Zatoichi comes upon the town of Tonda, overrun by gangsters. Using one of his favorite techniques, Zatoichi proceeds to win 8 ryo in a rigged gambling game. Of course, the…

The ghost of a samurai’s wife takes revenge on her husband.

Shuhei Hirayama is a widower with a 24-year-old daughter. Gradually, he comes to realize that she should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life,…

In this Japanese drama, a dry goods merchant’s daughter is surprised to discover that she has a twin sister. In rural Japan it was thought that twins bring bad luck,…

Yoshida’s first big-budget production and colour film is a haunting tale of unrequited love and postwar disillusion. The story of the fatal attraction between a spineless intellectual and a strong…

In Kabuki style, the film tells the story of a remote mountain village where the scarcity of food leads to a voluntary but socially-enforced policy in which relatives carry 70-year-old…

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…

Ryuji Oshima, a gambler, kills Saiga in self-defense, and considering himself unfit to lead men, secludes himself in a temple to atone for his misdeeds. At home, when his mother,…

Set in Kawaguchi in the early 60s, this simple story chronicles the lives of foundry families and one girl’s dreams of higher education.

A woman marries, gives birth to a stillborn child, and divorces, falls in love with a hotel-keeper, only to find herself subordinated to his drive for success, takes up with…

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…

A pair of down-on-their-luck swordsmen arrive in a dusty, windblown town, where they become involved in a local clan dispute. One, previously a farmer, longs to become a noble samurai….

A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the…

In the city of Yokosuka, Kinta and his lover Haruko, both involved with yakuza, brave the post-occupation period with a goal to be together.

The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and…

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s…

In the summer of 1941, the United States and Japan seem on the brink of war after constant embargos and failed diplomacy come to no end. “Tora! Tora! Tora!”, named…

Horus, a kid living in an unnamed Scandinavian/Eastern Europe culture of the Iron Age, recovers the Sword of the Sun from the rock giant Maug and learns from his dying…

Japan, 1860. The men of the Mito clan, victims of the Ansei purge, anxiously prowl around the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle with the intention of assassinating Naosuke Ii of…

A teacher at a Japanese school tries to hide his outcast upbringing.

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

The story follows a university student who moves into an apartment building and becomes involved with a waitress. The landlord then attempts to evict the tenants and sell the building…

Italy is usually cited as the anchor of the neo-realist movement in cinema, but Mikio Naruse’s Ginza Cosmetics (1951) is a reminder that Japan had its own output equally rooted…

A salaryman’s drunken ravings in public attract the attention of journalists who coerce him into telling them his life’s story.