Sachiko Chiba

Set in Qingdao, China, a Japanese company locates an office there and begins work and cooperation with a local Chinese company for business. Many Japanese engineers also move to China, with their families, for the company in order to construct a canal. There are young Chinese resisting the Japanese in this area.

OSHINO, the beautiful daughter of restaurant owners, is in love with SHIRASAGI the painter. But there is another young man, the son of a moneylender family, who is desperately in love with Oshino...

A sentimental tale of the filial love between shogun Iemitsu (matinee idol Hasegawa) and his loyal old retainer Hikoza (comedian Roppa, playing somewhat against type).

Okumura Ioko story directed by Shiro Toyoda

A forceful indictment of the devastating effects of war and nationalistic fanaticism on the average man, who, in the face of the absurdity of violence, is reduced to apathy or victimhood.

The film tells about the life of the former vassal of the Ako clan - Fuwa Katsuemon Masatane.

Kayo and Kuniko graduated from girls' school together and are as close as sisters. Kuniko's fiancé, Minakami, feels something that attracts him deeply towards Kayo. On the other hand, Kayo prays for the happiness of her best friend and marries a very ordinary man. However, at one point, this mediocre but increasingly ferocious husband died in an accident ... A triangular love story develops depicting a woman's heart that sways between love and morals. Based on a novel by Nobuko Yoshiya, there were originally two parts to the film (If Spring Comes & Fall Once Again), both supposed to be 85 minutes, but apparently what we have now is this 103-minute amalgam of the two.

Story of a bandit king part 2.

Story of a bandit king.

Story of a bandit king.

As suggested by the title, this film takes up the theme of the city, beginning with a series of traveling shots from Chiyo's point o view on a bus leaving the countryside and entering the metropolitan cityscape. After some fruitless job hunting in downtown Tokyo, Chiyo accepts a job as a bar hostess in Shiba ward. Well away from glamorous Asakusa and Ginza, this is a neighborhood bar where the women are dirt poor, each having only one kimono to their name....

The otherwise promising young man Asaji (Heihachirô Ôkawa) and his younger brother Yuji (Hideo Saeki) face blighted lives because of society's disapproval of their illegitmacy and déclassé family.

This film is based on a real Meiji era performer -- and tells of Tochuken's partnership with his wife (played by Chikako Hosokawa) who played shamisen for his songs/recitations), his affair with a geisha (Sachiko Chiba), and the deterioration of his partnership and marriage.

1936 P.C.L. adaptation of Natsume's novel.

A story of two sisters, the older being more traditional, the younger a "moga" ("modern girl"). Their widowed father runs the family sake shop, but is running into financial trouble, causing him to tamper with his stock; Meanwhile, his long-time mistress yearns for something more serious. Amidst this, the older sister is introduced to a well-off suitor: A university boy, much more intrigued by the less traditional little sister. A doddering grandfather, an officious uncle and busybody neighbors also don't make the lives of the hardworking members of the family any easier.

Kimiko, a Tokyo white-collar working girl, lives with her serious, intellectual, haiku-writing mother. Kimiko seeks to marry her boyfriend but needs her absent father to act as the go-between and negotiate the marriage. Kimiko travels and finds her father living with a second family.

Among the tight-knit neighbours are a poet, his actress wife, a bachelor budding author, a tobacco shop owner-cum-landlady, an insurance salesman and his nosy and greedy wife. Enter a young and seemingly high-class couple who just so happens is open to purchasing life insurance from their swift neighbour. In the meantime, life is imitating art across the street, which may end up providing for either a happy ending or a rude split - eventually that is.

Studio P.C.L. was specifically founded to make sound films, and this early musical balances the aesthetics of the sound film with those of the stage revue. The king of Tokyo’s revue stage, comedian Ken’ichi Enomoto (Enoken) had made his name in the capital’s theatrical district of Asakusa. The film employed not only the star, but his entire theatrical troupe, and the narrative was structured around scenes which Enoken had played successfully on stage. Billed as offering 'Japan’s number one comedy actor and Japan’s number one musical comedy,' the film self-consciously borrowed from Hollywood musical comedy; indeed, the original posters carried spoof endorsements by Eddie Cantor and the Marx Brothers! Director Kajiro Yamamoto, making his P.C.L. debut, would become a stalwart of the company and its successor, Toho. He was to have a profound influence on Japanese film history as mentor to Akira Kurosawa, who assisted him on a number of films including Horse (Uma, 1941).

The film generally regarded as Japan’s first true musical was also the first film made entirely in-house by the pioneering studio P.C.L., a company founded specifically to take advantage of emergent sound technology. P.C.L. worked in collaboration with a brewer’s firm, Dai Nihon Biru, who met the production costs of the film in full, and whose products are featured in the film in an example of the sophisticated and modern merchandising typical of the studio’s early work. The film is partially set in a beer hall, and its story concerns a beer seller at a train station and her relationship with a music student trying to create a hit song. Director Sotoji Kimura was to become a company stalwart, making such films as Ino and Mon, while actress Sachiko Chiba would emerge the studio’s first real star, appearing in such films as Wife Be Like a Rose.