For Kayako

A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.

A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food.

Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.

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 name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men.

In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains.

Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.

A blind female assassin lives alone in a remote house; her superiors occasionally send her "clients" / targets that she shoots right after having sex with them in her completely darkened bedroom.

Go, Masao! describes the relationship between people and their dogs. Comedian Hideki Matsumoto and a labrador retriever named Masao are selected to appear on the travel corner segment of a TV animal program. Until Hideki Matsumoto and the labrador retriever Masao become popular, they help each other.

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.

Kaji, sent to the Japanese army labeled Red, witnesses cruelties in the army and revolts against the abusive treatment against a fellow recruit. He also sees his friend Shinjô defecting to the Russian border, and he ends in the front to fight a lost battle against the Russian tanks division.

The mother of a feudal lord's only heir is kidnapped by the lord. Her husband and his samurai father must decide whether to accept the unjust decision, or risk death to rescue her.

A lonely, chain-smoking office lady in Tokyo falls for her teacher when she decides to take English lessons. When her teacher disappears, she sets out on a journey to find him.

In Burma during the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier separated from his unit disguises himself as a Buddhist monk to escape imprisonment as a POW.

Two detectives are tasked to investigate the murder of an old man, found bludgeoned to death in a Tokyo rail yard.

In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.

Expelled from her group for losing her virginity, blind travelling musician Orin endures a life of hardship, abuse, and poverty while wandering the countryside, finding brief companionship with an army deserter, and struggling against a society that marginalises her.

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.

Based on the "2.26 Incident", an attempted coup d'état in Japan 1936, launched by radical ultra-nationalist parts of the military. Several leading politicians were killed and the center of Tokyo was briefly held by the insurgents before the coup was suppressed.

This erotically charged drama traces the intersecting stories of a group of employees and visitors at a notorious "love hotel" in Tokyo's red-light district.

Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, even foregoing other customers while Jihei schemes to somehow buy her freedom. His efforts yield ruinous consequences for his business and his family life, and Koharu is meanwhile purchased by another client.

A look at the relationship between a young blind samurai and his wife, who will make a sacrifice in order to defend her husband's honor.

A world wide electrical outage occurs. Everything that requires electricity comes to a stop. Tokyo is nearly ruined. Yoshiyuki Suzuki decides to escape from Tokyo with his family.

21st Century Girl is an omnibus feature that is of the girls, by the girls and for the girls. The work of 15 women directors under the age of 30, each of whom contributed an 8-minute film, the package highlights a range of genres, visions and thematic concerns.

This 1989 drama is an adaptation of Natsuki Ikezawa's Akutagawa Prize-winning novel. It depicts the mysterious life of a young pianist who loses her future and mental balance after a broken heart, and a mysterious woman who appears before her. Marie (Kaho Minami) works part-time at a dyeing factory in downtown Tokyo. Three months ago, her left hand suddenly stopped working, despite her excellent grades at music college as an aspiring pianist. After her boyfriend, cellist Yuji (Arthur Kuroda), was taken away by a classmate, Marie takes a leave of absence from music college and begins receiving treatment. Around that time, Marie met Kiriko (Yuko Tanaka), who worked at the same factory. Marie felt a strange attraction to Kiriko, a mysterious woman she had only spoken to a few times. However, Kiriko suddenly quit the factory for some reason, and a few days later, she approached Marie with a peculiar request for advice…

A drama depicting the conflict between a man that ran to an old lover suffering from advanced leukemia, his wife and child that were left behind, and the friendship that develops between his wife and his former lover.

Ever since an accident in the mountains outside town, Takuji's slept in a coma; his neighbors care for him as new events occur every day.

When Sosuke, a young boy who lives on a clifftop overlooking the sea, rescues a stranded goldfish named Ponyo, he discovers more than he bargained for. Ponyo is a curious, energetic young creature who yearns to be human, but even as she causes chaos around the house, her father, a powerful sorcerer, schemes to return Ponyo to the sea.

After a fishing boat is attacked, the sole surviving crew member realizes it is none other than a resurrected Godzilla. However, efforts to bring the story to light are suppressed by the Japanese government amid growing political tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, who are both willing to bomb Japan to stop the monster.

Godzilla has become a distant memory for Japan when the destruction of a US submarine raises alarms for Admiral Tachibana. His estranged daughter Yuri investigates the legend of the guardian monsters, who must rise to protect Japan against the vengeful spirits within Godzilla that seek to destroy both the nation and its people for the suffering they inflicted in the Pacific conflict.

Originally released in Japan as "The Return of Godzilla" in 1984, this is the heavily re-edited, re-titled "Godzilla 1985". Adding in new footage of Raymond Burr, this 16th Godzilla film ignores all previous sequels and serves as a direct follow-up to the 1956 "Godzilla King of the Monsters", which also featured scenes with Burr edited into 1954's "Godzilla". This film restores the darker tone of the original, as we witness the nuclear destruction of giant lizard terrorizing Japan.

A nuclear explosion in the far north unleashes Gamera, the legendary flying turtle, from his sleep under the ice. In his search for energy, Gamera wreaks havoc over the entire world, and it's up to the scientists, assisted by a young boy with a strange sympathic link to the monster, to put a stop to Gamera's rampage.

A young boy with a troubled home life becomes "chosen," and he stumbles into the middle of a great war of yōkai (a class of mythological creatures), where he meets a group of friendly yōkai who become his companions through his journey. Now he must fight to protect his friends and free the world of the yōkai from oppression.

Jack Elliot, a one-time MVP for the New York Yankees is now on the down side of his baseball career. With a falling batting average, does he have one good year left and can the manager of the Chunichi Dragons, a Japanese Central baseball league find it in him?

While pursuing his dream of having car sex, a goofy middle-aged man makes all the wrong moves and ends up enrolling in a number of crazy escapades.

Every Monday, a young woman is murdered in the subway, leading psychiatrist Setsuko Suma to investigate Dr. Rei Aku's deprogramming of former sect members.

Unholy Women (Kowai onna), is a composite of three unrelated half-hour horror movies. A compilation of 3 separate short horror films (Rattle Rattle, Hagane, The Inheritance) written and directed by Keita Amemiya, Takuji Suzuki, and Keisuke Toyoshima respectively. The first segment, “Rattle Rattle”, tells the story of a young woman who is pursued by an evil other-worldly being. The second movie, “Steel”, concerns a young man who agrees to take the sister of his boss out on a blind date, drawing him into a world more frightening than he ever dreamed possible. The third and final episode, “The Inheritance”, is a supernatural tale of a woman and her young son, scarred by abuse and psychological trauma.

In 1945, after the horrific fire-bombings of the Pacific War levels Japan to the ground, the government consults spiritual psychics to aid them in winning the war. Unfortunately, the souls' resentment and agony of the victims culminate together to revive the evil Onmyoji, Yasunori Kato. Only a young, psychically imbued priests' apprentice will dare fight the evil magician.