Heihachirô Ôkawa

After settling his differences with a Japanese PoW camp commander, a British colonel co-operates to oversee his men's construction of a railway bridge for their captors - while oblivious to a plan by the Allies to destroy it.(imdb)

Hard luck Yukiko (Takamine Hideko) remembers the days of wine and romance back in Indochina but Kengo (Mori Masayuki) isn't having any of it. The war is over, the survivors are back in Japan and Yukiko wants to rekindle the old flame. (IMDB Comments)

The effervescent and charming Chiba Sachiko (Naruse's wife at the time) plays Kimiko, the bold daughter who travels to the countryside to find her estranged father to seek his consent for her forthcoming marriage. When Kimiko discovers that her father has taken up with a young geisha and is just as difficult as ever, her journey forces her to reconsider her ideas about familial ties. The film was Naruse's biggest success to date and one of his warmest films...

Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts, writer-director Mikio Naruse's first sound film, tells the story of three very different siblings forced to work as samisen street musicians to make ends meet. (Slant Magazine)

In the furious The Girl in the Rumor, as tight, absorbing, and intricate a 55-minute film as any ever made, a confrontation between two sisters is staged and cut as a series of complementary, mirroring, responsive movements in and out of frame, resulting in a dizzying pattern in which the two sisters ceaselessly replace each other. (Chris Fujiwara)

The main focus is on the 5 member band of a small circus as it runs into problems while touring rural Japan. It also pays lots of attention to the two daughters of the aging and irascible ringmaster-circus owner. The high points are the sound (and score) and cinematography featuring a lot of vertiginous panning (appropriate - as high wire trapeze artists are also an important element in the film). A fascinating side-light on 30s Japan. (imdb comments)

This skeptical attitude to the conventional nuclear family was extended into open hostility in A Woman's Sorrows, where the repressive nature of traditional family structures is laid bare... (sensesofcinema)

As the titular, exceedingly popular performing duo (respectively a samisen player and a Shinnai singer) they enact a tragicomic tale of unrequited love that--save for a deeply affecting, pathos-ridden final scene--is far removed from director Mikio Naruse's usual cinema obsessions. (slantmagazine)

The material is certainly dark enough for Naruse: the otherwise promising young man Asaji (Heihachirô Ôkawa) and his younger brother Yuji (Hideo Saeki) face blighted lives because of society's disapproval of their illegitmacy and déclassé family. (Dan Sallitt)

"Rocky" Wilson and his sidekick, Archer McGregor, American soldiers en route home from Korea, stop over in Tokyo. They instantly get involved in a sabotage plot and, inadvertently, end up in the possession of some highly-explosive pills. But, with the help of Peggy Barnes, an American airlines hostess, and a crazy magician with hypnotic powers, they put an end to a scheme to take over the world. (imdb)

A father with no wife has three daughters with the oldest one (played by Hara Setsuko) at the age to be married off, which means the man needs to re-marry in order for someone to take care of him and his daughters. With the eldest and father now married, there is tension and an uncomfortable distance between the two remaining daughters and the mother-in-law. (imdb)

Army Master Sergeant Hugh O'Reilly is stationed in Japan after World War II. He hates the Japanese. He meets a pretty young Japanese woman, an interpreter for the Army, and through her learns of an orphanage in need of help. He enlists other soldiers in an effort to rebuild the orphanage, and in doing so, begins to soften in his attitude toward the Japanese people.

The title might sound shocking, but the red hands mean, the hands which drag fishnets. Ohama, 15 or 16 years old girl lost her family and lived alone in a fishermen's village. She is a strong-minded girl and very popular among young children. I guess that this story is one of the origins of girl's manga in the 1950s in which I belonged to the first generation of Japanese story manga.

Two boys lose their fathers in a plane crash. Yukichi was the son of the pilot, Takashi the son of the engineer/co-pilot. After clashing, the two become friends, and Yukichi's mother takes in the orphaned Takashi, leading the two to grow up as brothers. Years later in 1942, the two are now grown men, with Yukichi a decorated ace fighter pilot in the midst of WWII, and Takashi a pilot in the private sector testing out new fighter planes.

Ino tries to control Mon’s every move, but she becomes a fallen woman, having an affair with a student, Obata whereas her sister San remains a “good girl.” The mother is very supportive of her daughters, but, the father, Akaza, who is the stonecutter foreman on the damn, lacks control of his family.

A series of snapshots from the life of a fictional actress named Shirley serves to weave together thirteen paintings by Edward Hopperinto a fascinating synthesis of painting and film, personal and political history.