Eijirô Tôno

An executive mortgages all he owns to stage a coup and gain control of the National Shoe Company, with the intent of keeping the company out of the hands of incompetent and greedy executives. (imdb)

A crafty ronin comes to a town divided by two criminal gangs and decides to play them against each other to free the town. (imdb)

An elderly couple journey to Tokyo to visit their children and are confronted by indifference, ingratitude and selfishness... (imdb)

A dramatization of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the series of American blunders that allowed it to happen. (imdb)

Murakami, a young homicide detective, has his pocket picked on a bus and loses his pistol. Frantic and ashamed... (imdb)

This movie takes a look at a very Westernized subarban Japan in the late 50's. It focuses mainly on the daily lives of a small community and the way its members interact (imdb)

In a charity hospital, a hard-bitten but honorable older doctor, Dr. Niide, takes a young intern under his guidance through the course of a number of difficult cases. (imdb)

In a slum flophouse, a collection of beggars and thieves bewail their lot in life, and Osugi, the landlady, fights with her sister, Okayo, over the man they both desire, the thief Sutekichi (imdb)

After years on the road establishing his reputation as Japan's greatest fencer, Takezo returns to Kyoto... (imdb)

First of a trilogy of films. During the Second World War, a Japanese conscientious objector named Kaji works as a supervisor in a Manchurian prison camp. He hopes to avoid duty as a soldier, but he also hopes to be helpful to the welfare of his prisoners. An escape attempt by Chinese prisoners results in Kaji's arrest for collusion. He faces the possibility of transferral to combat -- or worse

A guilt-haunted samurai warrior attempts to stop a massacre taking place. (imdb)

Genta, a samurai warrior, is ordered to kill his best friend. After carrying out the command, he rejects the samurai way and devotes himself to a spiritual inner quest (imdb)

A humble and simple Takezo abandons his life as a knight errant. He's sought as a teacher and vassal by Shogun... (imdb)

February 17 to March 3, 1860, inside Edo castle. A group of assassins wait by Sakurada Gate to kill the lord of the House of Ii... (imdb)

Gennosuke, a clan retainer, kills one of the clan ministers as part of a plot to achieve reform. He is pursued by his former comrades... (imdb)

A young man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital romance.

Shuhei Hirayama is a widower with a 24-year old daughter. He gradually comes to realize that she should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life, and so he arranges a marriage for her. (imdb)

Zatoichi comes upon the town of Tonda, overrun by gangsters. Using one of his favorite techniques, Zatoichi proceeds to win 8 ryo in a rigged gambling game. Of course, the local gangsters attempt to kill him, and the adventure begins... (imdb)

Kiichi Nakajima, an elderly foundry owner, is so frightened and obsessed with the idea of nuclear extermination that his family decides to have him ruled incompetent. Nakajima's fervent wish is for his family to join him in escaping from Japan to the relative safety of South America. Harada, a civil volunteer in the case, sympathizes with Nakajima's conviction, but the old man's irrational behaviour prevents the court from taking his fears seriously. (imdb)

Muraki, a hardboiled Yakuza gangster, has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for murder. Revisiting his old gambling haunts, he meets Saeko, a striking young upper-class woman who is out seeking thrills, and whose presence adds spice to the staid masculine underworld rituals... (imdb)

Teen hoodlum Kinta is excited to be given the plum job of supervising the pig pen at the local US base, for which he'll be responsible diverting the food scraps to the black market, and scoring a good income for his yakuza gang. His girlfriend Hiroku earnestly hopes he'll leave the yakuza and get an honest job, but neither is she a paragon of virtue - she is drawn into prostitution and petty thievery. (IMDB Comments)

The stage director Shimamura, who is bringing western theater 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. (imdb)

The story is set around an American Air Force base which has attracted bars and brothels and the native Japanese who need this sordid world to scape by and make money to just barely survive. A love triangle develops among the dwellers of a falling down apartment building and a local gangster called Killer Joe. (imdb)

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. (imdb)

A bar hostess approaching middle age has a young child to support and an ex-husband who frequently needs money. She believes in marriage but is cynical about men. She seeks a rich patron for the faltering bar she works in but must then contend with unwelcome sexual advances. Meanwhile, she must manage her active young boy. When an attractive and kind young man enters the picture, introduced by a flirty friend, she thinks she may have found her way out of Ginza bar life. However, it is not to be. (imdb)

A woman's struggle for equality in Japan in the 1880s. Eiko Hirayama leaves Okayama for Tokyo, where she helps the fledgling Liberal Party and falls in love with its leader Kentaro Omoi, just as the party is being disbanded by the government. (imdb)

This film from the great Naruse has her stretching her acting muscles, playing Oshima, a woman who goes through situations in which men treat her wrong. Somehow, in a sometimes fun way, she emerges intact and stronger. (imdb)

A man travels to Akitsu Springs to die, only to be nursed to health by a young woman who works at the springs. The film follows their lives through the years as the man leaves, grows, and marries, but never stops coming back to Akitsu Springs.

A sarcastic movie that takes jabs at the practices of the medical profession.

The struggle of farmers against the greed of the company they rely upon to sell their rice.

The legend of the birth of Shintoism. In Fourth Century Japan, the Emperor Keikoh's son Ouso expects to succeed his father on the throne, but Otomo, the Emperor's vassal, prefers Ouso's stepbrother Waka, and conspires to have Ouso die on a dangerous mission he has contrived. (imdb)

Ishikawa Goemon, a talented young ninja becomes embedded in a twisted scheme to assassinate Oda Nobunaga, an evil warlord bent on ruling feudal Japan with an iron fist. Deceit, treachery and loads of ninjas lurk around every corner as Goemon travels the countryside to complete his task of winning back his honor, and ultimately his life.

The first stage of Nobunaga Oda's (Tomisaburo Wakayama) plan to unify Japan -- a dangerous mission that involved annihilating the Iga ninjas -- was a resounding success. But full unification will come only if he can bring the country's far-flung warlords together. Nobunaga's task is made all the more difficult by a renegade Iga ninja who managed to survive Nobunaga's initial attack and is now hell-bent on revenge.

A samurai warrior is haunted by the spirit of his first wife. (imdb)

A spectrum of characters from all walks of life converge on a bar in post-war Tokyo. Over the course of the night, many of their hopes and fears unfold and change.

Bushido, a.k.a. "The Way of the Warrior" is the chivalrous code of the samurai that has influenced the Japanese way-of-life for centuries. This epic film spans several generations of a typical samurai family, and illustrates the intricate system of loyalty, honor and sacrifice which bound the samurai in ages past, and which, in many ways, persists to this very day. (amazon)

Story of a family living in overwhelming poverty in a small town just outside of Tokyo.

A 36 year old man, bored by everything in his life, get's smashed and unwittingly promises to write a story for a magazine. Stuck for a subject he decides to write about about his ordinary life and his dysfunctional family... to his surprise his musings become a critically acclaimed best-seller... however, in the end, he remains as uninteresting as always.

Zushio and his sister Anju are kidnapped and sold to a cruel slave-master. Will they ever be reunited with their mother again?

Chikamatsu's Love in Osaka (1959) places Chikamatsu, the author of the original play, as a character in the drama. Relatively classical at first, the film grows increasingly self-conscious as it proceeds. Chikamatsu, initially an observer taking inspiration for his writing from the events he views, begins eventually to intervene in events, saving the heroine from suicide, substituting a gentler ending for the tragedy which seems likely. (Sense of Cinema)

Soldiers Hayate and Yaheiji secretly escape from their besieged castle. Hayate has left behind his lover, Kano. On his way, Hayate is wounded and cared for by O'Ryo, who falls in love with him. But when Hayate accidentally kills her caretaker, he flees, with O'Ryo in pursuit. Subsequently, Hayate's comrade Yaheiji falls in love with Oryo. Kano, the lover left behind by Hayate, believes him dead, and becomes involved with another soldier, Jurota...

A pitiless take on Japan's professional baseball industry. An excoriation of the inhumanity bred by a mercenary, bribery-fueled business, it follows the sharklike maneuvers of a scout dead set on signing a promising athlete to the team the Toyo Flowers. (criterion.com)

Keisuke Kinoshita's wartime film, Army is anything but the rousing call to arms and reinforcement of patriotism that the authorities had envisioned the film would be. Known for his Ofuna-flavored shomin-geki "women's pictures", Kinoshita subverts the official themes of duty, allegiance to the emperor, and national glory. (Strictly Film School)

"The Mistress" is the story of a young woman whose relationships with men in the past have been stormy, and who finds herself once again in a bad situation. She becomes the mistress of a wealthy moneylender, believing him to be a merchant who has been recently widowed and that he will soon marry her. She discovers his lies but cannot leave him because of the money he has given to her elderly father.

This is essentially the story of Qin from the founding of "China" by his unifying the various provinces, through the building of the great wall on to close to his death.

Heinosuke Gosho's darkest and most acclaimed film of the '60s, An Innocent Witch recounts the life of a young woman who is sold be her family into a brothel in a rural fishing village. (huluplus)

The film centers on the working class families struggling to survive with menial labor in a rapidly modernizing city. Keiko and Saeko Hibino (Noriko Maki and Chieko Baisho) are sisters who support their parents by working at a local factory. The sisters must bear the burden of their traditional father (Eijiro Tono), who is pressuring Keiko to marry to save the family business, and compete with the modern city girls who get by on their looks to get ahead. (ADC)

Realistic docudrama on daily police life.

Intrepid detective Kindaichi (Ishizaka) tracks down a triple murderer using Haiku poem clues. (Audie Bock)

The conflicting dreams of the members of a Japanese family are threatened by a continuing series of misfortunes. (imdb)

As World War II escalates, the tight-knit habitants of a street in Tokyo must relocate from their homes so that the government can use the space. Kinoshita's sensitive film-beautifully and resourcefully shot on a single set-traces the fears and desires of the evacuees. (imdb)

The sweet but naive denizens of a charming port town are hoodwinked by a couple of con men who prey on them at the outset of the war. But the hustlers' plan backfires when they come down with severe cases of conscience. 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. (imdb)

Lavish Japanese-Chinese coproduction based on an ancient Chinese legend about a man who falls in love with a snake goddess in human form.

A satirical comedy about a store clerk who falls in love with his boss's daughter. Mizoguchi Kenji's final project; he died before completing it and directing duties turned over to Yoshimura Kozaburo. (The Movie Database)

The picture belongs to the jidai gekki (historic) genre. It is a powerful story of violence and eroticism, picturing a world at once sordid and poetic, with two central themes which intermingle to compound an admirable panel of a critical period in Japanese history: the great famine in the mid 19th Century. (imdb)

Based on a 1956 television feature on Japan's national network, NHK, this is one of Uchida's rarest films. A socially conscious drama with a contemporary backdrop, Dotanba focuses on the attempts to rescue a group of trapped miners. (The Movie Database)

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. (imdb)

A 1949 drama starring Kinuyo Tanaka.

Set in the 1860s, the final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate, The Fireflies focuses on Tose (Awashima Chikage), the mistress of the Teradaya, a small inn in the Kyoto suburb of Fushimi.

Masakichi was a troublemaker until he found a right girl to marry. Unfortunately, his happiness is short-lived - she kills herself after being raped.

WWII is at an end. Baby boomers are in full bloom. Minister Araki is introducing a healthcare bill that aims to establish "Birth Control Consultation Centers" across Japan. As his speech echoes in the national assembly, his wife receives a different message from the doctor: She is pregnant. (mubi)

First Japanese vampire film, one where the creature is not supernatural and all with the film being a riff on The Cat and the Canary. The story of a professional nude model stalked by a bizarre, unknown man wearing a hideous mask.

A Japanese artist (Ikebe), who had won the favor of the Cambodian royal family when he rescued their daughter during World War II, returns and falls for the now-grown princess, though neither realizes the other's identity.

In 1936 Japan, a married man begins a relationship with a prostitute who is working to support her ailing mother.

The story follows Oshino, a geisha who is trying to start a new life with a lover who is a painter. However, her past filled with debts and pimps catches up to her. (imdb)

One of Japan’s most popular historical characters, former Vice-Shogun Tokugawa Mitsukuni, whose travels around the nation are legendary has made it to the silver screen in a dynamic and exciting tale featuring megastar Toshiro Mifune as an expert swordsman drawn into the action to fight injustice. The Elder Lord travels about disguised as a retired merchant with his two trusty bodyguards Sukesaburo and Kakunoshin by his side and secret agent Yashichi close by.

This is a story of "Takechiyo," the previous name of Iemitsu Tokunaga, the third Shogun (General). Takechiyo (Ken Tanaka) got sick of daily run-of-the-mill tasks, and it put him off being the Shogun, saying "there is no truth". Then, Hikozaemon Ookubo (Eijiro Tono) took him to Tasuke Isshin (Jun Inoue) to bring him up into a full-fledged and admirable man.

The fish market is to be moved to Shinagawa, and Tasuke Isshin (Jun Inoue) got in trouble. Hikosaemon Ookubo (Eijiro Tono) heard of it from Tasuke, and ask about it to Iemitsu (Ken Tanaka). However, on the contrary, Hikosaemon received penitence for a bribe that he doesn't know.

Harada Yoshio delivers a powerful performance as a man consumed by revenge in his screen debut.