Yôko Tsukasa

A crafty ronin comes to a town divided by two criminal gangs and decides to play them against each other to free the town. (imdb)

During peace in 1725, aging swordsman Isaburo is living a henpecked life when his clan lord requests that Isaburo's son marry the lord's mistress... (imdb)

A guilt-haunted samurai warrior attempts to stop a massacre taking place. (imdb)

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)

Edmund Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac, transplanted to Japan. A poet-warrior with an oversized nose (matched only by his great heart) loves a lady. But she sees him only as a friend, so he helps another man to woo her by giving him the poetry of his own heart. (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.

Feudal Japan. Kamo Serizawa and Isami Kondo turn a collection of student fencers into a band of assassins known as the Shinsen Group, devoted to the Tokugawa shogunate and to an elegant code of action and behavior. Kondo leads the band against the forces of the Emperor in hopes of preventing his restoration to the throne. (imdb)

A war widow with a young boy manages a farm with her bossy mother-in-law. When a reporter comes to interview her, the two begin an affair. He turns out to be married and won't leave his wife. Her older brother tries to marry off his children and hang on to/ extend his farm through an advantageous marriage in the face of threatened land confiscation and the desire of his children to get comfortable urban jobs instead of the backbreaking work in the paddy fields under parental control. (imdb)

Scattered Clouds, director Mikio Naruse's final film, plays like the melancholy last dance of an extended evening of revelry now teetering on the fine line separating drunkenness and sobriety. It's the cinematic equivalent of a hangover, though the heady haze the film conveys is part of its charm and very much in tune with its deeply saturated color photography, which constantly threatens to spill over its borders and run together in a kind of chaotic emotional release. (KG)

A 1960s co-production between Japanese directors Yuzo Kawashima and Mikio Naruse

The legend of the birth of Shintoism. In Fourth Century Japan, the Emperor Keikoh's son Ouso expects to succeed his father on the throne, but Otomo, the Emperor's vassal, prefers Ouso's stepbrother Waka, and conspires to have Ouso die on a dangerous mission he has contrived. (imdb)

Professor Nishiyama, after studying and interpreting the prophecies of Nostradamus, realizes that the end of the world is at hand. Unfortunately, nobody listens to him until it is too late. As the effects of mankind's tampering of the earth - radioactive smog clouds, hideously mutated animals, destruction of the ozone layer - rage out of control, the world leaders hurtle blindly toward the final confrontation. (imdb)

This is once again, in terms of plot, a bit of a shocker. Soon after we meet Kuniko (a young widow, played by Hideko Takamine) and her much-beloved young only son, the boy is run over by Kinuko (played by Yoko Tsukasa the rich spoiled wife of an automobile executive). Kinuko, it turns out, was distracted at the time of the accident because her companion in the car, a hunkish younger man who is her lover, had just told her of his plan to soon begin a far-away job. (imdb comment)

Lord Taro must deliver a money chest but is robbed by brigands led by Jibu. One of Jibu's men, Rokuro, steals the money from Jibu, but after meeting and befriending Taro, Rokuro decides to return the money to Taro. But Taro's unscrupulous brother Jiro falsely accuse Taro of the theft, and Taro reactively joins the outlaw band and encourages them to steal from the nobles and give to the poor. (imdb)

Hideko Takamine is the widow of the oldest son of an extended family -- and runs the family's grocery. The upcoming threat of super-marketization is mentioned in passing -- but not followed through here. Much of the machinations here involve a marriage proposal for one of the younger daughters. (imdb)

Intrepid detective Kindaichi (Ishizaka) tracks down a triple murderer using Haiku poem clues. (Audie Bock)

Private detective Kindaichi investigates a series of murders in scenic rural Japan.

As Japan joins in a political pact with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is appointed supreme commander of the Japanese fleet. With Japan headed inexorably toward war, Yamamoto, despite his misgivings, believes the only possible victory lies in destroying the American fleet by surprise at Pearl Harbor. The attack succeeds, but fails to sink the American carrier fleet.

May Kawaguchi is a famous Japanese fashion designer. Returning to Tokyo from her home in New York, she travels incognito with a tour group, in hopes of having a quiet vacation without being noticed. But she is spotted and the press has a field-day with the returning celebrity. Her hopes of rest shattered, she agrees to put on a large-scale fashion show.

Japanese police detective Saburo Fujioka is suspected of corruption, demoted, and sent to the city of Kojin. Kojin is the scene of fierce fighting between rival gangs. (imdb)