Eiko Miyoshi

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

Lured by gold, two greedy peasants escort a man and woman across enemy lines. However, they do not realize that their companions are actually a princess and her general. (imdb)

A ruthlessly ambitious lord, egged on by his wife, works to fulfill a prophesy that he would become Emperor. (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)

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

With his closest friend, Matahachi, Takezo (the town's wild, orphan kid) leaves his village to join an army on its way to battle... (imdb)

Yukie, the well-bred daughter of a university professor, is shocked when her father is relieved of his post for his political teachings... (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)

Two sisters live with their father. The younger sister is embroiled in an affair and becomes pregnant. The elder sister has run away from her husband and returned with her child to her parent's home. Both sisters are astonished when their mother, long thought dead, turns up alive. The sisters are even more stunned when they learn what their mother's life has been. (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)

Study of the relationship between children of the Ainu tribe in Hokkaido and their pure Japanese neighbours and schoolmates. (bfi.org.uk)

A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family. (imdb)

Okuni (played by Michiyo Kogure) is the wife of a samurai, who was murdered (in an underhanded fashion) by a former suitor, Tomonojo (So Yamamura). So she and one of the retainers of her husband, Gohei (Tomoemon Otani, a famed kabuki artist, during a brief stint in the movies) go seeking the murderer, planning to seek revenge. However, the two have no real clue as to where to seek Tomonojo and their quest seems endless. (imdb)

Character study revolving around four characters: a sock salesman, his wife and their two young lodgers.

Kiyoko, along with her husband Shinji (Keiju Kobayashi), wants to open a coffee shop and so goes to Kenkichi to ask for a loan. (Slant)

It's a man's world. Shimamura, an artist, comes to this snowbound town to rejuvenate himself. He connects with Komako, a geisha he met on a previous trip, and it seems like love. She's the foster daughter of a local family, almost engaged to the family's son Yukio, now dying of consumption. He's tended by his sister Yuko who's angry at Komako for abandoning her brother. Shimamura returns to Tokyo but promises he will be back soon. (imdb)

An Inn at Osaka, rarely seen outside Japan, follows the story of an insurance company executive from Tokyo, Mr. Mito, who is demoted to the Osaka office. He takes a room at a small inn and tries to rebuild his life. Notable for its exquisite framing and cinematography, An Inn at Osaka allows its complicated plotlines to disappear behind the minutiae of penury and humiliation that Mito and others suffer during the post-war economic and social reconstruction. (mubi.com)

SOMEWHERE BENEATH THE WIDE SKY (1954, aka KONO HIROI SORA NO DOKOKA NI) came near the end of Masaki Kobayashi's formative period as a director -- scripted by the sister of his mentor Keisuke Kinoshita (and scored by Kinoshita's brother), this drama of middle-class life in postwar Japan tells the story lower-middle-class workers in the city of Kawasaki, and their troubles and travails. (KG)

A teacher at a continuation school who is not getting ahead in the world goes to the Ginza and is hit by a car. A student he asks to help him demands money, and the girl he loves snubs him. (Audie Bock)

The story is based on the author's personal experience as a teacher dispatched to Matsuyama on the island of Shikoku. Set at a middle school in Matsuyama. Botchan (young master) is the first-person narrator. He grows up in Tokyo as a reckless and rambunctious youth. In the opening he hurts himself jumping from the second floor of his elementary school, fights the boy next door, and tramples a neighbor's carrot patch by wrestling on the straw that covers the seedlings.

A naive stripper falls for an artist engaged to the daughter of a controversial female politician. (imdb)

Two youths - the serious son of a Buddhist abbot and his rakish pal - quarrel over a restaurant keeper's daughter. When one of the youths die the other boy and the girl find they cannot forget him. (The Movie Database)

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.

When a family has to relocate due to the war, they are ostracized by their new community.