable man whom she has rejected.
Tatsu Watanabe
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
Onao
Group of women escape Chinese controlled area for Japanese occupied lands during Pacific War.
Atsuko is an office secretary who is also her family's primary source of income and caretaker in postwar Japan.
Auntie
Melodrama by Kon Ichikawa
Onobu
This early gem starring the great Mifune Toshiro tells the tale of Katakana Yonetaro aka "The Shark," a rough-and-tumble horse trader in Japan's rugged northernmost territory of Hokkaddo.. ...
Taniguchi Shige
Michiyo lives in the small place Osaka and is not happy with her marriage, all she does is cook and clean for her husband.
Connie Sonobe's mother
One Sunday morning, Toshio Esaki, a young dentist, wakes up in his clinic. It seems that he was drunk and spent the night in the clinic instead of going home. When he goes into the laboratory to get a drink of water, he finds a woman wearing a green striped Western-style dress lying there.
San
Hamako has just started working for her personal hero, Madame Yuki. Her romanticized view of the Madame is broken immediately, though, as she is introduced with a ever-growing list of the Madame’s personal problems.
A bar girl tries to pass her three children, each from a different father, to rural relatives.
Boarding house landlady
A film by Kiyoshi Saeki
Japanese comedy film.
Shizuko Kasagi and Hideko Takamine star as young women who try to raise money for a needy old friend by becoming wandering singers who work for tips in Tokyo's Ginza nightlife district.
Kane Nonomura
When a young woman is named as the prime suspect in a murder, her girlfriend and her girlfriend's boyfriend set out to prove her innocence. Their investigation leads them to an isolated, creepy house in the middle of nowhere, where sinister goings-on abound.
Brothel-keeper
Fusako, a drug dealer's young mistress in postwar Japan, loses her tenuous grasp on life upon learning about her lover's affair.
Brothel Keeper
Fusako, a drug dealer's young mistress in postwar Japan, loses her tenuous grasp on life upon learning about her lover's affair.
A hospital melodrama where the conflict between love and friendship rules the faith of the protagonists.
Tomi
A band of guerrillas fight against occupying British forces in Malaya.
Minowada, a young teacher at a National People's School, has his own theory of education and the daughter of his linguistics teacher becomes drawn to him. Kayo, a strong-willed doctor, is also attracted to him. A mediator tries to arrange a marriage but just at that point Minowada receives military call-up papers.
A village romantic drama. (Now lost.)
Ume
A story of a servant girl whose life is upturned by her doomed love for a spineless young man.
A sad love film where the action takes place in Kyoto, in a trading house.
Ogin
Taki no Shiraito is a very independent young woman with a famous water juggling act in a travelling carnival troupe. She falls in love with an orphaned carriage driver Kinya Murakoshi, and pledges to put him through law school in Tokyo. She always encloses money in her letters to him, until one hard winter there is no work to be found.
Jesuit priests in Japan during the 17th century are persecuted by the shogunate to for trying to spread Christianity.
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. Released in 2 parts. His only release of 1931
Omatsu
Tōjin Okichi is a 1930 film by Kenji Mizoguchi based on the novel by Gisaburo Juichiya. Only 4 minutes have survived. The fragment has been published on DVD coupled with The Downfall of Osen (1935) by Digital MEME in 2007.
Otoku
Yaji and Kita: Yasuda's Rescue is a 1927 black and white Japanese silent film directed by Tomiyasu Ikeda.[1] This comedy film showcases the comic talent of Denjiro Okochi, which contrasts markedly with his heroic performance in Oatsurae Jirokichi Koshi. The humorous exchanges with Goro Kawabe, his senior at Nikkatsu, can be priceless, with the expressions and movements of the two goofy characters making for pure, hilarious slapstick comedy. A 15-minute remnant of the film was released on DVD by Digital Meme with benshi accompaniment by Midori Sawato and Ryubi Kato.
Directed by Minoru Murata.
