This story takes place at a school under the new educational system. It all began when a love letter addressed to Takeshi Kodama, the straightforward art teacher, from Yoko Kagawa, a young and beautiful female teacher, was found lying in the school hallway. It soon became clear that Ms. Kagawa was not the one who had written the letter, but this incident made her feel the need to explore the emotions of her adolescent female students.
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.
A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
A feudal epic presenting the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid attacks by competing clans. The impostor becomes comfortable living his life among nobility, but his responsibilities to his station grow more demanding the longer he occupies it.
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.
A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.
Seibei Iguchi leads a difficult life as a low ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century. A widower with a meager income, Seibei struggles to take care of his two daughters and senile mother. New prospects seem to open up when the beautiful Tomoe, a childhood friend, comes back into he and his daughters' life, but as the Japanese feudal system unravels, Seibei is still bound by the code of honor of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedence. How can he find a way to do what is best for those he loves?
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.
The deep conversation between a Japanese architect and a French actress forms the basis of this celebrated French film, considered one of the vanguard productions of the French New Wave. Set in Hiroshima after the end of World War II, the couple -- lovers turned friends -- recount, over many hours, previous romances and life experiences. The two intertwine their stories about the past with pondering the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb dropped on the city.
In this companion piece and sequel to "Yojimbo," jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a proper samurai on its ear.
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.
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.
When George Tanner does business with high-ranking Yakuza Tono, Tono kidnaps his daughter, and George summons his old friend, private eye Harry Kilmer, to Japan to investigate.
A fictional account of the life of Japanese author Yukio Mishima, combining dramatizations of three of his novels and a depiction of the events of November 25th, 1970.
A strikingly beautiful young woman is trained from birth to be a deadly instrument of revenge against the swindlers who destroyed her family.
When Wabisuke's father-in-law unexpectedly dies, the family goes through a series of random events and occurrences as the funeral unfolds over three days in their home.
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.
Aldin, a vagabond water vendor, embarks of a series of fantastical and tragic misadventures through the Middle East in search of love, fortune, and power.
A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his new doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality and causing him to question his identity.
This sensuously beautiful film chronicles the activities of four sisters who gather in Kyoto every year to view the cherry blossoms. It paints a vivid portrait of the pre-war lifestyle of the wealthy Makioka family from Osaka, and draws a parallel between their activities and the seasonal variations in Japan.
In 1943, as Japan's WWII effort falters, a vice-admiral proposes training squadrons of "volunteer" flyers to crash their armed planes into Allied warships. Yarn follows the lives of kamikaze pilots, as remembered by an aging Kyushu restaurateur who cherishes their memory. Honoring the dead and multiple military anthems may stir the soul of some Japanese, but elsewhere auds will make a one-way trip for exits. Battle scenes are well-executed and script delivers some memorable scenes, but overall competent helming and thesping are powerless over writer-cum-Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishiara's repetitive storytelling. A post-war postscript adds considerable length to an already over-extended narrative. Tech credits are good quality.
A historical drama that tells the story of a simple girl, Chizuru, who entered the imperial palace as a maid and rose to the top because of her love affair.
1958 Toei movie.
After her mother runs away from home, Tomoko is raised to be a geisha. One day Tomoko meets her mother in a red-light district in Tokyo and her life deeply gets in trouble.
Pierre Marsac, a French engineer working for the Nagasaki shipbuilding yards, has fallen in love both with Japan and a charming Japanese girl named Noriko. But Françoise Fabre, a French journalist and Pierre's former lover, contacts him while visiting the Land of the Rising Sun. They meet again, find out their love might not be dead. Meanwhile, Pierre gradually becomes estranged from sweet, humble Noriko. One day, a typhoon strikes Nagasaki...
Yataro Tanigawa, a one-eyed hired assassin, impresses yakuza boss Gomyo Kiyoemon with his skill. Gomyo hires Tanigawa as his bodyguard, or yojimbo, to protect him during an inter-clan conflict. Tanigawa quickly rises in stature in the clan, but finds his boss's enemies almost overwhelming.
Drama about a young dress designer.
Chikako, who was living in a room at a temple affiliated with Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto while attending a women’s college, was deeply shocked when her boyfriend, Hashida, coldly rejected her after she told him she was pregnant.
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 their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.
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Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
Shares a lead actor
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.
Shares a lead actor
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.
Shares a lead actor
A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.
Shares a lead actor
From 1928 to 1946, the lives of 12 young people and their school teacher in a poor Japanese village are profoundly affected by historical events and personal circumstances.
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A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
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In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse they would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.
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Early morning silence is broken by screeching tires as a helicopter bears down on a speeding vehicle. Taking a quick corner, the team tumbles out into the woods as their car pulls away. Now they must make their way through the thick of nature and thick gunfire to accomplish their mission. Not a single word of dialogue is spoken throughout the entire film. Instead, the music, sounds, images and deeply truthful acting turn a simple plot into an intense experience. Passion and intrigue keep building to the very end.
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A 21-year-old girl is released from prison, only to deal with the neighborhood gossip about her and family conflicts. She decides to save one million yen, move to where no one knows her and keep repeating the process.
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Sophie, a young milliner, is turned into an elderly woman by a witch who enters her shop and curses her. She encounters a wizard named Howl and gets caught up in his resistance to fighting for the king.
A young witch, on her mandatory year of independent life, finds fitting into a new community difficult while she supports herself by running an air courier service.
The story of three sportsman brothers living in the Ginza. One day, the three meet a raving beauty on separate occasions and are unaware they have met the same girl.
Judo movie.
A yakuza man who dreads being released from prison, yet the day of his release arrives. Awaiting him are a woman’s burning gaze and the muzzle of a gangster’s gun…
A young man longs to travel to Hawaii, the birthplace of his deceased father, against the wishes of his family, who are estranged from those relatives in Waikiki.
Masuda Toshio film starring Watari Tetsuya and Mori Masayuki, about a lone-wolf type (Watari) seeking love and defending the honor of an elderly widower (Mori).
