In the year 1786, Shogun Ieharu Tokugawa selected beautiful Ochisa to be his concubine. It causes other concubines to become very jealous and mean. When the Shogun passes away, his concubines are forced to become nuns, which they are not happy to be. The subject is life inside a shogun's harem, and the treatment is again more restrained than in most of the historical pinku eiga films being produced by independents at the time, but the tone of this middle installment in the trilogy is decidedly more grim than that of its predecessor. There's a good deal of abuse and violence on display, as the shogun dies and his concubines are sent to a remote convent to become buddhist nuns. the hysterical nuns are being punished for their transgressions and committing suicide in grand exploitation fashion.
A dynamic woman who aspires to be a writer, living a wild life in constant search of freedom while indulging in lust with four men.
A gentle, war-shattered ex-soldier, Kinji Kameda, arrives in wintry Hokkaidō and is pulled into a volatile tangle of love and pity between the disgraced Taeko Nasu, the proud Ayako, and his possessive friend Akama. Kameda’s saintly compassion exposes everyone’s wounds, steering the quartet toward jealousy, violence, and inexorable tragedy. Adapted from Dostoevsky’s novel.
Woman melodrama by Shiro Toyoda
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.
A 28-year-old single woman is pressured to marry.
A matchmaker looks to unite a young woman from a wealthy Tokyo family with the humble owner of an auto garage.
A young student falls into a hopeless romantic attraction to a sick girl, whom he can only see from afar.
First japanese talking movie.
A young man who is unable to tell his childhood friend how he feels makes a pledge with her to reveal all of their secrets during the upcoming festival.
A Japanese soldier who died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Hawaii entrusted Henry Gray with an unfinished score and promised to complete it.
A family of Kyoto textile workers struggles after tragedy.
Pu Zhe, the younger brother of the Emperor of Manchukuo, marries Ryuko the daughter of an aristocratic family. To the surprise of all, a deep love between Pu Zhe and Ryuko develops and is put to the test when Japan loses the war.
Story of a romance between a middle-aged journalist and a young woman.
During the Warring States era of early 17th century Japan, teenage princess Sen is besieged with other members of her family in Osaka Castle, by a rival force led by her grandfather.
Adaptation of the Shôji Yuki novel.
Japan, 1701. A group of samurai become rônin after their lord is forced to commit seppuku for assaulting a court official, who will become the target of a merciless revenge.
A film about the Ghost of Okiku that's based on the kabuki play Bancho Sarayashiki.
The Yoshikawa family is a typical small town family. With only the father's and daughter's salaries to support the family's six members, life is not easy.
This movie attempts to present the reality of doctorless villages to society at large, while focusing on simple human love in a heartwarming episode that unfolds in a doctorless village.
The sweet but naive denizens of a charming port town are hoodwinked by a couple of con men at the outset of World War II. But the hustlers’ plan backfires when they come down with severe cases of conscience. Keisuke Kinoshita’s directorial debut is a breezy, warmhearted, and often very funny crowd-pleaser that’s a testament to the filmmaker’s faith in people.
This film stars Tanaka Kinuyo as the mother of the heir to the Hosho name, a famous lineage of Noh actors. The heir, Hosho Yagoro, is played by Hasegawa Kuzuo who went on to become familiar among Ichikawa Kon fans as Yukinojo in An Actor's Revenge, which was also co-written by Ito, adding to the relatedness of An Heir's Place.
Tozai Electric president Minamoto (Yanagi) is about to be pursued by the public prosecutor's office and tries to bribe Manabe (Saburi), the man in charge, but fails. His daughter Naeko (Takamine) finds out and takes on the role herself. This is a love romance adapted from an original story by Seiichi Funabashi that appeared in the magazine "Romance.”
Japanese drama.
A student at a woman's university takes a controversial action against the school's old-fashioned doctrines.
Born to a prestigious family, Natsuko is not impressed by any one of her suitors. Determined to spend her life serving god, she sets off to a convent in Hakodate, Hokkaido, and meets along the way a young bear-hunter with whom she begins an adventure.
1958 Japanese movie
A fishing union depends on two brothers to make up the losses caused by the dishonest captains they replaced.
After surviving the double suicide pact she made with her lover, a woman gives birth to their child.
When a wealthy, selfish family decides to take care of an elderly hobo who collapsed near their home, they are beset by visits from his numerous friends.
In the Meiji period, a schoolteacher tries to hide his lower-class upbringing as he supports a visiting liberal intellectual.
The mistress of a crook real estate broker comes to terms with her soulless existence after an artist paints her portrait.
When the future of his construction company falls into danger, a controlling father pushes his children into unsatisfying marriages and careers in order to regain financial stability.
The Angry Street includes a great deal of location shooting in the rebuilt city, including downtown streets, residential neighborhoods, the campus of the University of Tokyo, and the high life of jazzy dance halls. Sudo (Hara Yasumi) and Mori (Uno Jukichi) are two university students who make money by picking up rich girls in dance clubs and conning them into giving them cash. Mori is the brains of the operation, and Sudo is the suave dancer who picks up the girls. Over the course of the film, Sudo becomes involved with three different girls and is drawn into the gangster milieu, which he seems unable to resist even though he is responsible for his mother, grandmother, and sister, Masako (Wakayama Setsuko). In this world of bad boys and girls, Masako is the pillar of strength and moral virtue who finally enables Mori to straighten out.
Japanese mystery thriller.
Utsugi, a seventy-seven-year-old man of refined tastes who is recovering from a stroke, discovers that, while his body is decaying, his libido still rages on -- unwittingly sparked by the gentle, kindly attentions of his daughter-in-law Satsuko, a chic, flashy dancer with a shady past. Pitiful and ridiculous as he is, Utsugi is without a trace of self-pity, and his diary shines with self-effacing good humor.
In postwar Japan a young woman is unable to marry her sweetheart because her family's in difficult circumstances and needs her income to keep afloat.
In order to pay back Mrs. Kajiki for her good deed in the past, Hatsu moves from her village in Akita to Tokyo to start working as a maid for her family. She grows close to their youngest son Katsumi, experiencing things that will change her view on life.
A young woman decides to leave school in order to help her sister.
Genji, the illegitimate offspring of a Japanese potentate, goes by the philosophy of "love 'em and leave 'em" as a matter of course. Only when his heart is broken by Awaji does Genji realizes how much pain he himself has caused.
A village struggles to survive when the nearby lake becomes barren of fish.
A case of mistaken identity in which a woman assumes the role of widow to a man killed in a train accident.
The long-awaited haymaking season has arrived on the island of Honshu. Work is in full swing in the fields, with young and old alike toiling away. For the young woman Moyoko and the young man Tokizo, it is more fun than work. Both are young, cheerful, excited by the shared anticipation of the harvest festival, and not yet aware that they are beginning to fall in love with each other. That is why the first timid hint of confession causes such turmoil in their souls and almost leads to a serious quarrel. Their quarrelsome aunts did the lovers a disservice...
The film consists of three short stories. Tomiko, the heroine of the first story, "The Flower Girl" (dir. Kozaburo Yoshimura), is a little girl who bears the unbearable burden of caring for her family. Tomiko's father has been unable to find work for a long time, and her older sister is terminally ill—it is unlikely that she will ever recover. To feed her family, Tomiko runs around the city from morning until late at night selling flowers... The second novella (dir. Tadashi Imai) also depicts the lives of the poor. An unfamiliar girl brings young Kavano a letter from his mother. It turns out that the girl's name is Kuniko, she is very hardworking, but her family is dying of hunger. Therefore, her mother decided to send Kuniko to her son so that he would marry her. The short story is called "The Unexpected Bride." The third short story, which gave the film its title, is particularly interesting: "When You Love" (dir. Satsuo Yamamoto). It shows the family of a young peace activist.
In the fourth installment, Musashi's potentially greatest opponent Kojiro jumps in and out of the story at the oddest and most coincidental moments. As his great love Otsu has succumbed to madness. Musashi then sets off to beat the functionaries of a treacherous clan in an arranged duel. 73 against one. Boastful Kojiro watches, secure in the knowledge that only he is a worthy opponent.
Yuko is sent to the coastal regions to be raised away from the rest of her sophisticated family where she finds out from her ill grandmother that she is not who she thought she was.
Yuji, a budding writer, meets and starts falling in love with his best friend’s girlfriend, Natsuko. The attraction is mutual but due to the circumstances, they try to not act on their attraction. However, as time goes by, they realise that, perhaps, they cannot be without each other. Will the forbidden love affair move forward and can they finally be with each other?
A story about four best friends and their lives inside and outside college. Then suddenly one of them receives a surprising offer to be a movie star.
Strip dancer Carmen falls in love with Hajime, who is engaged to the daughter of a right-wing politician.
Epic saga of an idealistic land-owning family dealing with militarism, war, social change and economic reform.
One day a company executive learns that his younger brother, whom he recommended, embezzled company funds. To save the situation he withdraws his life savings and gives money to his younger brother. He then suddenly disappears…
Kyoko is the third daughter of the Nonomiya family, a very ordinary family. Momoko, the eldest daughter, is married to Ichiro, the president of Mihara Shoji, and Riko, the second daughter, is married to Jiro, the managing director, and they plot to marry Kyoko to Saburo, the third son of the Mihara family. Kyoko is angry at the marriage talk that is being pushed forward without her permission, and declares that she "definitely won't get married," but before she knows it, she begins to become aware of the other person...
Two obaachans become fast friends listening to music in front of a record store. They both boast about their loving sons but in reality, one had just escaped a retirement home and the other was looking for an escape from her son and daughter-in-law. With nowhere to go, the two wander around, befriending a cosmetics salesman and a kind waitress who give them beer. This biting social satire starring two memorable grandmothers, scripted by Yôko Mizuki, picked up on Japan’s aging population problem far ahead of its time.
Hikaru and Ichiro are close friends in high school. Hikaru's elder brother Tadashi fell in love with Ichiro's elder sister, Mikako at first sight. Although she gave the cold shoulder to Tadashi, she gradually became fond of Tadashi.
Adaptation of the novel by Kan Shimozawa.
The stage director Shimamura, who is bringing western theatre to Japan, falls in love with the outspoken actress Sumako Matsui, and leaves his family to be with her, while trying to keep his Art Theatre solvent.
A survivor of the tragic mass suicides on Tokashiki Island in 1945 falls in love with a near-mute motorcycle engineer.
1947 Toho film directed by Tadashi Imai
Three IJN flyers Mikami (Susumu Fujita), Kawakami (Masayuki Mori) and Murakami (Akitake Kono) are good friends, and they are all renowned for their torpedo techniques. Mikami is posted as a staff officer at a base on an island in the Pacific. Kawakami and Murakami later joins him as the base squardron is reinforced. The enemy task force approaches the island and all three of them attack the fleet, killing themselves in the process.
Based on the original work by Shuji Hojo, Itohan Monogatari depicts the fate of a clumsy and kind-hearted woman in the Taisho era.
A love triangle among a girl, her poor boyfriend, and a rich company president.
Motoko Fujikawa works in the Seisen Church as an assistant to pastor Maki Inokichi. Motoko falls in love with Inokichi's virtuous character and devotes herself to the rehabilitation of a delinquent girl, gradually finding her job at the institution more worthwhile than the marriage recommended by her parents. Meanwhile, inside Inokichi's heart a flame of unknowing love for the single-minded Motoko begins to burn...
The Siege of Osaka
One of many adaptations of "Onna no isshō", this time by Yasuzo Masumura as a starring vehicle for famed actress Machiko Kyo.
After Shuichiro moved to Tokyo, the Tanno family became completely female, including Mrs. Tanno, Shuichiro's daughter-in-law Manzuko, painter Takashiro Egi, Shizu Kazemaki, Mitsue Nanbu, an intellectual who works in a university laboratory, and an old woman.
In a certain port town, there is a group of young men called the Wakakusa-kai. The chairman Oda (Miki), member Ichiro Sonoda (Ishihama), his sister and music lover Keiko (Misora), Keiko's classmate Sachiko (Ota Chieko) and her brother Shoji (Yamada) meet enthusiastically to brighten the town and help themselves grow. Ichiro's family lives with his father and Keiko in a milk shop, but Keiko's desire to go to music school is unlikely to be fulfilled. Meanwhile, Shoji's father is trying to get Shoji and Keiko married.
A young lord joins gang of Robin-esque robbers.
1963 Japanese movie
Set during Japan's Bakumatsu period, the film follows Fukuzawa Yukichi, a poor samurai's son who defies societal norms to study Dutch and English. Despite facing opposition from his family and nationalist factions, he founds Keio University, becoming a key figure in Japan's modernization amid political turmoil.
At a coastal hot spring inn, a group of women navigate work, personal struggles, and unexpected scandals. When a guest threatens to expose one maid's past, she must decide whether to run or face it—with help from a kind local officer.