The Forest Is Alive

A young queen requests a bouquet of snowdrop flowers for New Year's Day in exchange for a reward. One greedy woman sends her stepdaughter, whom she does not like, to look for the flowers in a cold forest, knowing the task will be impossible for her. The girl almost freezes to death in the forest, but she is rescued by the spirits of the Twelve Months, who create spring around her. The girl is able to deliver the bouquet to the queen, but others want a share of the reward.

A young girl must spend six years making sweatshirts out of poison ivy in order to save her six brothers which have been turned into swans by an evil sorceress.

Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel.

After handing in a report on the treatment of Chinese colonial labor, Kaji is offered the post of labour chief at a large mining operation in Manchuria, which also grants him exemption from military service. He accepts and moves with his newlywed wife Michiko, but when he tries to put his ideas of more humane treatment into practice, he finds himself at odds with scheming officials, cruel foremen, and the military police.

An elderly Nagasaki hibakusha spends a summer caring for her four grandchildren, whose curiosity about the 1945 bombing stirs buried memories and moral questions. When an American nephew from Hawaii visits, the family confronts grief, guilt, and the possibility of reconciliation across generations.

Judo movie.

A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu is on the run from the police.

With her family suffering from extreme poverty, Yuko, as the eldest daughter, is sold to a successful brothel in Kyoto. There she is assigned to serve Takamatsu, one of the brothel’s top customers. But while Takamatsu falls madly in love with Yuko, she finds herself attracted to a young priest named Kunugida. Torn by jealousy, Takamatsu hatches an evil plan to tear them apart.

After being cruelly set up and deceived by Sugimi, a detective in cahoots with the mob with whom she was whole-heartedly in love, Matsushima’s desire for revenge knows no bounds.

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 sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.

On a Tokyo dump’s shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who “drives” an imaginary trolley, a homeless father and son designing a dream house, a young woman brutalized at home, drunks, schemers, and saints of small kindnesses. Kurosawa crafts a ragged mosaic of hardship, fantasy, and flickers of grace that keep people moving forward.

A woman, Tome, is born to a lower class family in Japan in 1918. The title refers to an insect, repeating its mistakes, as in an infinite circle. Imamura, with this metaphor, introduces the life of Tome, who keeps trying to change her poor life.

Two young women must come to terms with the fact that a man they're deeply linked to is a murdering rapist.

In feudal Japan, when any commerce with the rest of the world is strictly prohibited, an idealist appears at an isolated inn, headquarters of smugglers with stolen money intended to ransom his loved one forced to work in a brothel.

Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades.

The 21-year-old feudal on Sendai, Tsunamune Date, was prohibited to go out in the daytime for his misbehavior during his short stay in Edo. On the next day, his 4 attendants were killed one after another. Sakai Utanokamike, the Rozyu, is turned out to be involved in this scheme, and the aim is to destroy the Date family. Tsunamune's brother Munekatsu Date who is willing to take over the family doesn't know the real purpose of Utanokami and helps him. Munesuku Harada gets to know the whole picture of the incident and takes action alone for the sake of protecting the Date family, leaving his own family. His lonely fight continues for 10 years and he got in danger in Utanokamike's house, and...

A young journalist interviews an elderly woman about being forced into prostitution in Borneo at a brothel called Sandakan No. 8.

A soldier has been in the Japanese military for the entirety of WWII, and in that time, his dedication to the army has never faltered. However, as the war draws to a close, his commanding officers become increasingly desperate and push their men to ever more absurd extremes. The ridiculousness of the orders from above peak when the hero of the story is assigned to drive a one-man submarine straight into the hull of an enemy battleship.

Though his parents help him run the family business, Jun still feels persecuted by their love; when they bar him from meeting with his girlfriend, tensions increase.

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.

Real-Life stripper Madoka Mika plays the fictional ROSE RED, a former striptease queen who is now doing roadshow engagements while trying to raise her child and balance her love affairs.

In Tokugawa-era (1637) Shimabara, oppressed peasant Christians revolt against the shogunate with the aid of charismatic Christian rebel leader Shiro Amakusa.

The story contrasts the life of two doctors, former classmates and now both assistant professors at Naniwa University Hospital in Osaka. The brilliant and ambitious surgeon Goro Zaizen stops at nothing to rise to a position of eminence and authority, while the friendly Shuji Satomi busies himself with his patients and research.

Shimada is a student of U College. When the college's baseball team wins the day, he and his friend Ito drug two girls they met at the game.

The film tells the story of four orphans living in an impoverished mining town. An adaptation of a best-selling book based on the diary of a ten-year-old zainichi (ethnic Korean Japanese) girl, it was one of the first films to deal with the subject of zainichi identity and struggles in Japan.

Kohei Misugi works in a vegetable market, but his ambition is to be a photographer. He is given his first opportunity to demonstrate his talent by the Sakura Film Company which offers him an assignment to "Cover Tokyo" with a camera. But he is disillusioned when he is told he must work together with Miharu, a good looking girl in the film company's publicity department. Then the fun begins.

Set in the pleasure district of Kyoto, Tamiko (Yoshiko Mita, in her first lead role) is a young girl attending high school by day and training as a geisha at night She sees her future as an entertainer, not a prostitute, & she expects a happy marriage with a medical student, Yasuke (Katsuo Nakamura), a sweet fellow she deeply loves. but things started to getting worse for Tamiko and she's forced to become the mistress of the disgusting Tsukada (Seiji Miyaguchi).

When her only relative, her elder brother is accused of robbing and murdering an old woman loan-shark, pretty, young Kiriko travels from her home in Kyushu to Tokyo to get Japan's top lawyer to defend her brother. Unfortunately her naive idealism is shattered when the lawyer refuses to take the case based on her insufficient funds. What follows is a long determined revenge plot that sees the heroine become a Tokyo bar hostess and worse to punish the lawyer. The plot thickens with another murder mystery and a sleuthing reporter.

One year after the Kidojis' eldest son Otohiko was arrested for his part in a terrorist kidnapping, which resulted in multiple deaths, all the other perpetrators' parents have either resigned from their professional positions or taken their own lives, Nobuyuki Kidoji remains adamant that he is not responsible for his son's actions.

A pioneer farmer's stubborn dream of building Japan's greatest ranch is put to the test when a leisure resort company sets its sights on his village's land.

The story of Sanshiro Sugata, a young man who wants to learn the new art of judo. A wise teacher reveals to Sanshiro that judo is not merely a means of combat nor a demonstration of physical skill, but an art which reveals the artist to himself.

Once again we focus on Nami Matsushima. This time she has a sister who goes missing and after getting too caught up in doing something about it, our innocent heroine is given a fifteen year sentence for a murder she didn't commit. She's sent to an all women prison where she's not exactly welcome. Her fellow inmates torture, humiliate and try to kill her; but the Scorpion prevails long enough to get some justice.

This TV dramatization of Kitakata Kenzo's hard-boiled novel depicts a man who fights a deadly battle with a group of corrupt bosses who control the hot spring town. Sakaguchi, the owner of a long-established inn in a seaside hot spring town, rebels against the Shimoyama Tourism company that dominates the town, and is arrested by the police for a minor assault. One day, Sakaguchi's old best friend Shindo shows up and tells Sakaguchi's son that he will definitely get his father out of the police. (TV film adaptation of the novel, separate from the 1985 Yoichi Sai-directed film)

During the Tokugawa Shogunate, a band of smugglers use a tavern on an isolated island in Edo's Fukagawa district as their base of operations. After the unexpected arrival of an injured man with a troubled past, the men find themselves in a life-or-death situation.

1961 Japanese movie

Five women classmates from a college in Tokyo are on the first stretch of a walking tour when one of them, Masako, falls ill at a railway station. Osen, a middle-aged maid from a nearby inn, takes her in and nurses her, assisted by Dr. Minami, a young physician who diagnoses her illness as a mild case of pneumonia. With Masako in good hands and needing a few days to recuperate, her classmates continue their tour. Masako’s recovery, however, is hampered by her spoiled and immature nature and her determination to punish the world for the loss of her mother.

Koji Himuro is the wandering gambler. His brother and his girlfriend were both murdered because he was determined to expose a gambling cheat. As a result, he vows to never gamble again, but in the end, his rage against cheats spurs him to action once again, with deadly consequences.

A high school boy and girl in the midst of their youth try to get their parents to remarry.

1962 Japanese movie

1962 Japanese movie

"Is there anything interesting going on?" Yūjirō Ishihara is a pilot who has broken free of his dreary life and is following his dreams and Ruriko Asaoka is a dancer trapped in her banal existence who is falling in love with him but hates him at the same time for not being afraid to be free while cannot. The two clash with tragic consequences.