Tadashi Iimura

The second of two films based on the novel by Futaro Yamada.

Seventh movie of the Wakadaishō series directed by Kengo Furusawa

The first of two films based on the novel by Futaro Yamada.

A woman and her daughter are in love with the same man, a chef at the restaurant that the mother manages. He is slightly crippled from frostbite in his years in Siberian labor camps and considers himself "already dead."

A modern love story involving different affairs.

An American scientist tells two colleagues about the finding of an abominable snowman living in the Japanese alps, where it is worshipped by a remote tribe as a god, and how it was discovered by modern man after it raided a ski-ers' shelter following an avalanche, killing all inside. This is an adaptation of the Japanese film Ju Jin Yuki Otoko with added American-made footage, narration and music track.

Historical drama about a sleepy-eyed ronin.

In the Tokugawa Era, the clan of Lord Yagyu has hidden away three scrolls containing clan secrets which, if revealed, would cause revolution and disaster for the clan. The information is divided among the three scrolls, all of which must be possessed for the secrets to be understood. When Princess Yuhime steals the scrolls, Tasaburo, a samurai with magical powers, and his brother Senshiro are sent to retrieve them.

Masahiko Koseki, a judo master, gets in several fights as a result of protecting a young woman. Despite his success, Koseki is expelled from his judo school because of his propensity for street fighting. He goes to work for a gangster named Joji, but when he realizes that Joji is mixed up in the slave trade, Koseki helps the police in their attempts to foil Joji.

Period romantic drama.

Three competing parties all race against time to track down an elusive creature known only as the Snowman.

An Ishiro Honda film.

An Ishiro Honda film.

A narcotics investigator for the harbor police, Eiichi Tsuda, is driven by thoughts of vengeance for the overdose death of his brother and the subsequent decline and death of their mother. Tsuda acts viciously and with disdain for legal niceties in his exploration of the criminal facts behind the explosion of a freighter in the harbor. He goes undercover with a band of drug smugglers, but his methods threaten to destroy him as well as his case.

A legendary gangster raises himself out of a small town and gathers followers on his rise to power.

A wandering Jirocho stumbles upon his wife's possible murder and has other adventures while on the run.

Story about a poor Japanese woman living near an American army base who resorts to prostitution.

Jirocho and his followers chase the Kurokomas into the Kai Province.

A story of unhappy youths and the perils of lack of sex education.

Following the Second World War, the lives of various people in a poverty-stricken area of Tokyo are entertwined. Pachinko parlor girls, shoeshine boys, a maker of costume jewelry, and a streetcorner artist all struggle to make their livings and to find happiness in difficult surroundings.

Soldiers Hayate and Yaheiji secretly escape from their besieged castle. Hayate has left behind his lover, Kano. On his way, Hayate is wounded and cared for by O’Ryo, who falls in love with him. But when Hayate accidentally kills her caretaker, he flees, with O’Ryo in pursuit. Subsequently, Hayate's comrade Yaheiji falls in love with Oryo. Kano, the lover left behind by Hayate, believes him dead, and becomes involved with another soldier, Jurota. When Jurota defects to the opposing army, he takes Kano with him. A double set of love triangles has developed, wherein each man and each woman loves one and is loved by another. Finally only combat and self-sacrifice can untangle the weave.

製作は「青春会議」の藤本真澄。原作は源氏鶏太の「ホープさん」「三等重役」の二作より「風雪二十年」の猪俣勝人がシナリオ化したもので、監督は「結婚行進曲」の市川崑、撮影も同じく飯村正である。出演者の主なものは「呼子星」の小林桂樹、「青春会議」の杉葉子、小泉博、「慶安秘帖」の島崎雪子のほか河村黎吉、沢村貞子、斎藤達雄などである。 東洋鉄業に勤める若原俊平は通称「ラッキーさん」。庶務課から秘書課へ抜てきされ、給料の前借をして全部同僚に奢ってしまうというような男。同じ課の泰子は彼にほのかな好意を感じました。泰子の父町田さんは、秋葉社長にタイプが似ているので、冠婚葬祭にはよく社長の替玉をつとめます。東洋鉄業の元社長、奈良財閥六代目庄右衛門の令嬢由起子さんの美容院開店祝いに行ったときも、社長の替玉であることを白状した上、お葬式の帰りであることまで白状して大失敗を演じました。秋葉社長はこの失態をつぐなうため由起子さんのお婿さんを世話しようと季節はずれの社員大運動会を催しました。若手独身社員は我こそと大はりきりでしたが、由起子さんには若原が気に入ったらしく、由起子さんを想っていた近藤と、若原に好意を寄せていた泰子とは失望を感じました。そしてその失意がこの二人を結びつけましたが、一方由起子さんは奈良財閥のため銀行家勝田家の令息と結婚することになり、ラッキーさんの若原は一人淋しく釧路所長に栄転して行きました。

Melodrama by Kon Ichikawa

Though recognized worldwide almost exclusively for his colorful kaiju fare, director Ishirō Honda (Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra) was a natural humanist with a particular understanding of the relationship between people and their social environs. His debut fiction feature, The Blue Pearl (Aoi Shinju) – virtually unseen in the west until now – depicts the melodramatic, but keenly-observed interplay between a young man from Tokyo and two ama (pearl divers; literally “women of the sea”) in a superstitious coastal town. Though raised within the same tradition-bound crucible, the two women – Noe and Riu – are portrayed as diametric opposites; the former meek but affectionate, the latter strong-willed but jaded by a tryst with metropolitan life. Nonetheless, Honda provides equal weight to their desires and their ambitions to break free from the social mold imposed upon them from birth.