Jô Shishido

The place is the down side of Yokohama. The atmosphere is international and the action fast. The hero is Maiku Hama - a delinquent turned private eye who operates out of the second floor of the local movie theater. (Tidepoint Pictures)

The film's story centers on Hanada, a.k.a. "No. 3 Killer," the third-best hit man in Japanese organized crime... (imdb)

After World War II, some Tokyo prostitutes band together with a strict code: no pimps, attack any street walker who comes into our territory... (imdb)

A violent thug plays opposing yakuza bosses against each other. (imdb)

n this violent and morally ambiguous crime drama from master genre filmmaker Kinji Fukasaku, Takeda (Akira Kobayashi), a longtime leader of one of Hiroshima's Yakuza families (the Japanese Mafia), attempts to resolve the longtime war between various mob factions by reshaping his organization into a political organization that would be both powerful and legal. (All Movie Guide)

In this second film compiled from two episodes of a Japanese TV serial, Captain Joe, reformed interstellar marauder Ken and the rest of the crew of the Backus-3 set off to destroy an alien race's super-weapon, face off with Ken's vengeful ex-lover Rita and confront the sinister leader of the marauding Star Wolves. (imdb)

An alien is pursued as a traitor by his own race because he refuses to kill humans. (imdb)

One year after the suicide of C-list model Miki, five of her fans come together for a commemorative meeting: fan club leader Iemoto (Shun Oguri), Oda Yuji (Yusuke Santamaria), Snake (Koide Keisuke), Yasuo (Tsukaji Muga), and Ichigo Musume (Kagawa Teruyuki). Sitting down together for the first time, they reminisce about their idol, wondering how someone so bright and beautiful could have possibly taken her own life. That's when they reach a revelation - she must have been murdered! (AsianMediaWiki)

Former hoodlums trying to leave behind a life of crime find their past coming back to haunt them when the authorities seek them out as murder witnesses.

A hard-boiled hit man is caught between warring gangs

The world-famous woodblock artist Hokusai is a widower who lacks the ability to earn money, and he lives with his daughter Oei at the house of his friend, Bakin. Hokusai meets a woman called Onao and finds himself uncontrollably attracted to her, but she disappears all of a sudden. One day, an excited Oei brings home a young girl who looks exactly like Onao. Immediately, Hokusai starts to paint, using the young girl as a model.

Fresh out of the slammer, Togawa has no chance to go straight because he is immediately coerced by a wealthy mob boss into organizing a heist on an armored car carrying racetrack receipts. After assembling a ragtag bunch to carry out the robbery, Togawa learns that all is not what it seems in Takumi Furukawa's thriller. (criterion.com)

This is the story about a young female golpher and her transformation from young promising teenager, into a media sensation. Think Michelle Wie. During her rise she falls in love with her trainer, gets her own TV show, attracts a female stalker, and has to deal with the pressures that come with being in the spotlight. Funny, dark, and slightly erotically charged, a must for fans of Suzuki! (karagara)

Jo Shishido stars as Det. Tajima, a smug investigator who nabs a pair of criminal gangs with flamboyant aplomb while the police remain baffled. Suzuki treats the rather hoary plotline as an excuse for dark-humored camp, and young audiences were delighted with his irreverent approach, which made him one of the few distinctive names in the '60s assembly-line of Nikkatsu Studios. (www.surrealmoviez.info)

A young yakuza hitman named Goro does a job and needs to hideout away from Tokyo for a while. (imdb)

Jiro is a man who can do anything for you for a price. Part odd jobs man and part private eye he takes on tasks as simple as clearing out storage lockers to tracking down lost items. That's what he's asked to do by a beautiful young woman (Hiroko Satô) who shows up at his warehouse living space one afternoon. This young woman asks Jiro to help her track down a lost Rolex watch that she says was accidentally thrown out of a helicopter while she was scattering the ashes of her late father.

The movie is set in Kure (same place as Yakuza Papers part 1), and the initial story once again revolves around the Yamamori clan. Boss Yamamori is the same whining, crying bastard you hate from the original series. In this new series Bunta plays Mikio Miyoshi of the Yamamori family. He is a similar type of character to the one he played in the first set of movies. These new ones are differernt though. There is a lot more (uncoregraphed) gun violence. (KG)

The film is another Chinese vs. Japanese movie and is set during the early years of the Republic of China. Ying (Pei Pei) is a patriotic young woman who goes undercover to try and find out where a student revolutionary leader called Choi (James Tien) is being imprisoned. Coming up against the invading Japanese and their puppet government, she works her way into the favor of Lui, the Peking Bureau Chief of Security (Ou Wei) by pretending to be his long lost younger sister. (kungfucinema.com)

Jimmy Wang Yu stars in his first major modern-day role, in the same year he revolutionized martial arts cinema in One-Armed Swordsman. Here he has both his arms, and he's going to need them to survive the homicidal desires of Japanese gold smugglers. To spice things up even further, there's femme fatales, damsels-in-distress, and even killer strippers. From the first bomb to the final corpse (crushed by gold bars), this is a camp classic of amazing proportions. (hkcinemagic.com)

Story of a female detective solving crimes.

Tooyama, an aging impotent art critic, sends his much-younger wife, Shizuko, to Paris to evaluate the work of Ikegami, an artist he sponsors. She discovers she's curious about sado-masochism, and soon she becomes Ikegami's object of bondage as well as his muse. Encounters with Ikegami lead her into a shadowy world of wealthy patrons of ropes, humiliation, and slavery. Ikegami discovers his protective side, and Tooyama reenters the picture. Once Shizuko can reestablish control over her life, she (imdb)

Realistic docudrama on daily police life.

In the movie, Maiku Hama (Masatoshi Nagase) is finally making it big in the detective biz. Financially well off and up to his neck in new clientele, things seem to be looking up. However, when he receives a strange request from a hooded character, "I want you to look for me". Never one to back down from a challenge, Hama gets mixed up in the work of a serial killer that has Yokohama paralyzed with fear. (eigapedia.com)

A tale of gang warfare that features a raft of the period's most iconic stars, Akira Kobayashi (Battles Without Honor and Humanity, The Flowers and the Angry Waves) is a yakuza lieutenant who emerges from jail to find his gang dispersed and his aging boss in his sickbed. [Jô] Shishido is the rival waiting to kill him and a young Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood) is the girl caught in the crossfire. (Arrow Films)

Kuroda (Jô Shishido) is a mob hitman who turns on his employers after being forced to execute his lover. Joining forces with his similarly wronged brothers, hot-headed Eiji (Tatsuya Fuji) and aspiring boxer Saburô (Jirô Okazaki), the trio escalate their mob retaliation to all-out turf war where no one will stop until one faction emerges victorious. (imdb)

Obayashi captures the erratic and turbulent but sincere energy of youth with this story of a group of rebellious boys who form an uneasy alliance to save a local girl from being sold into prostitution. The film breaks with the somber and tortured critiques of wartime Japan by previous generations to present a positive and anarchic vision of resistance. (Alexander Zahlten, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard)

Ishikawa, a newspaper journalist, unexpectedly meets Asako, a woman who used to work for his company some time ago as a phone operator. Three years ago, she accidentally heard the voice of a suspect who committed a still-unresolved homicide. Since then, the suspect's voice has remained lodged in her mind as a terrifying memory. One night, her husband invites over his colleagues, Kawai, Hamazaki, and Muraoka. She realizes that Hamazaki's voice sounds exactly the same as the unseen suspect's! (imdb)

Shinji (Akira Kobayashi), a wandering street musician, gets involved with a mob boss, Akitsu (Nobuo Kaneko), after saving one of his henchmen in a bar fight. Akitsu gives Shinji a job to evict an offshore fishery, but things take an unexpected twist when Shinji finds out the owner's wife is Akitsu's actual sister. As Shinji protects the Akitsu family, Akitsu's daughter takes a romantic interest in him.... (imdb)

Two young people meet by chance and fall in love but the woman is diagnosed with leprosy and sent away to a remote mountain sanitorium. (imdb)

Komori Chiaki is a budding tennis prodigy, however one day during training her coach hits her in the eye with the ball. She's taken to hospital where she learns that she will never regain the sight in her eye. Her coach learns of a mysterious doctor 'Black Jack' who lives in a secluded house, who might be able to help. 'Black Jack' agrees to do the operation, but for a 'substantial reward'! Her sight is regained, but now she starts to see a mysterious man that is invisible to those around her.. (RMS)

Fleeing from China, where the Japanese army is in retreat, Kisaburo, a vindictive soldier who always questions the orders of his officers, falls in love with a Chinese spy, they're on different sides of this war, and yet. But soon he'll be forced to choose between the love for his woman and sacrifice for his country. (japanesesamuraidvd)

When one billion yen goes AWOL, "Joe the Ace" (Shishido) spies an opportunity to get rich quick, but things soon go wrong as it turns out he isn't the only one who'll stop at nothing to get his hands on the missing cash. (Arrow Video)

When the mysterious Joe of Spades executes one of the bosses of a powerful syndicate, his colleagues, fearing for their own lives, call on the services of assassin agency Murder Unincorporated to take care of the problem. (Arrow Video)

Nobuo is a hot-headed hoodlum fresh out of reform school who struggles to make a clean break with his tearaway past. (imdb)

With the aid of a plucky sheriff, a bounty hunter stands up to a slithery saloon boss and his gang of gunslingers.

Second adventure of the detective.

A romantic drama starring Jô Shishido & Kinuyo Tanaka.

The story centers on Naoe Kanetsugu, a loyal and devoted samurai in Echigo Province in the 16th century. Kanetsugu was trained in his early childhood by Uesugi Kenshin and after his death, served Kenshin's adopted son Kagekatsu and is known for his extreme loyalty to the Uesugi family. He also made every effort to protect the people of Echigo with a strong sense of justice and genuine sympathy toward commoners. (imdb)

Mako (Junko Natsu) and her delinquent girlfriends do as they please. Seducing men to bed for money, Mako always got what she wanted - until she met Hideo. As she goes about her regular scheme, Hideo strikes back and tries to rape her. Little did he know that Mako's older brother was a Yakuza. (nikkatsu.com)

The Akiba and Shimura crime families run the streets of "K City". With the construction of new buildings and new factories underway, the city has sprouted into a boomtown and business is good. Two of the most infamous mobs of Tokyo want a piece of the pie. As out-of-town yakuza flood the city overnight, the crime boss of the Akiba family, Tezuka (Joe Shishido), is released from prison after a five year sentence. He does not like the "change" he sees. (nikkatsu.com)

A guitar-playing drifter arrives in Niigata, Japan and gets mixed up in a revenge plot of a gangster.

"Making of" Hana to hebi 2: Pari/Shizuko (2005).

By Ash_Campbell Ryuji (Hideki Takahashi) is a yakuza released from prison trying to re-establish the Oshima clan. Throw in the long suffering girlfriend Haruko (Masako Izumi), rival clans, and the mysterious provocateur Enshu Tora (Jo Shishido) (Letterbox'd)

When a mob cartel is threatened with assassination of its leadership, and indeed one of its heads is shot, the remaining heads hire hitmen of their own via an audition as defense.

Set in Mexico. The love story of an architect and a fashion designer. Both are from Japan.

Comedy about a young man who causes pandemonium by raiding a bar patronized by his father, winning the favors of a hostess, and ends up feeling the breasts and hips of all the girls in his father's office.

A Yakuza smuggler gets involved with a Korean prostitute.

Based on the manga of the same name. Originally published in the Japanese magazine Weekly Playboy. It follows Ippei Yasuda, the son of a prominent family, who is immensely gifted in nearly everything he does.