Masao Kosugi

A newspaper reporter investigates the lives of juvenile delinquents.

Outside of a small village in Japan, a mysterious pond is inhabited by mythic creatures. Their story is of revenge, tragedy, and the power of real love. A classical tale which translates wonderfully to film.

Kumokiri Nizaemon, a former samurai warrior, has abandoned his class to become the leader of a gang of thieves. He leads his outlaws in an attempt to rob the castle of his former clan.

Japanese film based on the song by Harumi Miyako.

Japanese action film.

Japanese crime film.

Suspense film about a beautiful photographer who becomes involved in a murder case.

Youth movie.

The film follows the story of Sugi Toranosuke, a ronin, who returns to his home town of Edo many years after his attempted suicide as a sickly child. Rescued and adopted by a master swordsman, he has grown into a master swordsman and a very kind gentleman. The time is around 1868 the year that the nails were finally put into the coffin containing the feudal system that nurtured and sustained the samurai. Sugi is confused and unsure about what is happening but his teacher wants him out of the chaos of the multiple power struggles between the various clans.

Japanese crime film.

A sentimental drama about aspiring artist, Eiji, who rescues a blind girl. His friends Goro and Minoru and the blind girl's sister Kazue are a happy group until Goro steals money from Kazue's purse. Goro is arrested and his friends start bothering Eiji. To escape their harassment he changes jobs. But then he becomes the victim of an unexpected accident.

Two assassins are hired to carry out a hit on the second wife of a candle merchant, but someone is watching...

Teenage film

A ryokan maid is on trial for pushing a familiar guest off a cliff to his death. An eager attorney offers to take the case to gain notoriety.

Masuda Toshio film starring Watari Tetsuya and Mori Masayuki, about a lone-wolf type (Watari) seeking love and defending the honor of an elderly widower (Mori).

The story of the desperate struggle between the police and a large crime syndicate.

Set against the background of a giant newspaper company. A girl reporter on the staff of the newspaper witnesses the accidental killing of one of the top executives, whose wife is having an affair with the head of the company.

At midnight, Yamabe, a killer, escapes from prison. Two years before, bribed by a narcotic smuggler, Yamabe killed a real estate broker. As he was being arrested by detective Negoro, the detective's bullet struck Sakuko, Yamabe's girl friend who attempted to protect him, and crippled her. When Yamabe was sent to prison, Negoro cared for her and they fell in love. Sakuko asked him to marry her, but Negoro was reluctant to take the killer's sweetheart from him. Learning of the relationship of his girl friend and the detective, Yamabe had pledged revenge.

Oichi the Blind helps a woman escape the clutches of a high government official to go off with the man she loves. The official puts a reward on her head of fifty gold pieces and soon a menagerie of bounty hunters are after her skin. Three of them band together to accomplish this, one an expert swordsman, another a huge judo master and the third is deadly with a chain. To escape, she heads for the fishing town of Itso but soon comes face to face with Sankuro, the swordsman...

Coming of age/high school sports drama.

A young female samurai comes upon a dying messenger and agrees to deliver the scroll he was carrying to its destination. However, unbeknownst to her, the scroll is actually a formula for a new kind of gunpowder. An evil clan that is planning to overthrow the Emperor is also after the scroll, and they try to take it from her.

Tonomura has a singular taste in women. He likes them, but he wants them tattooed. To this end, young Osayo has herself decorated with a celebrated flying-angel pattern and in this way brings much pleasure to her patron. A young hoodlum named Shinnosuke also covets the tattooed maiden. He, decorated with the design of a famous thief, finally gets to her and she responds as she rarely does with her older lover. Also in love with her is a young girl named Okimi who has herself tattooed with a courtesan design just to please the older woman. Having done so, however, she becomes fair prey to the tattoo-loving Tonomura who loses no time in seducing her.

Two rival groups of gangsters vie for control of a tiny port town in northern Japan. Daisuke, a member of the older of the two gangs, and Kosuke, a hoodlum in the newer gang, both fall in love with the daughter of an inn proprietor, even though she evinces more interest in improving the town than in their romantic advances. Eventually, the two hoodlums come to respect her efforts and decide to join forces in ridding the town of all gangsters. The two men succeed in restoring peace to the town and, rejected by the innkeeper's daughter, they leave town as friends.

Years of warfare end in a Japan unified under the Tokugawa shogunate, and samurai spy Sasuke Sarutobi, tired of conflict, longs for peace. When a high-ranking spy named Tatewaki Koriyama defects from the shogun to a rival clan, however, the world of swordsmen is thrown into turmoil. After Sasuke is unwittingly drawn into the conflict, he tracks Tatewaki, while a mysterious, white-hooded figure seems to hunt them both. By tale’s end, no one is who they seemed to be, and the truth is far more personal than anyone suspected. Director Masahiro Shinoda’s Samurai Spy, filled with clan intrigue, ninja spies, and multiple double crosses, marks a bold stylistic departure from swordplay film convention.

When the man who seduced the famous painter Otoko as a teenager--and then wrote a bestselling novel about it--reappears in her life, her pupil--and lesbian lover--hatches a plot to destroy the man and his family.

Assassination begins with the events of 1853 when "four black ships" anchored at Edo Bay, sparking civil unrest and the major political manoeuvring that saw the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate. At a time when assassination had become a disturbing political tool, Shinoda's film follows Hachiro Kiyokawa, an ambitious, masterless samurai whose allegiances drift dangerously between the Shogunate and the Emperor.

Muraki, a hardboiled Yakuza gangster, has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for murder. Revisiting his old gambling haunts, he meets Saeko, a striking young upper-class woman who is out seeking thrills, and whose presence adds spice to the staid masculine underworld rituals. Muraki becomes her mentor while simultaneously coping with the shifts of power that have affected the gangs while he was interred. When he notices a rogue, drug-addicted young punk hanging around the gambling dens, he realizes that Saeko's insatiable lust for intense pleasures may be leading her to self-destruction.

Follows the lives of three sisters who have a dance act together.

Japanese comedy film.

Takashi Fujiki stars as a rebel in this drama about life on the Yokohama waterfront by New Wave director Masahiro Shinoda. The rebel works as an errand boy for a shipping company and vents his frustrations by plucking on the guitar. His interpretations of popular trends in music are sometimes right-on, and sometimes not exactly. Bereft of his guitar, the rebel's modes of expression are not as effective in generating interest as the Yokohama docks themselves, a fascinating world in their own right.

A treasury official passed over for promotion and obsessed with careerism interferes in the lives of his three sons, who seek escape from his relentless pressure in the mortal danger of mountain climbing.

When two sisters fall in love with the same man, one must decide to look elsewhere.

A woman brings her injured daughter to the hospital, only to realize that the doctor is the estranged father of her child.

Ishihara Kiyoshi plans to marry the woman he loves, Chiee, a coffee shop girl. After an accident, Chiee loses her memory. A romance movie whose original work by Ayako Sono was made into a melodrama by a combination of Shinoda Masahiro and Terayama Shuji.

Eye-popping visuals and black humor mark this wild New Wave masterpiece about a vengeful contractor who hires a series of young killers to target a woman muckraker. Trouble brews when an amateur marksman shows up his eclectic competition.

A reckless student contemplates terrorism in a prescient film that confirmed Shinoda as a fearless member of Shochiku’s iconoclastic New Wave. At the height of student protests, Shimojo (Shinichiro Mikami) takes his aggressions to another level, beset by seemingly insoluble feelings of alienation.

The backstage romances of an egotistical singer and his under-valued manager, a lovelorn bandman and a nude dancer.

A woman diver in great peril is rescued by Shinji, a fisherman. But his deed is belittled by Takiko, another diver, as a rash act. Her attitude, however, is nothing but a cloak to hide her affection for him. Shinji, hard working and manly, becomes the focus of many yearning eyes and Seikichi, the boss' son, picks a quarrel with him and violent fight ensues in which Shinji kills a man in self-defense.

Masaki Kobayashi directs this romantic drama concerning a family of florists.