Nobuo Iida

A young girl moves to Tokyo and endures the rivalries between other high school girls of varying cultural and economic backgrounds.

A little girl who falls into a lake and is saved by a god who then takes her up to the clouds and shows her what the world was like before she was born and what the world would be like if she where never born. While in the clouds she meets her grandparents and a few other people she loved who have passed on.

Onna Hitori Daichi wo Yuku (A Lonely Woman in a Lonely Land, Kinuta Production, 1953) was the second feature film directed by Kamei Fumio, who is known as a master of documentary films, and followed his “Haha Nareba Onna Nareba(Become a Mother, Become a Woman)” (1952).

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.

A Japanese woman, the mistress of an American, falls in love with her servant.

War film by Kon Ichikawa

A young lord joins gang of Robin-esque robbers.

This little seen early work by Ichikawa was produced during the director's Shintoho period (1947-51). Written by Kaneto Shindô and featuring Ryô Ikebe as a young policeman it is part crime drama, part social study. Definitely not an undiscovered masterpiece, but still a must for Ichikawa buffs.

The Angry Street includes a great deal of location shooting in the rebuilt city, including downtown streets, residential neighborhoods, the campus of the University of Tokyo, and the high life of jazzy dance halls. Sudo (Hara Yasumi) and Mori (Uno Jukichi) are two university students who make money by picking up rich girls in dance clubs and conning them into giving them cash. Mori is the brains of the operation, and Sudo is the suave dancer who picks up the girls. Over the course of the film, Sudo becomes involved with three different girls and is drawn into the gangster milieu, which he seems unable to resist even though he is responsible for his mother, grandmother, and sister, Masako (Wakayama Setsuko). In this world of bad boys and girls, Masako is the pillar of strength and moral virtue who finally enables Mori to straighten out.

An early film by Kon Ichikawa

Woman melodrama by Shiro Toyoda

Slice of life film centered around a couple of years in the life of a rural high school girl.

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.

Jurobei, a kaisen tonya (wholesaler in port) in Awa, was wronged and killed on the day of the Dance Festival by the evil merchant & the chamberlin. His brother (Kazuo Hasegawa) vowed vengeance on the day of his brother's death. So every year the villains are worried during the Awa Dance Festival (which is part of the Obon festival), but nothing has ever happened, until seven years later...

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

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.

Chorus of a Million People