A young boy and a girl with a magic crystal must race against pirates and foreign agents in a search for a legendary floating castle.
A businessman kills his adulterous wife and is sent to prison. After his release, he opens a barbershop and meets new people, talking to almost no one except for an eel he befriended while in prison.
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.
Zatoichi treks to a village that has always been a favorite spot of his, only to discover that it’s become a living hell, plagued by feuding father and son yakuza as well as the younger crime boss’s bodyguard, scruffy, smart-mouthed, cash-hungry Yojimbo of legend.
Stuck doing show-biz schlock, an investigative reporter stumbles on a scheme to swindle pensions through an attractive gold futures scam, a potential news-story.
Shinji, a young man who accidentally met a successful model, moves to Tokyo because of his admiration for her. However, a harsh reality awaits him in Tokyo. As a result, Shinji returns to his hometown to start life anew. A romantic drama inspired by the hit song of the same name by Goro Noguchi.
A wealthy matriarch is kidnapped by a gang of three. She is insulted by the amount of money they propose to demand as ransom, and a strange interchange of roles takes place.
Japan, 1860. The men of the Mito clan, victims of the Ansei purge, anxiously prowl around the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle with the intention of assassinating Naosuke Ii of Hikone, tairō of the Tokugawa shogunate and responsible for their misfortune.
Giovanni currently lives a dreary life of near non-stop work. At school, his peers ridicule him incessantly, and his employer at work is distant and cold. As his isolation from society becomes unbearable, he suddenly finds himself on a train heading far away from his miserable home. Accompanied by Campanella, an acquaintance from school, Giovanni embarks on a journey that will define the rest of his life.
Kôsuke Kindaichi, a somewhat peculiar private detective, visits a remote town. He meets a police detective and they start to investigate an old unsolved murder. Then some murders happen. Kindaichi must find out about the past in order to reveal who the murderer is.
A young unicorn named Unico must fight an evil magician and save everyone who's trapped under his spell.
On the Japanese island of Amami, despite lacking parental guidance, Kaito and his girlfriend Kyoko try to find their place in the world. While Kaito suffers from the absence of his father, who moved to Tokyo after his birth, Kyoko must come to grips with her mother’s terminal illness.
Why is it a crime for two people to be together? In the silence so profound that you could even hear the sound of falling snow, the man buried his wife alone. That was what his wife had wished for. When a loved one is dying, what can one do for them? 272 days, 6000 km—this is the true story of a couple's extraordinary love. December 2, 1999. A small article about the arrest of a man appeared on the social page of the newspaper. The charge was "abandonment resulting in death"—the crime of abandoning someone who needed assistance due to old age, childhood, physical disability, or illness, and causing their death. The man had been wandering around Japan for nine months with his wife, who had terminal cancer, in a van. In the fall of 2000, the monthly magazine "Shincho 45" published the memoir of the arrested man, Hisanori Shimizu, in two issues, which caused a great sensation.
This is a folk-tale-like adventure story of an active boy on a quest for the Water of Life. The boy sets out on this quest after learning that the Water of Life is needed to make his village happy. On the way, he meets gods, demons... Soon, he discovers that the evil snake has stolen the Water, and he heads for the snake's palace. Defeating the snake is not easy since it has the Water of Life to revive itself. This boy - Maegami Tarou - continues his courageous quest in cooperation with various creatures and the gods.
In the third installment of Yoshikawa's novel Musashi, things continue from the 2nd film at the end of battle, where Miyamoto continues on a mission of learning; with the introduction of his arch-rival Sasaki Kojiro; and lastly the large cast of characters rendezvouses for a fateful finale.
Nozomi is a former actress who moves back to Japan from New Zealand. Upon arriving, she meets her fellow high school student neighbor Ryotaro Shiba, who decides to join the high school boxing club. Adapted from Toshio's Nobe manga, with the same title.
Japan, February 1868. As the Tokugawa shogunate declines and the power of Emperor Meiji grows, Gonzo, a soldier of the Restoration Army, returns to Sawando, his hometown, to announce the end of tyranny.
After finishing the course of junior high school, Kazuo comes up to Tokyo, leaving his mother alone in the unproductive northern district. He finds a job in a small laundry in downtown Tokyo and works hard till late at night. At a nearby restaurant a brother and sister are working, and Kazuo becomes friendly with the girl, Yoneko. Love blossoms between the two. However, Yoneko's brother objects to his sister marrying Kazuo.
Filled with guilt over his forbidden desires, a young man leaves home and his studies. He finds a new smaller place to stay, a low-paying but satisfying job and a girlfriend. Then his mother, unable to fight her forbidden desires, shows up.
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.
Shigematsu Shizuma, who lives with his family in a village near Fukuyama, was in Hiroshima with his wife and niece just after the devastating atomic bombing, a tragedy that cruelly took the lives of thousands of people and forever marked the harsh existence of the survivors.
Umiemon is a naniwa-bushi singer who travels with his wife to the United States in hopes of achieving fame and fortune.
In the War's closing days, when a conscience-driven Japanese soldier fails to get his countrymen to surrender to overwhelming force, he adopts the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk.
Live-action adaptation of Jun Hatanaka's manga "Mandaraya no Ryota".
Japanese film based on the life of Zen Master Tetsugen Doko.
A story about the lives of young aspiring dancers who strive to create their own musical about stray cats.
A woman and her bridegroom are found murdered in their bed the day after their wedding. It had snowed overnight and the killer left no tracks. It is up to an amateur detective to figure out what happened. Carefully and systematically, he pieces together the clues in this locked room mystery.
Born in affluent families among the Japanese mountains, two close cousins fall in love and have to suffer through the social constraints of their time.
Yawara Inokuma is a girl who aspires to an ordinary life but due to her innate talent is forced to practice judo by her authoritarian grandfather, Jigorou Inokuma, with the aim of achieving the championship in Japan and the gold medal in the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games. Because of the pressure from her grandfather she has a generally bad attitude about judo, avoiding it as much as she can. However, over time she comes to understand why her grandfather loves judo and appreciates it more.
Former students of the notorious Harenchi Gakuen college open a new school for dissident youths after their former school is ruined by disputes.
Japanese drama film.
To solve the mystery of a murder of an old governess which takes place at a wealthy Daidoji family's country estate, family secrets and lies dating back several generations must be sorted out once and for all.
When a lone traveler stumbles upon a remote, drought-stricken village, he finds himself engulfed in a whirlpool of myth, mystery, and magic: in a nearby pond reside spirits who hold the fate of the town’s inhabitants, including lovers Akira and Yuri, in their hands.
An innocuous comment during a weapon inspection wounds the pride of low-ranking samurai Shinpachi, leading to an argument with his superior. The situation snowballs out of control, leading to a deadly duel and political fallout which threatens the entire clan. Declared mentally unstable by the corrupt authority, Shinpachi begins his descent into true insanity…
Osaka in the early 1600s, aftermath of the historical Battle of Sekigahara; a group of orphan children are wandering through the battlefield scavenging for armour when they encounter a young boy named Sasuke with magical powers he says came from a meteor that crashed onto the Earth…
A gangster named Sagara killed a broker at the request of a friend named Oba, was arrested and spent eight years in prison. Now released, he wants to find out who squealed on him.
Karate expert Katayama (Takeda) investigates the robbery of a bank in Hokkaido, where an apple seed left at the scene holds the answer to the robbers' whereabouts.
A laid-back man tries to become a member of the yakuza.
After the bankruptcy of her foster-father's condom factory, Tamae sets out to make a living on her own and ends up working as a geisha at a hot spring resort. After rising in popularity, a climactic sex battle is held to decide who gets to lay claim to her.
Two yakuza, one of whom frequently reflects on an uncomfortable past taking advantage of Korean women, meet a stowaway on Japanese soil from across the Genkai Sea.
A police procedural surrounding murder at a bookstore and the private lives of the cops trying to solve the case.
Based on a polemic novel by Amy Yamada, Bedtime Eyes is about the intense love relationship between a second rate Japanese jazz singer and a black American GI on the margins of the law.
After saving a girl from rape, a bored rail worker finds out about a chemical that makes people sleep and gets carried away into a new, violent world of ideas.
Follows the fluctuating fortunes of three ronin in feudal Japan who wander from castle to castle, selling their services to whichever lord will fill their rice bowls. Though they use the servants' entrance, they still feel themselves bound by the samurai code of Bushido; and this tension leads to tragedy.
Reprising his role from the popular TV series "Koya no Suronin" (The Lowly Ronin), Mifune Toshiro stars in this full-length, stand-alone made for TV movie. The wandering ronin is reminiscent of his most famous role as the samurai without a name in Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro". He travels about Japan, and while he may seek happiness, violence and tragedy always cross his path. This time, he reluctantly agrees when a girl hires him to kill a local offical who has unfairly taxed her villagers. But he soon discoves that not all is at it appears when he finds a direct link to his past.
Teenage cousins Masao and Tamiko fall in love when she comes to his riverside brewery house to take care of his sickly mother. Family objections ensue as Tamiko is older than Masao, and the two cannot marry in peace.
Set in Japan's Tenpyou era (729-749 CE), four young monks are sent to China to study Buddhism and bring a high priest back to Japan with them. The film tells the tale of the four monks' youth and the life and times of the high priest Ganjin.
Based on the folk tales "Repayment from a crane". One snowy night a beautiful woman named Tsuru (Crane) visits poor peasant Taiju and says she will become his wife...
Chieko (Momoe Yamaguchi) has been raised as the only child of parents who run a dry goods store. When Chieko was a middle-school student, she learned that her parents are not her biological parents. Cheiko's mother told her that she was stolen while sleeping under a cherry tree in Gion, Kyoto, Japan, but Chieko doesn't believe that. Her relationship with her parents is very close. Chieko only tells her childhood friend Shinichi, but...
In the year 1873, a Japanese woman is sold as a mistress to an American diplomat stationed in Japan.
The Story of the three Japanese castaways Otokichi, Kyukichi and Iwakichi. After their ship the Hojunmaru was damaged, they drifted to America and landed on the US-Westcoast in 1834. They had the wish to return to Japan, a long journey was awaiting them.
This time, Kousuke investigates a murder in a hospital. The murderer leaves misleading evidence to divert Kousuke's attention on the case. Suspicion and doubt clouds Kousuke's mind.
The Maccherone organization is out to get a priceless national treasure. But when they see third-generation cat-burglar Lupin as an obstacle, countless assassins are sent to kill him on sight and kidnap his girl Fujiko! Can Lupin get the loot before the Maccherone gang, rescue Fujiko, and stay alive at the same time?
The patriarch of a bickering family announces his retirement, stirring competition about who will succeed him as a leading practitioner of Noh theater, his granddaughter or grandson.
Dramatic story of one man trying to make a difference.
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.
Comedy film.
Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa’s own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier’s ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh’s canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity’s uneasy bond with nature.
Genji, the son of the emperor, is the talk of the Kyoto nobility for his charm and good looks, yet he cannot stop himself from pursuing an unobtainable object of desire: his father's young and beautiful bride. Following the tragic consequences of his obsession, Genji wanders from one affair to another, always seeking some sort of completion to his life.
Kayo, a zookeeper, dreams of raising a panda one day. However, she soon decided to study abroad in China, and her dream came true. As soon as Kayo arrived in Sichuan Province, she met a boy named Ryuryu, and together they helped save an injured panda cub. The panda cub regained his strength and was named Hua Hua, but one day he went missing…
A young man working as a first-class fashion designer decides to give up his business and return to his hometown after the sudden death of his father.
In Yamada Village, which is suffering from a serious shortage of wives due to the wave of depopulation, four young men from the village decide to go on an arranged marriage. However, they are rejected by the other women because of Yamada Village's too rural character. Then, a beautiful young writer, Ayakoji Reika, who has fallen into a slump, comes to Yamada Village in search of the countryside...
In 1949, after the war, Hidé and his sister Myoko are poor and live in a makeshift hut under the bridge and do their best to survive. When Myoko recovers from an illness, he offers to take her to the Zoo to show her the impressive elephant that marked him during a visit when he was younger. He will be angry to find that there is no more elephant, replaced by a cardboard reproduction. Sankichi, a Zoo employee will tell him the sad truth about what happened.
Gon is a little fox. Looking for food he comes to a little village where he repeatedly steals food and creates other mischief, constantly evading the angry villagers.
A man returns to his seaside roots to confront a yakuza boss. Along the way, he charms young men, softens a hard woman and busts a few heads.
Kenichi, a fifth-grader, moved from Tokyo to the Ina Valley to receive treatment for his asthma. At his new elementary school, he meets Sabu, the class clown; Masaru; and Karen, a girl born in Brazil.
"BLOW THE NIGHT!" Let's Spend the Night Together is a 1983 Japanese docu-drama shot on 16mm film starring actual Yanki gang members as many of the main characters.