Kôgo Noda

A troupe of travelling players arrive at a small seaport in the south of Japan. Komajuro Arashi, the aging master of the troupe, goes to visit his old flame Oyoshi and their son Kiyoshi, even though Kiyoshi believes Komajuro is his uncle (imdb)

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

In postwar Tokyo, this household is loving and serene: older parents, their 28-year-old daughter Noriko, their married son, his devoted wife, and two rascally sons. (imdb)

Somiya was an old widower with a daughter, named Noriko, mature for marriage but would rather live with her father... (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)

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

The great actress and Ozu regular Setsuko Hara plays a mother gently trying to persuade her daughter to marry in this glowing portrait of family love and conflict (DVD Beaver)

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)

Ozu creates a picture about an entire family, enriching the several strands of his story with many anecdotes. The film is unusually rich in character vignettes: at the same time it is one of the director's bleakest films.

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)

A business man is often approached by friends for advice and help regarding marriage as well as family and romantic relationships. He is always very calmly and objectively able to give great insight and assistance to these particular situations. However, when it comes time for him to be objective regarding his oldest daughter, he finds it very difficult... (imdb)

Takeo, a capricious wife from Tokyo high-society, is bored by her dull husband, a quiet and reliable company executive raised in the country (Shin Saburi) After a crisis, she understands better his true value. A parallel sub-plot shows her niece rebelling against the tradition of arranged marriages. (imdb)

The film opens as an effective heist drama pastiche, with Okada trussing up bank clerks and dodging the long shadows of a police dragnet, fox-like; we follow him home to his wife and their critically ill baby daughter, as does a wily police chief. As captor and prey sit out the night, waiting for the child's recovery, the scene is set for a claustrophobic battle of nerves. (timeout.com)

A young salary-man loses his white-collar insurance job trying to cover for an aging colleague. Unfortunately, it is 1931 and the Great Depression means few other employment opportunities. He has difficulty covering the expenses of his family. After misadventures, he runs into his former professor, now a health food café owner, who promises him aid if the young man assists him with the café.

Ryoichi and Chikako are brother and sister. They live together. Chikako works during the day in a office and at night she prostitutes herself to fund her brother's studies in university. (imdb)

Ozu revisits the dichotomy between schoolboy idealism and working world realities, this time focusing on four college friends, one of whom (Tatsuo Saito) happens to be the son of a corporate executive; the son takes over upon his father's death, and his friends come seeking employment. Their friendship clearly isn't the same under this new working relationship, the subordinates become yes-men to the point that one of them says nothing when Saito casts an eye on his fiance. (imdb)

After the husband dies of a heart attack, widowed Chieko selflessly devotes herself to the raising of the son and stepson Sadao. Her unconscious refusal to deal with Sadao finally uncovers the secret of his parentage, he tries to quit the family and live on his own. The prologue in which the father dies at the office, showed their former happy domestic life and the epilogue the reconciliation with mother after the traumatic central section. (dvdbeaver)

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)

Setsuko is unhappily to Mimura, an engineer with no job and a bad drinking habit. She had always been in love with Hiroshi but both of them failed to propose when Hiroshi left for France a few years ago. Now he is back and Mariko (Setsuko's sister) tries to reunite them. She too is secretly in love with Hiroshi. (imdb)

This early short (and silent) film by Japanese master Ozu seems to be the perfect illustration for XVIIth century French poet Jean de La Fontaine's fable "The Two Cocks" : "Two cocks in peace were living, when / A war was kindled by a hen." It is the simple story of two friends who live together in a poor tenement and who share about everything in life (food, hopes, work...). Everything goes well until they gallantly rescue a young (and pretty) woman injured in a road accident. (imdb)

This early Naruse silent is a stock drama about a mother sacrificing her happiness to ensure her child's.

A socially committed film about the feudal state of many Japanese women in 1946. Hiroko Hosokawa, a female lawyer, defends Mrs. Asakura, who suffocated her child in her grief after her husband died penniless following an industrial accident. The prosecutor is Hiroko's sister's husband Kono, who also sent Hiroko's fiance, Yamaoka, to jail for his liberal views during the war. Yamaoka has just been freed, but is seriously ill from his time in prison. (imdb)

The film is a lengthy work interweaving characters from different backgrounds and social strata in a narrative centered around the experiences of its heroine, Yumie Sone.

The film is a lengthy work interweaving characters from different backgrounds and social strata in a narrative centered around the experiences of its heroine, Yumie Sone.

A farmer's boy, obsessed with his balsa-and-paper flying models and with dreams of real aircraft, develops a friendship with the daughter of the local squire, who introduces the lad to her pilot brother and his flying officer friends; through hard work, and despite the handicap of a lowly class status, he eventually succeeds in qualifying as a pilot and joining the air force.

A young doctor, Kozo Tsumura (Uehara), falls for young nurse Katsue Takaishi (Tanaka). But she's got a secret: she's a widow with a son. Kozo and Katsue decide to run away to Kyoto, but her child suddenly became sick and she just missed the train and Kozo. She makes it to Kyoto finally, but is unable to meet him. Plus she isn't accepted into Kyoto society. She goes back to her hometown and tries to forget him. She quits the hospital to concentrate on her singing. (imdb)

The eldest daughter of a noble family is in love with an aviator while being courted by a fellow aristocrat she thinks is a dullard. (letterboxd)

Second part of Heinosuke Gosho's "New Road" film. (letterboxd)

A gangster tries to find redemption with the inadvertent help of an innocent shop girl and his jealous girlfriend will do anything to keep him. The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress ... (imdb)

In the movies of those times, you can see young boys in the company scene often. Those boys were called kyuji (給仕), which means “waiter” literally. They are doing odd jobs in the company including serving tea, ushering visitors, buying tobacco, etc. Ordering lunch for the individual requests was also an important job. Those boys were hired often as soon as they graduated from elementary school.

Following a young man through his childhood ambition to follow his father into the military to losing his life in combat in China.

It's 1863, and the politics of Japan have grown confused. Not only is there the continuing conflict between the Shogunate and the larger domains, but a growing movement for the restoration of power to the Emperor is at hand. The issue of the moment is how to deal with the foreigners who have been troubling the nation since Perry's fleet visited ten years before. The two sides argue over whether the foreigners should be expelled or welcomed.

Japanese propaganda film about the Normanton Incident.