During the Showa era, a young yakuza survives war and injury and rises to become a clan boss with the help and respect of his sworn brothers.
Screenplay
Nikkatsu Roman Porno
Director
Nikkatsu Roman Porno
A master swordsman is ordered to go undercover on a mission to find and destroy a cannon factory being used by two samurai clans that try to usurp power and gain the position of shogun for one of their own.
Kian
His bloodline damned by a witch, Waldemar Daninsky heads to Japan to seek a cure for his werewolf curse.
Nikkatsu Roman Porno.
Kentaro Kaneko
日露戦争における激戦地・二百三高地での帝国陸軍の戦いを描いた歴史スペクタクル。
戦後、東大法学部の学生が設立した金融会社“太陽クラブ”は急成長を遂げたが、メンバーの隅田がヤミ金融容疑で検挙され焼身自殺を図る。残された鶴岡は新たに六甲商事を設立し、企業から次々と金を騙し取った。東京地検の福永検事は鶴岡をマークするが、彼は証拠を残さずに犯罪を繰り返すのだった。
明智小五郎
明智小五郎
Kogoro Akechi
First in a series of Japanese TV movies which were based on horror-tinged mystery novels by Edogawa Ranpo.
Azami Yajuro
The third movie following the exploits of bounty hunter Shikoro Ichibei. The theft of almost a half ton of gold from the shogunate's official mine threatens to bankrupt the government of Japan. Despite a desperate search the gold has not been found, causing officials of the Tokugawa bakufu to call on their most skillful secret agent, Shikoro Ichibei.
Fujiko wanders aimlessly through the country, seeking vengence on the man she onced loved, who betrayed her, and destroying her family and her life. When she discovers that man had already died, she loses her will to live. But in a twist of fate, she meets Tatsumi, a raising star in the Horikawa Family. She quickly falls in love with him and his yakuza lifstyle. But when Tatsumi is chosen to but the next Boss of the family, his jealous sworn brother Morito kills him with the help of a mysterious man behind the scenes. Now Fujiko becomes a Bakuto, a wandering yakuza gambler, and once again, walks the bloody path of vengence...
Ryukichi
President of the territorial yakuza organization is being manipulated by a crooked leader in the military and some capitalists Ishikiri. The plan is to get multiple family of the organized crime groups based in Osaka to war it out and order the Shima to the Onishi group of the branch to expand the territory. Now members of the same yakuza gang are forced to fight each other over territory and honor.
Hitman
In the 1970s, the Japanese youth emancipation also found its way into the yakuza (crime) societies. A Girl Boss may have a choice between bikes, and between boyfriends. But she has to defend her choices the hard way, as her triumph and power over the girls' gang is questioned by her female rivals, and the all powerful Yakuza Boss. She inspires loyalty to her girls, and to men to the extent of many of them literally giving their lives for her - in a world of knife and gun fighting, bike and car chasing, and violent death.
An action-comedy about three men who try to bilk money out of gambling dens.
15th in the 17 film Daiei "Woman Gambler" series
Though he has come from a rough background on the streets, Muraki (Horoki Matsukata) quickly rises through the ranks by means of his well-honed blackmailing instincts. Desperate to keep rolling with his freewheeling lifestyle, Muraki sees his luck begin to crumble when he sets his sights on the business partners of a powerful gang boss.
Junta Kimura
A series of murders has been committed by someone with a new model gun, a Mord-Gessel X 38. Indeed, Daisuke himself is almost killed while investigating the case. This occurred while he was with Ritsuko, daughter of a company president. Detective Kimura thinks that the president himself, returned to Japan after an absence of fifteen years, might be the killer, or at least the man who supplied the gun. Ritsuko's father limps and though she explains this as the result of a traffic accident, Kimura remembers a narcotics smuggler named Suginami who shot himself in the ankle and then escaped from the hospital. He believes that the company president and the drug peddler are the same.
Chief Navel Surgeon Mamiya
A story of young students trained to become Kamikaze pilots in World War II.
Quick Drawer Dog (早射ち犬 Hayauchi inu) is a 1967 film directed by Tetsutarō Murano. It is the eighth film in the Inu series.
Part two.
Guntaro
Film directed by Kenji Misumi.
Aizen
Nemuri Kyoshiro discovers a conspiracy centering around a band of disgruntled samurai wanting to avenge the death of their sensei, a political reformer that pushed for better provisions for the lower classes until he was assassinated by Shogunate agents. Their plot, to set fire to the oil refineries of two rich merchants and unleash a raging inferno that will hopefully burn down the Edo Castle.
Part 3 of the 'Onna bangaichi' series
Part one.
Sugiyama
A bunch of young, angry and penniless misfits are full of great vitality. They aren’t quite up to joining the yakuza and execute a variety of petty scams. After being approached by a yakuza and asked to become a spy for them, they are now planning to take 10 million yen from the yakuza.
Genpachiro Kurobe
Zatoichi comes upon a dying man who asks him to give a bag of money to "Taichi". Zatoichi has no idea who this is but when he comes upon a small town harassed by gangsters, he finds that "Taichi" was the man's young son. Along his travels he also met a blind monk who makes Zatoichi question his murderous lifestyle. In trying to help the town, Zatoichi kills some gangsters and becomes a hero to the boy. He must make a choice of whether to use non-violence and set a good example, or violence and set the boy on the wrong path in life.
Zoku teppō inu (続鉄砲犬) is a 1966 film directed by Mitsuo Murayama. It is the sixth film in the Inu series.
Junta Kimura
Fifth film in the "Inu" series.
Legendary swordplay filmmaker Hideo Gosha's Sword of the Beast chronicles the flight of the low-level swordsman Gennosuke, who kills one of his ministers as part of a reform plot. His former comrades then turn on him, and this betrayal so shakes his sense of honor that he decides to live in the wild, like an animal. There he joins up with a motley group who are illegally mining the shogun’s gold, and, with the aid of another swordsman, gets a chance not just at survival but to recover his name and honor.
Teijiro Chigusa
In post-war Japan, it is difficult for private business to stay afloat. The small atelier has a debt of several million yen. To get a loan, his proprietress is forced to turn to a successful businessman, owner of entertainment establishments and bars. But she has nothing to guarantee the return of the debt, and then she offers herself as collateral. A drama about the contradictory nature of human feelings.
Genba
Mondonosuke, a young sword student, has a bad dream about his sensei being killed in a duel.Consequently, he quickly returns to his sensei's dojo in Edo, where he has not set foot in three years.
Junta Kimura
Third film in the "Inu" series.
「日本侠客伝」の笠原和夫「狼と豚と人間」の深作欣二それに「いれずみ突撃隊」の石井輝男が共同でシナリオを執筆、石井輝男が監督したアクションもの。撮影は「牝」の星島一郎。
Seiji Nawate
An early ninkyo film from before the genre had truly established its form. Koji Tsuruta plays an honourable outlaw who saves an older man from an ambush. It turns out the man is the head of a hard working clan appointed to a railway construction project. A ruthless yakuza gang is also trying to get their share of the project and attempts to sabotage the work. After the old man dies, his son (Sonny Chiba) and daughter (Junko Fuji) try to complete the project. Tsuruta joins them while also falling in love with a local woman working in a bar (after all, Tsuruta always was more of a lover than his stoic colleague Takakura).
First movie of the Inu series directed by Tokuzō Tanaka
[Period covered: 1582-1594]. As the film opens, the warlod Nobunaga Oda rides to Iga Ayanokuni shrine. He is asked if he thinks he has destroyed all the ninja who opposed him and answers that he suspects that there may be more. A servant brings water and tests it first. The paige dies and we hear gunshots as two ninja flee the scene. His suspicions confirmed, Nobunaga oversees the execution of captured ninja and decides that, in the future, he needs a much crueler method of execution. The daimyo Hideyoshi comes to visit.
Sadamitsu Miki
In the mountain regions of Hida, the dreams of a peasant named Kyonosuke, who longed to be a samurai, come true when he becomes one of three doubles, of shadows, of Lord Yasutaka. After months of intense and cruel training, he faces his destiny when the Lord and the other two shadows are killed in battle and he must take on the role of Lord Yasutaka....
Nagasaki at the end of the Edo period had the taste of a criminal paradise, where, despite the exotic, dangerous work was always in demand. Here, three wandering samurai who earn their living by killing get to know each other. Soon they learn that government officials will be transporting a large cargo of gold and decide to steal it.
Toshizo Hijikata
As winds of change sweep Japan, an honest man joins the Shinsenhumi out of admiration for its leader and because he wants to live and die as a samurai. However, as his involvement grows, reality and idealism come into deadly conflict.
Higashinosuke Yamagata
Shinjiro is a rambler, a single sword carrying lone wolf with only his fighting skills to protect him. He doesn’t know where his road leads, only that he must find his lost sister, and the ronin who stole her away. The ronin that Shinjiro has sworn to kill. On the road he’ll find his sister and test his blade against his bitter enemy. He also encounters a lost boy searching for his father, a boy he will swear to protect, and find his own lost love, a daughter of the yakuza who draws him into a frenzied and bloody battle between rival yakuza gangs for the control of a frightened town.
Sôshi Tada
The son of an executioner and the assassin he loved yet murdered learns of his origins, leaving his foster parents to avenge his mother's death.
Miki Hirate
勝新太郎が盲目の居合抜きの達人・座頭市を演じ、彼の代表作となった人気シリーズの第1作。博打のツボ振りと居合抜きの達人である盲目の男・座頭市は、下総飯岡の貸元・助五郎の食客となる。市は肺を患う浪人・平手造酒と知り合い友情の念を抱くが、平手は助五郎と対立する笹川一家の食客だった。やがて市と平手は、運命的な対決へと導かれていく。
Crime film distributed by Taiho.
Kuroiwa
Two young crooks who scam betters in the race track are employed by a yakuza gang called the Shigemori Syndicate to steal a shipment of handguns from a rival gang. Somewhere in the process they find themselves on the run from their own gang and one of them becomes himself romantically entangled with the boss's girlfriend. An ambitious underboss of the gang offers them a way out if they murder the previous boss but things don't turn out as planned (for everyone).
Japanese mystery film marking Yuka Mizuhara's film debut.
5 criminals organize a jailbreak in search of a cache of stolen diamonds.
実は相当がめつい女社長に入れあげるケチな会社社長(天知)、愛する女性(池内)を田舎まで追うも人違いされ住人に歓待される青年(菅原)、結婚詐欺師の標的にされる幼稚園の先生(三原)らの、愛や欲が渦巻く恋の駆け引きが展開する。
Muteppô no Masa
In this fifth episode of the "Wataridori" series, Taki Shinji (Kobayashi Akira) drifts north to Hokkaido, where he helps protect an Ainu village from unscrupulous land developers.
第二次大戦下、天田(天知)親子は三人の人物にスパイ容疑をかけられ父は獄中死する。月日は流れ、偽名で古美術商を営む天田は、社会的地位を得る三者に復讐を誓うが、当時取調官だった警視総監の娘で警視庁の宇野(宇津井)の婚約者・洋子(三ツ矢)に近づくうちに恋におちる。
Japanese comedy film.
Japanese crime film.
Japanese action film.
Shirô Shimizu
仏教系の大学に通う清水四郎は、恩師の矢島教授の下で彼の一人娘の幸子と婚約していたが、謎めいた笑みを浮かべる同窓の田村がしつこくつきまとってくるため、彼の誘惑から逃れようとして逆に次々と罪を重ねていく。まもなく、幸子を自動車事故で亡くしてしまった四郎は実家へ戻るが、そこに住む画家の谷口円斎の娘で幸子にそっくりなサチ子と恋に落ちる。しかし、田村に加えて四郎に轢き逃げされたヤクザの志賀恭一の情婦が復讐しようと後を追ってきたため、四郎は吊り橋でもみ合っているうちに2人を殺害してしまう。
その晩、四郎の父の剛造が経営する老人ホーム「天上園」の創立十周年記念パーティーでは集団食中毒が発生し、入所老人たちが全員死亡。更に復讐にやってきた志賀の母が酒に毒を盛ったことで、四郎も剛造もすべての人間が悶死する。死の間際、地獄へ落ちる幻想を見た四郎は、そこで会った幸子の霊から彼女が四郎の子を身ごもっていたことや、その子も水子になって地獄へ落ちていることを告げられる。四郎は我が子を見つけるべく、八大地獄の修羅場をさまようのだった。
Lieutenant Colonel Shiizaki
Japanese war film.
Kazuhiro Moroki
From the king of Japanese exploitation films comes a criminal drama told in a semi-documentary fashion. The murder of the chief official of Kobe city's Customs triggers an investigation of a prostitution ring called the 'Yellow Line' that sells Japanese women. A hired assasin is betrayed by his organization, and kidnaps a woman who happens to be the girlfriend of a newspaper reporter.
Lt. Commander Fushimi
During the naval battle of Midway in WWII, the battleship Mutsu was in its home port in Japan. The ship's officers and crew were frustrated at not being able to take part in the fighting. They had been held back by orders from the Naval Ministry, but there was also a plot by saboteurs, who were trying to prevent the sailing of the Mutsu. Director Komori developed a suspenseful plot by including a fictional adaptation of the Russian spy Richard Sorge, who had been captured in Japan and subsequently executed. Komori brings a fictional Russian spy to the screen by portraying him as a military attaché at the German embassy. As Germany was an ally of Japan in WWII, a secret agent being a mole in the German embassy is a perfect cover. The interaction of the saboteurs and the officers and crew of the Mutsu make an exciting story.
Japanese thriller.
Koji Machida
Freelance reporter “Scoop” Machida is hot on the trail of a prostitution ring called the Black Line, when he is framed for the murder of a young woman. Forced to clear his own name, the handsome journalist sinks deeper into the Black Line’s rotten swamp of drugs, prostitution, and murder and finds unexpected help in Maya, a steamy female gambler familiar with the neon-lit streets, shadowy alleyways, and seedy nightclubs he must navigate. The closest film in the Line series to classic American film noir, Ishii’s Black Line is a pulpy assortment of crime film conventions including the starkly expressionistic black and white cinematography by Jûgyô Yoshida, a jazzy music score by Michiaki Watanabe, and a sleazy screenplay by Ishii and Ichirô Miyagawa.
Hayase Chikara
1959 Shintoho adaptation of Kyoka Izumi's novel "A Woman's Pedigree".
Japanese war film.
Iemon Tamiya
The ghost of a samurai's wife takes revenge on her husband.
First Lieutenant Yokoyama
Rika, a manageress of a night club is about to be arrested on suspicion of smuggling. However, she escapes through the assistance rendered her by First Lieutenant Yokoyama of the Japanese Naval Commander's Office. After the end of war, Yokoyama plans to escape from riot-ridden Amoy and finally succeeds with the help of Rika to whom he gives a destroyer. Rika is actually the leader of a gang of pirates, and plans to rule the East China Sea by crushing Banryu, her rival.
Japanese crime film.
Nobutaka Takenaka
Tamio takes Itsuko to an art gallery and the two find one painting is a nude portrait of Itsuko's mother, who disappeared twenty years ago when she was just a baby. No one knows the first thing about the artist who painted it, but he goes by the name Shiro Sofue, and he's always wearing shades in the daytime...
Japanese spy film.
First Officer of the Yamato
In 1941, overpopulated Japan faces an economic boycott and its armed forces push further to the south. And despite negotiations between Japan and the U. S. A. war is declared with the attack on Pearl Harbour. Victories follow for Japan on land and sea and her forces push forward to the borders of India. But gradually the tide turns in favour of the Allies and after the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan is compelled to accept the Potsdam Declaration and by the order of the Emperor agrees to unconditional surrender. Under the supervision of the occupation forces the International Military Tribunal opens in Tokyo to try the Japanese war leaders. Established in the cause of justice, and to prevent future aggressive wars the trials drag on for two and a half years. And on December 23, 1948, General Tojo and six other war leaders mount the thirteen steps to the gallows at Tokyo's Sugamo prison.
Noboru Gôda
Part of the Queen Bee series.
Japanese drama film.
First film in Teruo Ishii's Line series.
軍の機密文書が何者かに盗まれた。波島はそれを田沢の仕業であると断定、田沢は無実にも関わらず自白を強要された末射殺される。だが全ては田沢の妻に目を付けた波島の謀略であった。田沢は亡霊となって甦り、その怨念に悩まされた波島は破滅の道を歩んでいく。
Japanese film.
Japanese comedy film released to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Shintoho's founding.
Japanese crime film.
Udaka is a new, post-war city where corruption has already taken hold. A persistent district attorney wants to arrest and convict Katsumata, a laughing, self-confident thug. The D.A. gets an anonymous letter about the suicide five years' before of a city council member. Evidence about the case leads the D.A. to Tachibana, struggling to go straight after involvement with the mob and a prison sentence for killing the man responsible for the rape and suicide of his fiancée. One of Tachibana's friends is Keiko, the daughter of the dead councilman and the ward of another powerful official. How do these stories connect?
Mazaki
Earlier version or Prequel to Queen Bee and the School for Dragons.
Japanese film.
Japanese mystery film.
1957 crime film
Staff Sergeant Tsuneyoshi
The year is 1937, and it has been six months since the Sendai Infantry left for Manchuria. The rotted corpse of a young woman is found at the bottom of a well, but her face and limbs are gone. The military police begin an investigation and search fervently for the person responsible, but they can't even determine the victim's identity, much less find any clues. However, the incident is made public when newspapers give wide coverage to the story, so Staff Sergeant Kosaka is dispatched from Tokyo to solve the case. Eventually, General Tsunekichi is taken into custody by local infantrymen because of the testimony of another unit, but the spirit of the dead woman appears before Staff Sergeant Kosaka, who continues to investigate on his own...
A samurai rescues a mischievous tanuki from hunters and sets it free. When the samurai's wastrel son hatches a plot to kill his father for his fortune, the magical tanuki is determined to protect its rescuer.
Meiji Tenno portrayed the ramp up to the Russo-Japan War. In addition to showing the political events that led to war, it also showed the era from the story of a farm family in rural Japan who sent their son off to war. As such, it could be considered an anti-war movie, showing how, while war is devised by governments, the people do not really understand what war is, and it's combatants often do not know what they are fighting for.
Asaka Keinosuke
Famed detective Dandy Sashichi tries to solve who's behind the serial murders of six beautiful women under the aegis of local showman Ibaragiya. The film opens with the sextet humiliating a respected painter's portraits of them, driving the man to a suspicious suicide. Later, while celebrating his son's impending marriage into a wealthy family, Ibaragiya releases six pigeons from a pleasure boat, each with a rolled up drawing of one of the beauties tied to their legs. He offers a cash reward to whomever recovers the pictures, but they instead become death notices of which of the six are next to die.
Assistant Osugi
A 1956 alien invasion tokusatsu film directed by Shinichi Sekizawa, the screenwriter noted for his immense contributions to Toho's Godzilla series by providing the screenplays/stories for the majority of the original Showa films.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto leads the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy to defeat the American Fleet.
Yûzô Yamauchi
Kizaki, an upstart at a trading company has one more assignment for the day before meeting his lovely girlfriend, Natsuki for a date. Little does he know that he's walking straight into a trap set up by his boss, Asanuma and his murderous right hand man. The next day Kizaki finds himself framed for the murder of the company president, and the robbing of the company safe. Natsuki innocently waves goodbye to her loved ones as the boat sails only find herself caught in Asanuma's evil scheming and the object of his lust. In a desperate attempt to escape, she falls to the watery depths. When we next see her she has washed ashore like a siren in the nude on a deserted island inhabited by five castaways who fight each other for her. She learns there's a rich wealth of clams underwater and eventually comes into a large fortune in pearls. Once rescued, she returns to Japan with revenge on her mind.
Scammer Horikawa Shinbei hopes to make a quick buck using Namie, a stripper under his control.
元香川家の農園主任技師の作之助は、病のために御婚約破棄になった朝子に対して深い愛情を抱いていた。平和な農園にも悪夢のような戦争が訪れ、爆弾の落ちる猛火の中、退避する夜に、二人の心はあらゆる自制心を超えた熱い抱擁に固く結ばれたが、翌日に作之助は外地に出征することに。敗戦後、華族の特権は失われ、薄幸に泣く朝子は俗界を去り、法籍に身を置くことになる。それを知った作之助は農園に急ぐが一足違いで会うことができず…。
Takes place in one place, a beer hall, over the course of one evening. Uchida employs this concentration of setting and time to fashion a microcosm for a group portrait of Japan. One by one, the regulars of the bar appear: the pianist who dreams of becoming a composer but has disappeared from the music world after a knifing; a stripper who had planned to be a ballet dancer; an elderly painter trying to make a living at pachinko, and who rues his art having been used for militarist propaganda during the war; a young waitress considering elopement; a colonel turned real estate broker who attempts to rouse the crowd in military song until he realizes the tune has been transformed by marchers in the street into a leftist chant. The "twilight" is more than just a time of day; here, it is a state of being, a suspension between past and present, between the camaraderie of the saloon and the harsh world outside.
Horror film about a killer dwarf.
Suspense film based on the "Carbine Gang Incident" that happened in June 1954 in Japan.