Daisuke Itô

While performing in a touring kabuki troupe, leading female impersonator Yukinojo comes across the three men who drove his parents to suicide twenty years earlier (imdb)

Tokugawa Ieyasu befriends another daimyo, Oda Nobunaga, and becomes a military leader.

Zatoichi makes friends with a dangerous chess player, while fending off angry yakuza and bloodthirsty relatives out for revenge, and trying to save a sick child. Meanwhile, his luck with dice is turning... (imdb)

It's senseless. "I should have changed. But it's not my fault" says one of the characters. In the great tradition of storytelling, Mizoguchi creates remarkable characters, gets involved in their drama, but also keeps distance. He skips between concepts, ideas, emotions poetically. In his films, people laugh and people cry... (blog.waysofseeing)

The story of two samurai who become embroiled in the conflict between two powerful lords.

A gambler from a small village becomes a samurai and later an outlaw hero in turbulent feudal Japan.

Chuji is forced to escape from his small village and become an outlaw.

Now an outlaw, Chuji fights for the poor while defending himself from traitors and spies.

This film relates the life of a legendary thief, Jirokichi the Rat in an exquisite original story and through the revolutionary use of dynamic intertitles (imdb)

A village struggles to survive when the nearby lake becomes barren of fish.

Kyoshiro gets drawn into a complicated plot revolving around the remnants of a failed anti-Shogunate uprising, who are secretly organizing a new attack on Edo castle.

Two hostile clans had reached an artificial reconciliation which involves the marriage of a person from each family. The boy's father is away to serve the emperor, and his highly despotic mother has the absolute power. Typical of the atmosphere are the boy's words to her: "If mother was not my mother I would hate her." "If father was not my father I would hate him." The boy eventually finds a poor peasant girl and has a beautiful love affair. (imdb)

In the film, Musashi (Kinnosuke Nakamura), hoping to extend his knowledge of the techniques of personal combat, visits the home of Baiken Shishido (Rentaro Mikuni), a bandit who has developed a highly unorthodox way of fighting with ball and chain in one hand and a small very sharp scythe in the other. Musashi first comes upon Baiken's wife (Hideko Okiyama), also adept in her husband's methods, training her baby not to fear the whirling iron ball or the cries of an advancing warrior. (nytimes.com)

Ito Daisuke's wartime retelling of the Miyamoto Musashi story. (imdb)

A Daisuke Itô drama starring Kinuyo Tanaka.

Set in the Edo period, the film deals with two brothers falling in love with the same girl. The younger brother is badly injured in a sword fight and while nursing him back to health, the girl falls in love with him. Having lost out in love, the older brother gets into a desperate fight in which he's eventually slain. Only 12 minutes of footage survive.

Gonza wants to be a samurai, but not for the reasons we usually see. He is in love with the daughter of an impoverished samurai who has nothing left but his pride and refuses to allow his daughter to marry anyone but a samurai.

In medieval Japan, a brutal and corrupt magistrate is planning to kill the child who is about to become the heir to the estate and position of the local lord and substitute his own "heir", an orphan, in order to get control of the late lord's estate and rule as the impostor's "regent". However, a mysterious stranger appears and sets out to thwart the magistrate's plans and free the people from his oppressive rule. A 25-min fragment of 125 minutes survives.

Japan is building her first steam ship, which can be converted to a war ship with a few guns on deck. The problem is that the construction is under the supervision of westerner Sôjin Kamiyama and an awful lot of counterfeit money is coming through his establishment. Kamiyama can't be taken off the job until the ship is completed, but the government's top spy, Kanjûrô Arashi can be sent in to investigate, when he isn't busy taking care of blind Otoji Koto and her kid brother.

The tragic, yet exciting story of the friendship between Nakayama Yasubei, a member of the 47 Ronin, and Tange Tenzen, a relative by marriage of the vile Lord Kira. Remake of Hakuôki AKA Samurai Vendetta (mubi.com)