Whirlpool of Flesh

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.

Five years after the end of the Second World War, Reikichi, a repatriated veteran, translates love letters for Japanese women to American GIs, while searching for his lost love, Michiko.

A strikingly beautiful young woman is trained from birth to be a deadly instrument of revenge against the swindlers who destroyed her family.

Two boys beg their parents for a television set, nagging them until all patience is lost. The parents order the boys to be quiet and the boys do exactly that--refusing to utter a word. The boys' silence ultimately puts the whole neighborhood into turmoil.

A Japanese bullet train is threatened with a bomb that will explode automatically if the train slows below 80 km/h, unless a ransom is paid. Police race to find the bombers so the train crew can learn how to defuse the bomb.

A sake factory worker on holiday returns to his home town, where he rapes the wife of one of his co-workers in the forest. The other man returns home to find his wife changed and suspects that she has been unfaithful.

Volunteering as a "comfort woman" on the Manchurian front, where she is expected to service hundreds of soldiers, Harumi is commandeered by the brutal Lieutenant Narita but falls for the sensitive Mikami, Narita's direct subordinate. Seijun Suzuki's Story of a Prostitute is a tragic love story as well as a rule-bending take on a popular Taijiro Tamura novel, challenging military and fraternal codes of honor, as seen through Harumi's eyes.

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

Professor Nishiyama, after studying and interpreting the prophecies of Nostradamus, realizes that the end of the world is at hand. Unfortunately, nobody listens to him until it is too late. As the effects of mankind's tampering of the earth - radioactive smog clouds, hideously mutated animals, destruction of the ozone layer - rage out of control, the world leaders hurtle blindly toward the final confrontation. The film sparked controversy in Japan and was subsequently pulled out of circulation, with no official video release of the uncut film.

Minami mistakenly kills a gangster associate of his named Brother. Almost as soon as the murder takes place, the body of the deceased man is gone, prompting Minami to conduct a search. While looking, he finds a mysterious isolated hotel where he decides to take a rest. Not only are the front desk clerks a bit strange, but even the ambiance feels unusual. Minami soon realizes he may have gotten more than he bargained for.

Against the backdrop of the Edo treasury devaluing currency and driving many into poverty, Hanzo Itami enforces the law without regard to status. He shows inadequate respect to the treasurer, who wants him dead.

Three men with completely different backgrounds and beliefs—one in his forties who lived through the war, one in his thirties who grew up in the postwar era, and one in his twenties who has never experienced the war—hit it off and cause a great commotion.

A ronin desperately seeks a way out of financial straits; he allies with the Tosa clan under the ruthless leader Takechi, who quickly takes advantage.

Film distributed by ATG.

A car going at 25 mph plunges into the sea at Shinko Harbour, Toyama prefecture. Inside is the local business magnate Fukutaro Shirakawa, who perishes. Riding alongside him and surviving unhurt is his second wife, Kumako. It soon comes to light that Kumako’s husband was insured for 300 million yen and she is arrested on suspicion of murdering her husband for the insurance money. The newspapers denounce her as an evil woman, while the public is in no doubt about Kumako’s crime. Ritsuko Sahara is chosen as her defence attorney but the pair clash over almost everything...

Two interwoven stories. The first is a biography of anarchist Sakae Osugi which follows his relationship with three women in the 1920s. The second centers around two 1960s students researching Osugi's theories.

The film follows the story of Sugi Toranosuke, a ronin, who returns to his home town of Edo many years after his attempted suicide as a sickly child. Rescued and adopted by a master swordsman, he has grown into a master swordsman and a very kind gentleman. The time is around 1868 the year that the nails were finally put into the coffin containing the feudal system that nurtured and sustained the samurai. Sugi is confused and unsure about what is happening but his teacher wants him out of the chaos of the multiple power struggles between the various clans.

In this intricately layered Japanese film, the nature of actresses and what they gain from acting is explored. The lives of three actresses are laid bare, and scenes from their lives are woven in and out of interviews with each of them. Each of them has experienced a traumatic event which contributes to their particular enjoyment of becoming someone else in dramatic roles.

A story of friendship between a lone wolf judo expert and a youth.

Based on the life and career of novelist Fumiko Hayashi, she bitterly struggles for literary recognition in the first half of the 20th-century – her affairs with feckless men, the jobs she took to survive (peddler, waitress, bar maid), and her arduous, often humiliating attempts to get published in a male-dominated culture.

Shinta is a sixth grader in Kawasaki City a troublemaker that dreams to become a soccer player. Yoshiko, a classmate who moved to Kawasaki from Iwate Prefecture two years ago, is a gloomy girl who suffers from asthma due to the polluted air in Kawasaki and is ostracized by her class. Shinta is placed next to Yoshiko in class and their stories will take a turn.

A ryokan maid is on trial for pushing a familiar guest off a cliff to his death. An eager attorney offers to take the case to gain notoriety.

A young man has to deliver a Mitsubishi Galant GTO from Kagoshima (on the southern tip of the southern Japanese island of Kyushu) 3000 kilometers across the length of Japan to the northern island of Hokkaido.

A crossover between Wakayama's Gokudo and Sugawara Mamushi series. Gokudo runs a restaurant and makes Takuzo Kawatani his kitchen bitch. He tries to do the same for the Mamushi bros. but the boys don't play along, which pisses Gokudo off. Things get worse when he starts helping a young teacher and Bunta has a crush on a pretty girl... and unbeknownst to them it's the same woman! Yes, the film has not one but two romantic subplots! Of course it all ends in bloodshed.

After yakuza boss Kurata dissolves his own criminal empire, a rival kingpin offers a position to Kurata's top operative, Tetsuya "Phoenix Tetsu" Hondo. When the fiercely loyal Tetsu declines, Otsuka taps unstoppable Tatsuzo the "Viper", a ruthless gun-for-hire, to assassinate him. As the Viper trails his target through the countryside, the agile Phoenix Tetsu grows concerned that one of his former associates has betrayed him.

A series of mysterious robberies at gas stations across Tokyo and a seasoned detective with no leads—until his runaway son suddenly emerges as a suspect.

The 10th "Ekimae" feature.

The 11th "Ekimae" feature.

Set against the backdrop of the Warring States period, this thrilling period drama follows the "Demon of Iga," a bloodthirsty and resolute Koga-ryu ninja Sarutobi Sasuke.

A squadron of Japanese Self-Defense Force soldiers find themselves transported through time to their country's warring states era, when rival samurai clans were battling to become the supreme Shogun.

The Sannō-kai is a yakuza organisation based in Kobe. Tanooka (played by Hitoshi Ozawa) managed to quell internal power struggles and rise to the position of second-in-command, but by cutting ties with a long-standing brother-in-arms who resented this decision, he left a lingering grudge within the organisation. Amidst this, an attack is launched on Ryūzōji (played by Tamio Kawachi), the third-generation chairman of the Sannō-kai, by a group affiliated with the Umeyama-gumi!

A bunch of young, angry and penniless misfits are full of great vitality. They aren’t quite up to joining the yakuza and execute a variety of petty scams. After being approached by a yakuza and asked to become a spy for them, they are now planning to take 10 million yen from the yakuza.

An expedition in the South Pacific lands on a tropical island where the natives worship the mysterious deity Gappa. An earthquake opens up an underground cavern and a baby reptile is discovered inside. The natives warn the foreigners to leave the hatching alone, but they don't listen and take it back to a zoo in Japan. Soon after, moma and papa Gappa start smashing Tokyo looking for their kidnapped child.

The 9th series of Violence Action that depicts the battle between this issue and Ino aiming at the top of the gangster society as a unit.

1969 Nikkatsu yakuza movie

A man who is fed up with his office job finds himself targeted by a hitman after he unexpectedly agrees to act as stand-in CEO for a major corporation. However, for some reason, the hitmen start getting killed off one by one.

Adaptation of the Shôji Yuki novel.

Hell manifests itself through the sins, shame and desires of an upper class rural family and a mother's grief from beyond the grave.

A ship is attacked at sea for its cargo by a group of thieves who murder a newlywed doctor and rape his wife. Three years later her twin sister is kidnapped by the same pirates, who begin to die strange deaths...