Himself
An exploration of the spirit world as portrayed in the height of the J-horror era of the late ‘90s.
A treasure appears in front of antique dealer Norio Koike (Kiichi Nakai) and potter Sasuke (Kuranosuke Sasaki). The treasure is Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s chawan (procelain tea bowl) called Houou, that has been missing.
Shinjiro, who runs a humble detective agency using a coffee shop in a certain town as his office, gets into trouble at a dark gambling den and is forced to take on a troublesome job by Kyoichi, an executive of the Kasahara clan, a yakuza gang he knows well. The task is to investigate an arson case that is suspected to involve the Chinese mafia Barretto, with whom the Kasahara-gumi has a rival gang. In addition, Shinjiro is asked by Michiko, whose Filipino parents were deported in the past, to search for her best friend, a Kurdish woman who mysteriously disappeared. However, as he pursues the two cases, he finds himself caught up in a war between two huge underworld organizations.
Yasuo (Hiroshi Abe) grew up as an orphan. He married a woman he loved and they had a son Akira (later played by Takumi Kitamura). Yasuo's life seemed great at the time, but his life totally changed after his wife died in accident. Since that time, Yasuo, who never experienced parents' love himself, has to raise his son Akira alone.
Having launched a social media prank about a haunted building, three girls suddenly vanish. Rumours circulate that they were victims of The Ox-Head Village curse, triggering an investigation by two of their friends, desperate to find the truth about what has happened…
Iwao Mikumo
Am I really the daughter of a thieves family? Hana Mikumo, daughter of the "L family", a family of thieves, unexpectedly falls in love with Kazuma Sakuraba, the son of a family of police officers. She spends her days dreaming of a normal life whilst hiding her true identity. Eventually her true identity is revealed to Kazuma, and after overcoming many difficulties, the two accept their fate and get married. Along with their new daughter Anzu, they manage to live happily, despite the problems that arise between their two families. Then one day, Hana's father announces his plan to retire from thievery after an incident. To make up for all the trouble he has caused Hana and Kazuma in the past, he offers them a late honeymoon trip. However, the trip actually turns out to be the last job of the "L Family", who are in search of the biggest treasure in history, and it becomes a grand adventure that reveals a family secret that even Hana does not know...
Grandfather
Fleeing to Tokyo with the hopes that she can fulfil her dream of becoming a dancer, Yume is met with the harsh reality that success isn’t something that comes quickly or easily. Whilst juggling her job as a hostess in Tokyo’s red-light district, Yume throws herself headfirst into studying the artform and integrating herself into the underground dance community.
Saburo
Takeshi grew up spoiled in an affluent family. One day his businessman grandfather Saburo sends him to the grasslands of Mongolia where he is to search for a daughter born out of Saburo's relationship with a local woman after the Second World War.
Tetsuhiko Todoroki
While shooting the horror film Ghost Master, Akira Kurosawa, an untalented assistant director, is struggling. Continuing with the film sends him into a rage that awakens an evil spirt. Now possessed, Akira wreaks revenge on those who have been cruel to him on set, killing the cast and crew one by one.
Narration (voice)
The third movie in Léona Hirota's 'Candy Boys' series.
Wanyudo
Tormented and bullied people can access a special website, run by a Hell Girl who will enable them to take revenge on their torturers. The price for such a service is only that the person must join their torturer in damnation.
Akira
Tokyo. Asuka, a young cleaning lady working the night shift, is ready to pay a high price to achieve her dream of becoming a music star. She manages to perform on a TV-talent show, but all her sacrifices backfire when she is accused of murder and is forced to reveal all the details of the dark path she has followed until then.
Sojyuro Saionji
People from Saitama Prefecture are persecuted and, because of this, they hide the fact that they are from there. In Tokyo, Momomi Hakuhodo is a male high school student and the son of the Tokyo governor. Physically, Momomi Hakuhodo looks like a girl. One day, he meets mysterious male transfer student Rei Asami. They are attracted to each other, but Rei Asami is from Saitama Prefecture.
On (segment "Kuu")
Six Stories based on Six Songs.
Ishin Shimazu
The background to and depiction of a watershed battle in Japanese history, at Sekigahara in 1600, when Tokugawa Ieyasu's Army of the East defeated the Army of the West of Ishida Mitsunari. The story includes the intrigues and shifting loyalties of the various retainers, family members, and samurai.
Katsuragi
Kagerota is a young ninja who embarks on his first mission: stealing the goldfish from a wealthy samurai. He succeeds, but then a mysterious fat cat starts following him. His distinctive red nose leads Kagerota to believe that the feline stalker is actually the reincarnation of his long last father, a legendary ninja who left him when he was ten years old.
Gondo
Whether it's someone mixing burnables and recyclables or noise from a neighbor's domestic spat, there's always something occupying the residents of a housing project in the suburbs of Osaka. However Hinako (Naomi Fujiyama) and Seiji (Ittoku Kishibe) couldn't care less. Having moved in just six months ago after the closure of their herbal medicine shop, the old couple is reluctantly putting their life back together. But when Seiji disappears, the apartment rumor mill churns: divorce, murder, dismemberment? As the story spins out of control, and a mysterious man with a parasol puts in a tall order of natural remedies, the truth turns out to be even more fantastic than gossip. Ranging from incisive comedy of errors to absurdist adventure to moving late life romance, "The Projects" is one of the biggest surprises of the year.
A movie director goes to the Paris Opera to shoot his new film. Lacking inspiration, he looks for ways out of his solitude and fear of failure. With each step forward, his imagination reveals itself to him, and mysterious characters lead him towards his desire to create and love.
Admiral Hisanori Fujita
In July 1945, during the end of World War II, Japan is forced to accept the Potsdam Declaration. A cabinet meeting has continued through days and nights, but a decision cannot be made. The U.S. drops atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. General Korechika Anami is torn over making the proper decision and the Emperor of Japan worries about his people. Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki leads the cabinet meeting, while Chief Secretary Hisatsune Sakomizu can't do anything, but watch the meeting. At this time, Major Kenji Hatanaka and other young commissioned officers, who are against Japan surrendering, move to occupy the palace and a radio broadcasting station. The radio station is set to broadcast Emperor Hirohito reading out the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War.
Seisetsu
Kakekomi tells the stories of Edo women in the 1800s that escape abusive husbands and lovers by taking refuge in Tokeiji, a monastery in Kamakura.
Mado wakes up in the morning finding all the people disappeared. Hearing a strong typhoon might strike, everyone has escaped the disaster. She checks her school, but no one is there. She meets her classmate, Fujii, unexpectedly. Fujii asks Mado to find a shelter together. He doesn't want to leave her alone. Both start looking around to see if anyone's left behind: An empty theatre, a movie is still running on the screen. A young girl stands by a desolated pool. A strip show theater with a retired stripper. An old man brushes his shoe in a bowling center continuously. Both guys search everywhere. And finally in the heavy rain, they find shelter in a factory. This is a factory where Mado's father had died in.
Oka
Set within the fictional city of Mahoro, Keisuke Tada runs a "benriya" - a general problem solver for hire. His assistant is his former high school classmate Haruhiko Gyoten. A big crisis then occurs for them.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Goemon Ishikawa steals a golden statue from Yukari Kukai with female thief Neko no Me Ogin, but Private Detective Shinkuro Akechi chases after Goemon Ishikawa and Neko no Me Ogin. Detective Shinkuro Akechi discovers that there is a code hidden within the golden statue. The code reveals the location where gold is hidden. Meanwhile, outlaws gather under Goemon Ishikawa.
In Okinawa, a down-and-out middle-aged yakuza underling named Shidara kidnaps and confines a high school girl named Yui, the daughter of a fellow yakuza’s mistress.
In Japan, gonzo filmmakers hatch a three-pronged plan to save an actress's career, end a yakuza war and make a hit movie.
Akira Nitanai
Saya Toma is a female detective with an IQ of 201. Takeru Sebumi is a career detective with a distinguished background. They work on cases by postulating the "SPEC" of the unknown criminals and then deduce the criminal's unknown "SPEC" to make arrests. A mystery occurs when bodies are found on a cruiser in the ocean. Saya Toma and Ryo Kase of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department are brought in to solve the case.
Yonosuke Matsudaira
Ryosaku, a struggling actor, endures daily abuse from his wicked wife. One day, the janitor of his apartment gives him a 'The Pod of Good Fortune'. And his life begins to go awry. The sudden death of his abusive wife...suspicion of murder...an impulsive cover-up...same old routine on set...an unexpected visitor...and the body count rises. This fi lm closely follows the daily life of the protagonist as the bizarre and horrifi c drama unfolds. When people are pushed to an extreme situation, it's also the most comical. Full of such aspects, the stor y reveals the secret side of the people surrounding the protagonist. Where will the 'The Pod of Good Fortune' lead this man's unfortunate life? Only the Pot can tell.
Yo-Chan
Woodwork artist Takumi moves to the small village Asuka in Nara Prefecture. He remodels old homes and lives a peaceful existence with nature. Takumi then meets Kayoko, a woman who went to the same school as Takumi. Kayoko is fascinated with the color crimson. She dyes scarves with the color of hanezu. Kayoko lives with boyfriend Tetsuya, who works as an editor of a PR magazine. They live together. Soon, Kayoko falls in love with Takumi.
Noboru (Taku Manabe) finds himself in a very difficult situation. The factory he’s been working at has gone bankrupt. He heads to the factory’s office to demand his last paycheque, but it turns out some gangster thugs are there demanding money as well. Now with the yakuza on his tail Noboru has to run for his life. He ends up hiding out in a rundown rooming house in a mysterious area of Kyoto not listed on the city maps. It’s while Noboru is living in this rooming house and working as a security guard on a construction site that he encounters a cast of unusual characters: a fellow security guard who is obsessed by fossils, an aging widow on the edge of sanity, and a beautiful alcoholic woman named Miyuki (Natsumi Seto) who is convinced that she I growing a wing on her back. Will Noboru be able to stay hidden or will his newfound infatuation with Miyuki prove more dangerous than the thugs who are hunting him?
Kenta Kurihara (Tasuku Nagaoka) is sent to prison for battery. In his cell he is referred to as the "newcomer." Meanwhile, Kenta is bummed out with simple meal offerred in prison. The four other prisoners in his jail cell have no problems eating his food. On lunar new year's day the prison offers the traditional Osechi-Ryori dish. The inmates in the cell gather to play a game that has become an annual ritual. They compete for items from each other's dishes by boating about the most delicious things they have ever eaten. Shunsuke Aida (Motoki Ochiai) begins their game by talking about a dish which his mother made ...
Oka
In Mahoro, the fictional suburb of Tokyo, Tada works as a general problem solver for hire. One day, former classmate Gyoten appears unannounced. Both men are over 30 years old and divorced. With no explanation, Gyoten suddenly asks to spend the night at Tada's home. Eventually, Tada accepts Gyoten as his assistant and together they become involved in various cases concerning an assortment of people from different walks of life.
Boss Ozawah
An assassin is shot and almost killed by her ruthless employer, Bill, and other members of their assassination circle – but she lives to plot her vengeance. Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is a complete edit of the two-part martial arts action films Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Kill Bill: Vol. 2. The film was originally scheduled to be released as one part. However, due to the film's over 4 hour running time, it was split into two parts.
Kenzo Iwaki
After four years overseas, Shozo returns to Japan to avenge his yakuza boss who was assassinated by his own treacherous top man, Kurawaki. The resulting battle leaves both men severely injured, and Shozo awakens in a mysterious medical facility to find his arm replaced with an M61 Vulcan cannon and his leg replaced with a rocket launcher. Meanwhile, Kurawaki has been fitted with mechanical augmentations of his own. Get ready for the second round.
Monk
Toward the end of World War II, middle-aged soldier Keita is entrusted with a postcard from a comrade who is sure he will die in battle. After the war ends, Keita visits his comrade's wife Yuko and bears witness to the tragic life she has led.
Bald Moriyama wants a new image and buys a wig. It works: suddenly he has a career and a girlfriend. But life is hard when you have to keep a secret. Perfect timing and handling of real-life anxieties plus brilliant comedians MIMURA and OOTAKE make WIG an exceptionally funny comedy.
Nursing home "Yuyoso". Many lonely old people live there, including botanist Taro Makiso, a physicist, an actor, a bar mom, and a chef. Maki has spent most of his life studying botany, and has lived without regard for entertainment, drinking, women, or everything else in the world. Then came my 80th birthday. He and a young staff member go digging for wild yam and find a mysterious golden flower. It was the flower of immortality, the "Golden Flower", which was said to bloom beside the Himalayan Virgin, which he had been looking for for many years. From that day onwards, fragments of memories from his youth, which he had intentionally sealed off in order to immerse himself in botany, surged into Maki in a whirlpool.
Manzo is a fisherman in a small seaside community who lives and works alone, but longs for a relationship and maybe a wife. When a sign is posted advertising a matchmaking party with city women, all the men gussy themselves up and videotape themselves for the dating service. Manzo borrows a camcorder and tries his luck, but his rehearsed speech doesn't go as planned. When showing the videotape to the prospective dates, he discovers something unusual: There is a woman and her son living in one of his closets. Instead of kicking them out, he encourages them to stay and develops a relationship with them that makes the other fishermen jealous.
Asahiyama Zoo in Hokkaido, is the northernmost zoo in Japan. The unpopular zoo welcomes a new zoo keeper, young Yoshida (Yasuhi Nakamura), who has more affection for insects than people after years of being bullied at school when he was young. Yoshida soon realizes that Asahiyama Zoo is facing a financial crisis and the zoo director Takizawa (Toshiyuki Nishida) has been doing everything in his power to save the zoo from closing down. Moved by Takizawa's passion, Yoshida and other zoo keepers came to share the zoo director's belief that one's dreams can come true, and together they tackle this seemingly impossible task of revitalizing Asahiyama. A breakthrough arrives in the form of “Behavioral Exhibition,†a method that is pioneered by Ashiyama's zoo keepers and which eventually makes the zoo renowned throughout the world.
Rin's Master
A Shaolin-trainer young woman returns to Japan to resuscitate her grandfather's defunct martial arts school.
Heihachi Edajima
Momotaro and Hidemaro are 1st-years at Otokojuku, a private boys school where true men are made. Momotaro, proficient in academics and martial arts becomes good friends with Hidemaro an underachieving weakling. Omito Date, former student leader, plans his revenge against his former school. Now leader of an evil army from rival Kanto Gogakuren school he fully intends on taking over Otokojuku.
In 1974, during the height of the recession, a Japanese Korean family relocates to Tokyo to raise money and seek better treatment for their ill son.
After the unexpected death of her husband a new life begins for Toshiko. 30 years of a happy marriage seem to suddenly vanish as she finds out that her husband had lived a double life. Struggling between her anger and the chance to begin a new chapter for herself, she finds her life moving into unchartered waters as she faces her 60th birthday.
Makai Priest Amon
In the aftermath events of GARO: Chapter of the Black Wolf, Saejima Kouga sets out to the northern district upon reassignment. While hunting down Horrors, a young priestess named Rin informs Kouga that she's been sent by Priest Amon to save a presumed dead friend in the Makai realm within Kantai, Jabi. Kouga teams up with Rin in a quest to save Jabi as they are hindered by supernatural and Makai forces alike. Meanwhile somewhere in Japan the dark Horror lord Legules was resurrected and plots a means to alter a supernatural event called White Night within Kantai to plunge the world into darkness with his "family." It's the final chapter of GARO as Kouga puts his life on the line to save Jabi and defeat Legules before the world is ruined.
An off-beat comedy about 3 'damejin' (useless persons), who don't work and spend their lives doing nothing. They actually don't want to work. When they hear 'in India one can live without working' they take it seriously. They begin to raise the money to go to India by doing anything but working, such as ripping off stamps from others' letters to sell, robbery at the bank which itself went bankrupt, etc.
Shopkeeper
Rou has returned to the monastery he was raised in. As he listens to the whispering of the Gods through his germanium radio, Rou defies God in every which way and puts religion to the test.
Sato's Father
Low-profile theater troop actor Mutsugoro Suzuki begins an oneiric journey back to his hometown, marked by his quest to find the one responsible of infecting him with a STD.
A-san
Four people are discovered brutally murdered in an up-scale high-rise apartment. All the victims appear to be family, but as the investigation deepens it is discovered that one of the victims isn't related to the family.
Real pro wrestlers Mizuho Ishikawa, Cutie Suzuki and Emi Tojyo star alongside newcomer Miki Suzuki as the women tag teams, and they are managed reluctantly by Yoshinori Okada, forced to take over as manager of his mom's struggling female wrestling team.
Boss Ozawah
The Bride unwaveringly continues on her roaring rampage of revenge against the band of assassins who had tried to kill her and her unborn child. She visits each of her former associates one-by-one, checking off the victims on her Death List Five until there's nothing left to do … but kill Bill.
A man is trying to flee from his past, and he ends up in an underworld filled with strange characters. He finds a job skewering meat in a dirty old room in a shabby old house filled with prostitutes, gangsters and a weird old tattoo master. He clearly doesn't fit in to this new world, and the inhabitants of it immediately despise him.
Owner of Candy Shop
After discovering a hole in their crowded cell, nine prisoners escape their confinement to track down the key of the universe, which a fellow prisoner known as the Counterfeit King said he had hidden.
Ieyasu Tokugawa
Shiro Amasuka, dead leader of the Shimbara Revolt is resurrected from hell with the desire of overthrowing the shogunate for killing his companions. To do this , he resurrects an army of living dead swordsmen. Between him and his goal, only Yagyu Jubei stands...
Ōmuta
In prison for 50 years after massacring his corrupt workmates with a samurai sword in 1945, Ginji Sonesaki (Riki Takeuchi) is given the nickname of Ginji the Slasher. On his release he finds himself on the streets living with the homeless hiding from a man whose life he tried to end. His former boss and the object of Ginji's hatred is now a highly-regarded figure in politics but Ginji plans to remind him of his past transgressions and make him pay for ruining his life.
Jam Films is a 2002 suite of 7 shorts produced by Sega/Amuse.
Yamaguchi, Ichikawa and Kosuge dress in white military-style uniforms to "clean" the streets of Shibuya from bad elements. After rightist gang boss, Aota takes an interest in the three, the boys gradually become influenced by him, but start to go their different ways.
Lord Kobari, ghost warrior
Kenichi Asakura is an uptight, hyper-square salesman. One day, three bank robbers commandeer his van. They are in hot pursuit of their fellow robber who has snatched the money. Unfortunately for the bank robbers, Asakura never drives over 40 km/h speed limit even under the extreme situation.
Ookura Nagashima
Shangri-La follows the lives of a group of homeless people in Japan who run into a man who nearly commits suicide and decide to help him out of his financial troubles. Using their various ingenious resources they embark on a complex scheme to blackmail a crooked businessman, whose bankruptcy claim has put people out of work. It’s a fun romp as these seemingly homeless people manage to outsmart the very people who cast them from society.
Susumu Kawahara
This movie is a political/espionage thriller, based on a real kidnapping incident of Korean politician, Kim Dae-Jun.
Mr Iwai
Set in a toy store specialized in antique toys, a boy works in the toy store and is obsessed with tin toys. There's one particular tin toy he loves more than the rest. In walks a girl wearing shades, and starts telling her own story, a weird and fascinating experience she had with a toy.
Detective Murata
When 54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a subway train it appears to be only the beginning of a string of suicides around the country. Does the new all-girl group Desert have anything to do with it? Detective Kuroda tries to find the answer, which isn't as simple as he had hoped.
Self
This faux-documentary follows a butoh master, a fashion designer, and a filmmaker racing against time to create art and help a young girl in love.
Oda
A man is assaulted by someone with a bat and attempts to figure out why.
Brazilian-Japanese gangster Mario rescues his Chinese girlfriend Kei as she's about to be deported from Japan. Desperate to escape, he hides in Tokyo's booming Japanese-Portuguese community and seeks passage from the country from a Russian mobster. To meet his price, they hold up a bigtime drug deal between the Chinese Mafia and the local Yakuza.
Daimon
Into the bully-infested home room class struts a fearless, ceramic-masked student. Squarely confronting a gang of ruffians, it is soon discovered that behind the mask is none other than Danta, an otherwise weakling student who has heretofore been picked on relentlessly by these same bullies. Donned with his mask, however, Danta exhibits a totally other personality, lacking fear and intimidation. The other students, looking on, soon experiment with the power of masks and find to their glee that behind a facade of anonymity, they experience an overwhelming power to act without the confines of self-consciousness.
The life and death of the men who are bound by violence.
Kakubê
When his mother's untimely death quickly follows his father's, a doctor begins to believe a killer may be targeting him and his amnesiac wife.
Aota
Crazy Man
Brash, loudmouthed and opportunistic, Kikujiro is the unlikely companion for Masao who is determined to see the mother he has never met. The two begin a series of adventures which soon turns out to be a whimsical journey of laughter and tears with a wide array of surprises and unique characters along the way.
Remake of Chusei Sone's 1983 comedy about a yakuza family trying their luck in show business.
It is based on the story of The Ballad of Narayama updated to the present day, with the substitution of putting a parent into an old people's home for the abandonment of the original. The film won the Golden St. George and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 21st Moscow International Film Festival.
Yakuza Boss
A young man decides one day to start killing yakuza. After he kills his first two he gets roped into helping a wannabe gangster and his bumbling underlings to perform a hit. While things work out in the beginning, this young psychopath quickly becomes more trouble than the gang expected. Will they be able to rid themselves of him, or will they be his next victims?
Tenkai
Yuko Moriyama stars in this ninja period piece as one of seven women determined to exact revenge on the evil lord Akinari Katou and “The 7 Spears”, the band of soldiers he commands. Trained assassins and skilled in sorcery, these men took over the Aizu prefecture and took its most beautiful young women as concubines. They left behind 7 daughters now seeking out Jyubei Yagyuu to help get revenge.
Hobo
A dark and strange comedy about a bank robber with bad luck. Bungling a bank robbery turns out to be a profitable mistake for Yamazaki, an amateur crook who ends up with 80 million yen after a string of improbable accidents. But having so much cash doesn't make his life is any easier. In fact, it gets much more complicated when Yamazaki stabs a hairdresser by mistake and instantly becomes a hunted fugitive. He's just one unlucky monkey but can he turn his luck around?
The cop Himuro is picked as scapegoat by his superiors because of their own involvement in sokaiya gangster practices.
When a young girl discovers that her new middle school is the same one her sister mysteriously disappeared from eleven years before. She and her new friends join forces to fight the evil force that threatens them all.
Wife in former life plagues husband as ghost in the present
A tough and violent battle ensues between Hikaru Gotokuji, who's been assigned as the bodyguard for a popular young entertainer, and the ex-mercenary who is aggressively intent on assassination.
Den
Hatano is living as an insomniac freelance typesetter alone in his bayside apartment. One day, Aikawa, a high school classmate he hasn’t seen in over ten years, shows up on his doorstep bearing a bag of clams. Though he claims to be the director of a fast-growing trading company, Aikawa crashes on Hatano’s couch for days on end. When the sleeping pills he was offered produce a strange side effect, Hatano is slowly dragged into Aikawa’s con-artist lifestyle. Soon afterward, they cross paths with the representative of a big-name publishing company and Aikawa’s ultimate scam begins to unfold.
Umehara
Three cat burgling sisters have to go up against the police and a Chinese crime syndicate in order to rescue their kidnapped father.
Boss of Minato gang
Sawaki is a postman who's not quite thrilled about his boring way of life. But his life is about to change when he delivers mail to his old schoolmate Noguchi, who's now a member of the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia, and just finished cutting his little finger off.
An odd journey starts as Mitsuru, a private detective, and a boy, whom a dying mobster entrusts to him, decide to go to northern Japan in search of the boy’s mother, and the detective’s buddy Hisashi joins them later.
After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, a writer remembers travelling with his family to bury his brother after World War II.
A detective, a mysterious beauty Ekin and other characters appear in the film. It creates a mysterious visual world that takes us one step further into the world of Ekin. This is the second art documentary film produced by the Museum of Art, Kochi, following Hiroyuki Oki's HEAVEN-6-BOX. This time, the stage performances of butoh greats Maro Akaji and Dairakudakan were documented by Hayashi Kaizo.
An unemployed man trying to steal from a convenience store, and the store clerk catches him in the act. the thief runs away with the store-clerk right after him. All the while, the store clerk is in trouble with a low-rank yakuza. Along the chase for the thief, they catch the eye of the Yakuza who's been looking for the convenience store clerk.
Comedy about a group of chemistry students who organize a cheating scam during their final exams. Amuro Namie, the top pop music sensation, plays one of the students.
Lt. Nakayama
When a hooded stranger appears in private eye 'Mike' Hama's office with the cryptic challenge "I want you to look for me," Hama is drawn into a string of bizarre serial murders that have Yokohama's police baffled and the city terrified.
The thug is now back in Shaba as a legendary hitman!
A retired actress whose husband has recently died visits her summer home. There she has encounters with old friends and acquaintances who bring various stories and news of death and the past
Lt. Nakayama
Broke, his vintage Nash convertible repossessed, private eye Mike Hama is reduced to combing the mean streets of the Yokohama waterfront on a borrowed bicycle. But when Lily, a beautiful stripper from out of Hama's past, returns to town, the fuse is lit on a criminal powder keg set to blow the lid off the Yokohama underworld.
Kanji, Nobuko's father
The members of the Ameya family are all scammers. After their election scheme goes bust in their hometown, they move from Shikoku to Tokyo and resume their fraudulent activities. Everything carries on smoothly until the eldest and the fourth sons' modus operandi go awry, the mother's lover runs off with another woman, and disasters strike one after another. This film is a collaboration between Yoichi Sai and Goro Kishitani following "All Under the Moon." The family business of the Ameya family is defrauding people. The matriarch, who keeps getting married and divorced, has five children with different fathers. The Ameya family chases after fortune and leaves a trail of trouble on their path.
Man of dry river bed
A five-part comedy and horror anthology
Lt. Nakayama
Maiku Hama is a private detective working in Yokohama. Hama comes to the aid of a Taiwanese waiter named Yang and agrees to track down his missing brother. Through a series of double-crosses Hama gets embroiled in a gang war and a revenge plot between the two brothers
An office worker who happens to end up helping a yakuza
Senba
A Korean taxi-driver interacts both humorously and tragically with his customers and employers in '90s Tokyo.
The Hitman
A quiet killer is looking for a room. The real state agent, shy and expressionless, guides him through Tokyo, towards the ruins the decadent economy has left behind, in hopes of finding The Room.
Hakugin
Set in Osaka's Shinsekai, the film depicts the lives of Ayumu Tobita (Hidekazu Akai), who makes a living as a shogi gambler (shinken-shi), and Ryuzo Kayama (Masaya Kato) who aims to become a professional player.
Criminal
Following the life of Japanese artist and poet Yumeji Takehisa through the imagining of an encounter with a beautiful widow with a dark past.
Sakurada
A middle-aged man discovers an injured refugee woman trembling in the corner of his bar in Kabukicho. He quickly becomes aware that her life is in his hands when he learns she is hiding from the yakuza.
Himself
"Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis" is a visually striking film portrait shot on location in Japan with the participation of the major Butoh choreographers and their companies. Although Butoh is often viewed as Japan's equivalent of modern dance, in actuality it has little to do with the rational principles of modernism. Butoh is a theater of improvisation which places the personal experiences of the dancer on center-stage. By reestablishing the ancient Japanese connection of dance, music, and masks, and by recalling the Buddhist death dances of rural Japan, Butoh incorporates much traditional theater. At the same time, it is a movement of resistance against the abandonment of traditional culture to a highly organized consumer-oriented society.
Tattoo Master
Two brothers, Jinta and Wataru, are raised in a travelling circus. After an accident, Jinta decides to leave the circus and travels the countryside working as a con-man. After a run-in with a local gang of yakuza, he is invited to join their ranks, where he makes the mistake of falling for a boss's mistress. Wataru stays with the circus and works hard to regain its former glory
Daisuke Kamoi
A Japanese boxer stages a dramatic and dangerous comeback after suffering brain damage in the ring.
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.
Director
Tomio, a college student, lives in a Western-style house where strange people live, such as his landlady Yukiko and her older brother Kishi, the crook Hosoda, and his idiot wife Tamae, Miyamoto, who lost both legs in the war, his mistress with tattoos, Nozawa, who has no energy, and Shizue, a lover with heart disease. Detective Harada recently discovered the strangled corpses of four women, and while the local residents are suspicious and conducting a secret investigation, a strange incident has occurred, and suspicion falls on Tomio...
Tetsuaki's struggling to write a novel while his mother fades; Mitsuko's engagement has been forced upon her unwillingly; the two individuals run away to share their grief.
Detective Seiji Otaki is determined to find the psychopathic killer of a young woman who was ostensibly a student but in reality a high-priced prostitute. Even though he has been taken off the case for beating up a suspect, he refuses to let it go and recruits his mistress to act as a decoy for the killer. Her involvement turns out to be a fatal mistake, and when her husband gets out of prison, Detective Otaki is in worse trouble than ever.
Homeless
A 1920s playwright meets a beautiful woman who may be the ghost of his patron's deceased wife.
A surreal period film following an university professor and his eerie nomad friend as they go through loose romantic triangles and face death in peculiar ways.
Taro Kuroki, 42, is a stuntman with a samurai's heart. He loves adventures, plays pranks with the police, tries to cure a cat lady by reversing her trauma, and finally, rescues his niece who is about to be lured into prostitution.
Hirose Kinzō
The film depicts the youth of Kinzo, a heretic painter who worked in Tosa during the late Edo period, and the hurricane-like inner side of his life.
Actor
This is the story of a bookstore thief named Birdy, who is led through various adventures in Tokyo's Shinjuku district by salesgirl Umeko.
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.
Correlated with Susan Sontag's theorization of kitsch as well as employing the queer lingo of "camp," this film's relentless equal opportunity pop-art montage shattered the foundations of conventional cinema, making it a true document of the Shinjuku underground scene. Director Okabe himself appears recreating his favorite roles from Bonnie and Clyde to Spaghetti Westerns, as well as incorporating quotations by inserting stills of Godard, Kennedy’s assassination and the Vietnam War.
Taka
Shirō raids the office of the organization that attacked his lover, wreaking havoc and escaping with a stolen handgun. In retaliation, the organization hires two killers to get rid of Shirō. The duo begin to develop a strange kinship with their target...
A wealthy real estate investor is forced to watch the rape of his girlfriend and then is sent a film showing the fact. He hires a hitman, Sho, and shows him the film, so that the detective can get rid of the criminals. But the boss of the criminal band is Ko, Sho's archnemesis, who raped and murdered his girlfriend.
