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.
A skilled country doctor's talents are such that he can even perform operations as difficult and novel as removing a patient's kidney for the first time in Japan. Unfortunately for him, however, his wife's addiction to gambling is of such a magnitude that he is down to selling his underwear to make money. The image sticks and he becomes known as the 'underwear doctor.' On the other hand, his successful surgery's patient is so grateful he himself wants to become a physician.
Men are being murdered by a psycho called "The Telegian," who uses a matter-transmitting device to locate his victims.
An Ishiro Honda film.
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?
Osumi
Mining engineer Shigeru investigates the disappearance and death of his fellow coworkers when prehistoric nymphs are discovered emerging from the mines. After an attack on the local village, Shigeru heads deeper into the mines only to make a more horrifying discovery in the form a prehistoric flying creature. Soon a second monster appears as the two converge in Fukuoka.
With one of the busiest film industries in the world, Japan was able to submit several films into competition at the 1957 Berlin Film Festival. One of the best of these was Arashi, directed by Hiroshi Inagaki of Rickshaw Man fame. Anticipating Hollywood's Table for Five by nearly a quarter of a century, the film concerns the efforts by a recently widowed high-school teacher to raise his four children alone. Chihu Ryu is terrific as the central character, while Izumi Yukimura is even better as Ryu's eldest daughter. For reasons unknown, Arashi is often omitted from "official" lists of Inagaki's films.
The Boy's Mother (uncredited)
Em 1956 o filme japonês "Gojira", primeiro filme do Godzilla, foi editado e re-lançado nos EUA. Mudanças na história incluem um novo personagem: o repórter Steve Martin, interpretado pelo ator canadense Raymond Burr, que virou protagonista e narrador da história, relatando a invasão do gigantesco monstro a Tóquio.
Otatsu
An Ishiro Honda film.
A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.
(uncredited)
An Ishiro Honda film.
Mrs. Yamada
Um gigantesco réptil mutante surge em virtude de testes nucleares. A monstruosa criatura cria um rastro de destruição no seu caminho até Tóquio, que corre o risco de ser totalmente destruída se o monstro não for detido.
Como é a vida de uma gueixa quando sua beleza desapareceu e ela se aposentou? Okin guardou seus ganhos e tornou-se agiota, passando os dias a cobrar friamente os juros das quantias que empresta. Mesmo suas melhores amigas, ex-gueixas como ela - Otomi, Tamae e Nobu, devem-lhe dinheiro. Para todas elas, o glamour de suas vidas já passou e agora o problema é garantir o sustento nos difíceis tempos do pós-guerra. Seus filhos e amantes não aliviam a dureza de suas vidas.
A legendary gangster raises himself out of a small town and gathers followers on his rise to power.
Woman Farmer in front of Gono
No século XVI, durante a era Sengoku, quando os poderosos samurais de outrora estavam com os dias contados, pois eram agora desprezados pelos seus aristocráticos senhores. Kambei (Takashi Shimura), um guerreiro veterano sem dinheiro, chega em uma aldeia indefesa que foi saqueada repetidamente por ladrões assassinos. Os moradores do vilarejo pedem sua ajuda, fazendo com que Kambei recrute seis outros ronins (samurais sem mestre), que concordam em ensinar os habitantes como devem se defender em troca de comida. Os aldeões dão boas-vindas aos guerreiros e algumas relações começam. Katsushiro (Ko Kimura) se apaixona por uma das mulheres locais, embora os outros ronins mantenham distância dos camponeses. O último dos guerreiros que chega é Kikuchio (Toshiro Mifune), que finge estar qualificado mas na realidade é o filho de um camponês que almeja aceitação.
Uma noiva insinuante desenvolve laços afetuosos com o sogro enquanto seu marido frio a desdenha por outra mulher.
Ten years into a marriage, the wife is disappointed by the husband's lack of financial success, meaning she has to work and can't treat herself and the husband finds the wife slovenly and mean-spirited: she neither cooks not cleans particularly well and is generally disagreeable. In turn, he alternately ignores her and treats her as a servant. Neither is particularly happy, not helped by their unsatisfactory lodgers. The husband is easily seduced by an ex-colleague, a widow with a small child who needs some security, and considers leaving his wife.
A married couple looking for an apartment move in with the husband's co-worker, a widower. The husband becomes jealous of the widower and his wife.
Shunpei's wife Miyo
When a group of young geologists declares a mountainside marked for residential development unstable, they are met with scorn on two fronts. On one end, they must contend with the local villagers who balk at the prospect of relocation; on the other, they face the ambitions of the headstrong lumber baron, whose actions will only further destabilize the land. Their pleas for reason ignored, the scientists can do little but observe as nature runs its inevitable course.
Cleaner
Melodrama by Kon Ichikawa
The critical establishment was clearly not prepared to accept a woman's prison film featuring former prostitutes recovering from venereal diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and estranged lovers. With its cat fights, hysterical tantrums, film noir lighting, and dramatic music, White Beast is indicative of the new influences of the Hollywood psychological thriller on Naruse. Caged (John Cromwell, 1950) initiated a cycle of women's prison movies in the United States that may or may not have been shown in Japan, but the stylistics of White Beast draw on the same paranoid woman's films and film noir conventions that preceded the American cycle.
Three humorous love stories set in rural Japan.
Female Teacher A
Slice of life film centered around a couple of years in the life of a rural high school girl.
In this semi-documentary, an older locomotive driver is tasked with training younger ones and is currently training two in particular. The old man is finding the task overwhelming as it is hard work with practical lessons and classroom components. His wife has died, but he has three daughters with the oldest taking care of her younger siblings.
Okoma's mother
Okoma, a witty young woman working as a conductor in an old, rickety bus in Kōfu, Yamanashi (rural Japan), has a creative idea that could avert the dwindling number of passengers when her job and the bus company itself are at stake.
Japanese war-era film
Ine Onoda, a filha mais velha de uma família de fazendeiros pobres, cria um potro desde que nasce e passa a ama-lo muito. Quando o cavalo cresce, o governo ordena que seja leiloado e vendido ao exército. Ine luta para impedir a venda.
A Fond Face from the Past is also set in a rural community, specifically a village outside Kameoka, near Kyoto. In some ways this short, thirty-six-minute film is Naruse's most moving negotiation of the militarist restrictions of the time, perhaps because it is also his most direct engagement with the culture of war. When a newsreel comes to Kameoka featuring a local man named Yoichi, it causes some excitement in the community and, of course, in Yoichi's own family. First of all his mother makes the newsreel (Nippon News, no. 14), which begins with the same marching music that opens his own film, followed by a curious baby judging context in Los Angeles featuring two hundred Japanese babies. Released in January 1941, almost a year before the pacific war begins, this “found footage” is indicative of Japanese imperialist ambitions beyond Asia long before Pearl Harbor.
This film depicts a troupe of wandering kabuki players traveling through rural Japan.
The only son of a sushi chef hates sushi and decides to leave home to search for a job and make his own way.
