Izumi Hara

Ryōko Itakura returns as the tough-as-nails government taxing agent. This time she must figure out a way to expose a fanatical religious cult lead by a corrupt sociopath.

In the 12th century, Buddhism was still a relatively new religion in Japan. At that time, one school (Shingon) offered extensive training in complex and very demanding practices which might eventually bring about spiritual purification and realization. Various Zen schools offered students a lengthy path, literally composed of a blank wall and unceasing meditation. Yet another school (Tendai) emphasized complex metaphysics and the study of philosophical systems. Basically, all of them were designed to cater to the few who were able to give up everything else in their lives and focus on liberation, such as scholars and noblemen. In this historical and biographical drama, this is the situation that the young Shinran (1173-1263) discovered when he began exploring Buddhism as an alternative to the violence and ceaseless civil wars that racked Japan at the time.

During the fervently nationalist months leading up to World War II, a rebellious teenager is transferred to a new primary school in a small Inland Sea town. He vies with the school’s reigning bully, who takes a romantic interest in his older stepsister. When they learn she’s going to be sold to a brothel to pay off her father’s debts, they form an uneasy alliance to free her.

In this humorous paean to the joys of food, a pair of truck drivers happen onto a decrepit roadside shop selling ramen noodles. The widowed owner, Tampopo, begs them to help her turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle-soup making". Interspersed are satirical vignettes about the importance of food to different aspects of human life.

One spring, Tasaka, an elementary school teacher, receives a new class of first graders. While taking the children's attendance, Tasaka is surprised to see a call girl he once had an encounter with standing among the parents in the back of the classroom. According to the school's files, her name is Yukako Sawada, and her child Eisaku has no legal father. The next day, Eisaku gives Tasaka a letter from Yukako asking to meet at the hotel where they first met, and Tasaka sets out with an uneasy feeling...

In Okinawa, a Japanese-Filipino gangster named Joe kills an Okinawan mobster. Joe temporarily escapes the pursuing mob by fleeing to the Philippines, hoping to find there safety and perhaps to link up with his father. He meets Yoko, a saloon girl, who looks after him, but soon Joe's enemies show up, determined to make Joe pay.

An emotionally distraught young man goes on a violent killing spree after his tuberculosis keeps him from serving in World War II and is frowned upon by his fellow villagers.

A young man living on growing tomatoes in a greenhouse in a residential area. Tomato cultivation is as doomed as his personal life where he tries to keep alive his romance with the eccentric Kaede and parents selected fiancee Ayako.

Famous detective Kosuke Kindaichi follows a dying man's words to an enigmatic island, where he meets beautiful twin sisters and tragic events unfold.

The biography of Mifune Chizuko a woman clairvoyant.

Based on the comic book by Leiji Matsumoto.

A Young couple find a boad buried under a beach,and are taken to another world where they must face a Deadly cult who want to sacrifice them.

1978 Japanese film directed by Yoichi Takabayashi.

Masao is falsely accused and jailed for the murder of a loanshark to whom he owed a lot of money. His sister Kiriko makes the long trip to Tokyo, specifically to accost Otsuka, Japan's top criminal defence lawyer, and plead with him to take her brother's case. They live in Kitakyushu which, though a city, she contends that the local lawyers are not up to the job. Otsuka contemptuously brushes her off. A year passes. Masao has suicided in jail, his appeal having failed due to the lack of interest and competence of the local defence lawyer. Kiriko returns to Tokyo, planning revenge on Otsuka for refusing the case and causing her brother's death.

A blind traveling musician is abused and oppressed wherever she goes, even as the modern world imposes change around her.

When a tycoon passes away, he unexpectedly leaves the family fortune to outsider Tamayo on the condition that she marries one of the grandsons, pitting blood against blood.

A young boys' coming of age tale set in a strange, carnivalesque village becomes the recreation of a memory that the director has twenty years later.

Film about the Ashio Copper Mine Incident and Shozo Tanaka.

Minoru visits his home on Okinoerabu island for the first time in thirty years. Seeing the old man who used to be in love with his mother, Minoru recalls the old days spent on the island with his young, beautiful mother.

A film set in Nagasaki examining prejudice against atom bomb victims.

"The Time of Reckoning" transforms a screwball-comedy plot into a sober study of a successful businessman with serious relationship problems involving three women: his wife of ten years who announces she is pregnant by another man; a mistress who wants to have a baby with him; and an ex-lover who claims he fathered her son.

A master sculptor and his apprentice are trapped in a bad snow storm after finding a special tree for carving a statue for the local temple. Finding refuge in an abandoned hut they celebrate their luck in finding the tree but soon they are visited by the Snow Witch who freezes the sculptor to death but takes pity on the apprentice. He must promise to never speak of this or she'll return and kill him.

A man sets out to search for his brother among the survivors of Hiroshima after an anonymous letter.

In ancient Japan, a good lord is killed and his throne is taken by the trecherous Yuki Daijo and his wizard friend Oroki-maru. The young prince Ikazuki-maru is rescued from the jaws of death by a magic bird sent by a wizard. Ten years later, Ikazuki-maru embarks on an adventure to avenge his parents and the wizard's death with his magic powers he learned from the wizard. He kills Yuki Daijo but then must battle Oroki-maru in a battle to the death.

The fictional land "Pandora" sends three (numbered) graduates of the "National Gambling University" to Japan. You should defeat the master player Kôji, control the international casino empire and use the profits to achieve world domination. But Japan's most famous left hand knows what to do.

After a yakuza boss is assassinated by a rival, his naval officer son returns home to take over the gang.

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.

The murder took place at a hotel in Matsushima. The victim is a woman about 28 years old. The suspect is a young man who visited her the night before, and the evidence, in addition to shoe horns and handkerchiefs, is soap with the name of the tavern. When detectives at Shiogama Station followed the man's tracks, it turned out that he had come from Ueno.

The story is of two people. One is deaf, the other deaf and mute. They marry after meeting at a school reunion, and the film follows their trials and tribulations ... and joys.

In a time of continuous civil wars ravaging the fields of feudal Japan, the eldest son of a very poor peasant family, living alongside the bridge over the Fuefuki river, decides to serve a warlord to escape his miserable condition, being soon followed by his younger brothers. Although not all the men of the family take this tragic path of death, women of the family will be doomed to endure the pain of loss during the next five generations.

An upstanding young man’s racy adventure filled with conspiracies and love.

Kaji is sent to the Japanese army labeled Red and is mistreated by the vets. Along his assignment, Kaji witnesses cruelties in the army and revolts against the abusive treatment against the recruit Obara. He also sees his friend Shinjô Ittôhei defecting to the Russian border, and he ends in the front to fight a lost battle against the Russian tanks division.

Focuses on the mutual antipathy of two groups of children in an Izu village.

The 3rd Moonlight Mask movie from the 50s.

Second Moonlight Mask theatrical film.

First Moonlight Mask theatrical film.

A touching story depicting the harsh lives of farmers in Kasumigaura. An attempt to start a fishery business to revive an ailing farming community creates friction amongst the proud residents.

Based on Kakuko Mori's autobiography, about her life and retirement from acting due to her increasing blindness.

A group of Okinawan high school girls are drafted as nurses during the American invasion of the island. As the enemy army advances further, the situation for the girls becomes increasingly desperate as food and shelter run out and the number of injured climbs, leading to the film's tragic finale.

This film focuses on Koreans living in Japan. The filmmaker’s humanism comes across in the portrayal of a girl living in a shabby tenement, the warmth of a Korean girl she meets, and the friendliness of this Korean girl’s family.

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.

Venice Film Festival 1939

Adaptation of Fumiko Hayashi's novel.