Noriko Honma

This film tells the story of professor Uehida Hyakken-sama (1889-1971), in Gotemba, around the forties. He was a university professor until an air raid, when he left to become a writer and has to live in a hut. His mood has hardly changed, not by the change nor by time. Every year his students celebrate his birthday, issuing the question "Mahda kai?" (not yet?), just to hear Uehida-san's answer "Madada yo!" (No, not yet!), in a ritual of self affirmation, and desires of lasting forever. It's a very "japanese" film who portrays everyday life and customs in Japan. (imdb)

A heinous crime and its aftermath are recalled from differing points of view. (imdb)

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

The Whole Family Works, Mikio Naruse's adaptation of a Sunao Tokunga novel, feels more of a piece with the writer/director's quietly observant and psychologically charged later work. (Slant)

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

A squadron of Japanese Self-Defense Force soldiers find themselves transported through time to their country's warring states era, when rival samurai clans were battling to become the supreme Shogun. The squad leader, Lt. Iba, sees this as the perfect opportunity to realize his dream of becoming the ruler of Japan. To achieve this, he teams his troops up with those of Kagatori, a samurai daimyo who also aspires to become Shogun. Are either of these power-hungry warriors to be trusted? (imdb)

Former playmates both long ago abandoned by their parents, recall their youth and fall in love. A young man, deserted as a child by his mother, and a young woman, deserted in childhood by her father, meet and recall their days as playmates. When a romance develops between them, the man's foster parents express their disapproval and the woman's teacher claims they are too young for marriage; and the two lovers part. (The Toho Studios Story: A History and Complete Filmography)

A skilled country doctor's talents are such that he can even perform operations as difficult and novel as removing a patient's kidney for the first time in Japan. Unfortunately for him, however, his wife's addiction to gambling is of such a magnitude that he is down to selling his underwear to make money. The image sticks and he becomes known as the 'underwear doctor.' On the other hand, his successful surgery's patient is so grateful he himself wants to become a physician. (imdb)

It follows the lives of the wealthy Makioka family of Osaka from the autumn of 1936 to April 1941, focusing on the family's attempts to find a husband for the third sister, Yukiko. It depicts the decline of the family's upper-middle-class, suburban lifestyle as the specter of World War II and Allied Occupation hangs over.