Kôichi Iwashita

Richness, severity and pureness of love is beautifully and sentimentally depicted.

学園紛争のあおりで東大入試が中止となってしまった高校生薫クン（岡田裕介）のある一日を通して、青春の繊細な心理と行動、その機微を浮き彫りにしていく傑作青春映画。本作でデビューした岡田裕介は、後に東映会長となった。

Horror story about a girl who is shadowed by an invisible man.

A young man travels out into the countryside to meet his fiance, Yuko. When he arrives at the secluded house he is told by her mother that she has died in a car accident. He spends the night at the house and hears some strange sounds at night, even seeing someone that looks just like his dead love. Later he sees Yuko outside the house and follows her to a grave with her name. Cut to some days later where the young mans sister is worried since she hasnt heard from him in some time. She persuades her boyfriend to take her to the house, but is told that he already left. For the sake of proper plot development she doesnt believe Yukos mother and fakes the car breaking down so that they can investigate what really happened.

A Toho film featuring the comedy duo Konto 55, (コント55号), comprised of comedians Kinichi Hagimoto and Jiro Sakagami.

Sasaki Kojiro tells the story of the genius who staked his love, glory, and life on a duel with the supreme master of the sword, Miyamoto Musashi (Tatsuya Nakadai). Oscar winning Hiroshi Inagaki directs this epic motion picture based on Genzo Murakami’s fascinating story. Despite his humble birth, the orphan Sasaki Kojiro (Onoe Kikunosuke) is determined to become the foremost swordsman in all Japan, a title that traditionally belongs to a nobleman. At fencing school, young Kojiro receives the contempt of his classmates because of his superior swordsmanship. When rumors of the upcoming civil war between Toyotomi and Tokugawa clans spread, Kojiro leaves the school and sets out, seizing every opportunity to realize his dream.

Farmer Abare Goemon is confronted by brigand-like samurai. He raises an army of farmers to fight them and does so brilliantly. When Lord Asakura sees the success Goemon has achieved, he attempts to recruit him to fight in a conflict between Asakura and another clan. Goemon refuses, and Lord Asakura sets out to destroy him.

Former playmates (Naito and Tamura), both long ago abandoned by their parents, recall their youth and fall in love.

Set at the end of the Siege of Osaka this film follows the exploits of several members of the defeated Toyotomi clan as they cope with the post battle chaos and the persecution of the Shogun's army. Five samurai decide on different fates when it becomes clear that their side is being destroyed. One wants to attack the enemy head on in a final honorable death. Another decides to commit hari-kiri but wants to find a glorious view to do it. His close friend, the "coward", just wants to run and give up the life of a samurai. The final two set their own castle on fire to garner favors from the enemy and therefore avert their own death during the massacre of all defeated soldiers as

Lt. Col. Senda resists the idea of sending Japanese fighter pilots on suicide missions. He believes that what is really necessary for Japan to regain momentum in the war is for the air force to gather its most brilliant pilots into an elite squadron and use the unit to pinpoint attacks on the Americans. Disrespected by the kamikaze pilots who think the "non-suicidal" pilots are afraid, the unit redeems itself by stunning victories. But success leads the military leaders to expect too much of the unit, and new orders portend disaster.

The story tells of a group of samurai who were left leaderless (becoming ronin) after their daimyo (feudal lord) was forced to commit seppuku (ritual suicide) for assaulting a court official named Kira Yoshinaka, whose title was Kōzuke no suke. The ronin avenged their master's honor after patiently waiting and planning for over a year to kill Kira. In turn, the ronin were themselves forced to commit seppuku for committing the crime of murder.

Story of romance and rivalry between two ad agencies vying for the same account with a pharmaceutical firm.

京都の造り酒屋・小早川の長男は早く死に、その未亡人の秋子に親戚の北川が再婚話を持ってくる。相手の磯村は鉄工所の社長でちょっとお調子者だ。また、次女の紀子も婚期を迎えて縁談が持ち込まれるが、彼女は大学時代の友人で、札幌に転勤することになっている寺本に思いを寄せていた。一方、小早川の当主・万兵衛は最近、行き先も告げずにこそこそと出かけることが目立つようになった。店員の丸山が後を尾けるが、したたかな万兵衛に見つかってしまい失敗。小早川の経営を取り仕切る入り婿の久夫と長女の文子夫婦が心配して行方を突き止めると、そこはかつての愛人・佐々木つねの家だった。さんざん死んだ母を泣かせた万兵衛の女好きがまた始まったと怒る文子。万兵衛はつねとその娘百合子との触れあいに、特別な安らぎを感じているようだったが、そこで倒れて亡くなる。葬式の日、紀子は秋子に札幌へ寺本と一緒に行く決心を告げるのだった。

This Japanese film speculates on the events which lead the U.S. and the Soviet Union into a nuclear Armageddon.

During the raging war between the Toyotomi and Tokugawa clans, the swordsman Mohei (whose family has been completely decimated) is recruited by Toyotomi to overcome the seat of power, Osaka Castle. Mohei's daredevil skills will be put to severe tests.

A semi-documentary story about the vicissitudes in the life of an elderly fisherman.

Aiko, a bar hostess, falls for the son of a company president who also keeps a mistress, and whose family disapproves of his relationship with the bar hostess.

火星と木星の間に分布するアステロイドベルトは、かつて存在していた惑星ミステロイドの爆発によって生まれたものだった。ミストロイドの住人・ミステリアンは新たな居住地を地球に定め、富士の裾野に巨大なドーム基地を作り上げる。そして地球人に対し、地球人女性との結婚と居住権を宣言した。防衛軍のミステリアン対策委員会は、地球の科学力を結集、自衛のためミステリアンに総攻撃をかける……。

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?

九州の阿蘇山にある炭坑で、坑道に巣くう巨大なヤゴ・メガヌロンの幼虫による犠牲者が発生した。事件を調査する河村は、その怪物をもしのぐ、巨大な怪鳥の姿を目撃する。その怪鳥・ラドンこそ、各地で相次ぐ災害の元凶だったのだ。その音速を超える飛翔速度はソニックブームを起こし、街はまたたくまに壊滅していく。そして、自衛隊の圧倒的な火力によってラドンを追いつめたかに思われたとき、もう一体のラドンが現れたのだった……。

Lavish Japanese-Chinese coproduction based on an ancient Chinese legend about a man who falls in love with a snake goddess in human form.

美空ひばりが音痴なバスガイドのヒロインと自分自身の二役を務めた青春映画。「ひばりのチャチャチャ」「リンゴ追分」などを披露する。共演は『マタンゴ』の久保明。 野溝トミコは、東京の真中を走るバスの見習車掌。大スターの美空ひばりに瓜ふたつだが、鼻の横にホクロがあるので“びばりちゃん”と呼ばれる人気者。トミコの悩みは、父親が家出してしまったことと、美空ひばりとは似ても似つかぬ大音痴なこと。だが、そんなトミコに、ある日、本物の美空ひばりに会うチャンスが巡ってくる。

A musical starring 3 Japanese pop music and TV stars.

The story of a couple, a spoiled son and a down-to-earth girl, in Osaka in the early Showa era. The film won the prestigious Blue Ribbon awards for best director, best actor (Morishige) and best actress (Awashima), and the Mainichi Concours award for best actor and best screenplay (Yasumi Toshio). It ranked second (after Naruse Mikio’s Ukigumo) on the Kinema Junpō top ten films for the year.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, a brilliant tactician, is a loyal subject of the emperor, despite his grave misgivings about leading Japan's navy into war with the United States. He opposes the attack on Pearl Harbor, but, overruled, he leads his forces to the best of his ability.

This epic depicts the battle between Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen. The focus of the story is the struggle by the unit leader in charge of the main supply wagons and the supply troops to transport materiel to the Uesugi army. To this are added episodes involving an itinerant woman.

Japanese propaganda film

When Sentarô’s father is killed by a drunken samurai, Sentarô avenges him. His deed puts him on the run and leaves his sister behind. While running from both the authorities and the assassins, Sentarô meets with the beautiful travelling-actress Oshima who takes him under her protection.

Wartime propaganda filmed by the Japanese in occupied China, Shirley Yamaguchi portrays an orphan rescued from the streets by a kindly Japanese merchant marine officer. Part spy thriller and part Shanghai travelogue, it was part of a popular series known as "Chinese Continental Friendship" made by the occupying Japanese in China.

Song of the White Orchid was a co-production of Toho and Mantetsu, the railway that served the colonial region of Manchuria, and the first film in the Kazuo Hasegawa/Shirley Yamaguchi (Ri Koran) “Continental Trilogy.” Handsome Hasegawa (representing Japan) runs up against an impertinent Yamaguchi (representing the continent); not surprisingly, in the course of the film the woman comes around and realizes the benevolent intentions of the Japanese. In Song of the White Orchid Yamaguchi leaves Hasegawa, who plays an expatriate working for the railway, because of a misunderstanding. She joins a communist guerilla group plotting to blow up the Manchurian railway. Learning of the subterfuge that led to the misunderstanding, she renews her faith in Hasegawa—and by extension Japan—and tries to undermine the plot.

The Whole Family Works, Mikio Naruse's adaptation of a Sunao Tokunaga novel, feels more of a piece with the writer/director's quietly observant and psychologically charged later work. For the Naruse-familiar, it is an anomaly only in its placement within his filmography—indeed, this could be a film made by the elder, stasis-minded Naruse momentarily inhabiting, through a metaphysical twist of fate, his stylistically exuberant younger self. Set in depression-era Japan around the time of the Sino-Japanese War (which the director evokes, during a brief dream sequence, by dissolving between children's war games and actual adult warfare), The Whole Family Works gently observes a family coming apart at the seams. Ishimura (Musei Tokugawa) is the jobless father of nine children.

Drama about a couple and how they found themselves related with music, their egos and each other.

Based on an autobiographical story by Toyota Masako.

A comedic tale told in four parts, this film follows the antics of the pickpocket Kinta as he is pursued by a low ranking deputy named Kurakichi. The two get into all manner of peccadilloes and encounter a range of peculiar characters as their game of cat and mouse moves across the countryside in the last days of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

The study of a one-year marriage that begins to crumble. A married man is torn between the love of his wife, and the attraction to a cousin of his wife.

Japanese domestic drama.

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.

Ino tries to control Mon’s every move, but she becomes a fallen woman, having an affair with a student, Obata whereas her sister San remains a “good girl.” The mother is very supportive of her daughters, but, the father, Akaza, who is the stonecutter foreman on the damn, lacks control of his 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.

The main focus is on the 5 member band of a small circus as it runs into problems while touring rural Japan. It also pays lots of attention to the two daughters of the aging and irascible ringmaster-circus owner. The high points are the sound (and score) and cinematography featuring a lot of vertiginous panning (appropriate - as high wire trapeze artists are also an important element in the film). A fascinating side-light on 30s Japan.

Enoken plays both Kondo Isami and his deadly enemy Sakamoto Ryoma in this comedic, song-filled vision of the Meiji Restoration.

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.

Adaptation of Fumiko Hayashi's novel.

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.

1935 P.C.L. adaptation of Natsume's novel.

Three sisters earn money for their bossy mother by being samisen street musicians. This means mainly playing a banjo type instrument for tips in bars...