Yûko Mochizuki

Impersonating an Imperial Army officer by wearing a "red lion's mane", a poor servant returns to his... (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)

What is the life of a Geisha like once her beauty has faded and she has retired? Kin has saved her money, and has become a wealthy money-lender, spending her days cold-heartedly collecting debts. Even her best friends, Tomi, Nobu, and Tamae, who were her fellow Geisha, are now indebted to her. Kin has two former lovers who still pursue her; one she wants to see, and the other she doesn't. But even the one she remembers fondly, when he shows up, proves to be a disappointment. (imdb)

Oshima's first film does a wonderful job portraying the lives of those left behind when Japan's economy was on the upswing. It shows the thick glass walls of class distinction and the true difficulty of both sides being able to come to terms with each other. (imdb)

In Kabuki style, the film tells the story of a remote mountain village where the scarcity of food leads to a voluntary but socially-enforced policy in which relatives carry 70-year-old family members up Narayama mountain to die. (imdb)

The struggle of farmers against the greed of the company they rely upon to sell their rice.

Alternating in time, between the end of World War II and 1953, Haruko, a widow, does what she can to keep her daughter Utako and son Seiichi safe, fed, and sheltered. By 1953, it's clear that the children, as they enter adulthood, want little to do with their mother. They have a different view of their childhood and her sacrifices: in their eyes, she abandoned them to live a life of pleasure. The self-pitying Haruko is sure her life was one of pain and humiliation, for her children. (imdb)

An expose of conditions in an upper-class, feudalistic girls' boarding school in Kyoto. Sharply drawn characters: the spinster teacher who once had a baby; the girl forced to go to school by her father so she would be kept away from her boyfriend; the rich girl with extremely left-wing ideas. When one of the girls commits suicide because she is thought to be one of the teachers' spies, the girls break out into open rebellion.

The conflicting dreams of the members of a Japanese family are threatened by a continuing series of misfortunes. (imdb)

The picture belongs to the jidai gekki (historic) genre. It is a powerful story of violence and eroticism, picturing a world at once sordid and poetic, with two central themes which intermingle to compound an admirable panel of a critical period in Japanese history: the great famine in the mid 19th Century. (imdb)

A girl who had left her small Japanese village for the excitement and adventure of the big city--in this case, Tokyo--returns home years later for a visit. (imdb)

In Hiroshima Prefecture during the Meiji era, simple housemaid Seki accepts the proposal of Moichi, an educated mail carrier, who has decided to quit his job and save money for a warehouse by transporting goods with his wooden cart. Seki's parents disown her for not asking for their approval, and also Moichi's mother, a widow, does not accept her as her daughter-in-law, treating her disdainfully.