Yoshiko Kuga

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)

Makoto and Kiyoshi's generation follows their desires. She's in high school when a university student... (imdb)

After rising from his volcanic grave, Godzilla is threatened by a mutated rosebush. (imdb)

After a battle with rival criminals, a small-time gangster is treated by an alcoholic doctor in post-war Japan. The doctor diagnoses the young gangster's tuberculosis, and convinces him to begin treatment for it. The two enjoy an uneasy friendship until the gangster's former boss is released from prison and seeks to take over his gang once again. The ailing young man loses his status as gang boss and becomes ostracised, and eventually confronts his former boss in a battle to the death. (imdb)

Special Forces commander Captain Tadamori returns to Kyoto after successfully defeating the uprising of pirates in the western sea of Japan. But because the high courtiers dislike career soldiers gaining power and influence, they ignore the will of ex-Emperor Toba and refuse to reward the captain. (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)

Kameda, who has been in an asylum on Okinawa, travels to Hokkaido. There he becomes involved with two women, Taeko and Ayako. Taeko comes to love Kameda, but is loved in turn by Akama. When Akama realizes that he will never have Taeko, his thoughts turn to murder, and great tragedy ensues. (imdb)

After an attempted suicide attempt, Yukiko (Kuga) spends some time recovering at Kyoto with her mother, Hatsuko (Tanaka). However, their familial home is in fact a geisha house, and Hatsuko is the strong-willed Madame of this institute. Through this mother-daughter relationship, and the romantic entanglements that arise when both find themselves in love with Dr. Matoba (Otani), Mizoguchi explores generational conflicts and social mores whilst paying an effective tribute to the resilience of femininity in contemporary Japan.

In Older Brother, Younger Sister, director Mikio Naruse's adaptation of an oft-filmed popular novel by Saisei Murô, the eldest daughter (Machiko Kyô) of a rural family comes home pregnant, testing some already tenuous family bonds. (Slant Magazine)

The first of three consecutive films (the others are Miss Oyu and The Lady of Musashino) Mizoguchi made about women of the privileged classes.

A film about two lovers destroyed by war.

Three short tales from stories by Ichiyo Higuchi. In one, a young woman is degraded by her family after an arranged marriage. Another deals with the troubles heaped upon a young servant by her family and the wealthy people who employ her. Yet another tells of a prostitute and her hopes of finding a new, respectable life. (imdb)

Teiko, a young newlywed, bids farewell to her new husband, Kenichi, in a Tokyo station, as he leaves to conclude business in Kanazawa, promising to return on December 12. But the 12th comes and goes with no word from Kenichi. Teiko's only clue to her husband's whereabouts is a couple of strange postcards she finds among his belongings. When Kenichi's employers invite her to Kanazawa to help them locate him, Teiko finds herself embroiled in a complicated mystery. (sansebastianfestival.com)

This is ostensibly a sex-education film -- with hardly any education! -- but it's incredibly beautiful. The spring and early summer scenery in Nagano (probably) echo the budding sexuality of the film's young characters. A good dose of German romantic poetry also adds to the barely sublimated sexual atmospherics. The film isn't perfect; the cast is obviously inexperienced and the film hypocritically avoids a frank discussion of sex.... (imdb comment)

Sudo and Mori are two university students who make money by picking up rich girls in dance clubs and conning them into giving them cash. Mori is the brains of the operation, and Sudo is the suave dancer who picks up the girls. Over the course of the film, Sudo becomes involved with three different girls and is drawn into the gangster milieu, which he seems unable to resist even though he is responsible for his mother, grandmother, and sister, Masako. (Catherine Russell)

In the Tokugawa Era, the clan of Lord Yagyu has hidden away three scrolls containing clan secrets which, if revealed, would cause revolution and disaster for the clan. The information is divided among the three scrolls, all of which must be possessed for the secrets to be understood. When Princess Yuhime steals the scrolls, Tasaburo, a samurai with magical powers, and his brother Senshiro are sent to retrieve them. (imdb)

At a dormitory for an ironworks in Kitakyushu, a young man is frustrated in his attempts to get a job in the foundry because of his poor school record, while an iron worker pines for a woman who works there. (Shochiku)

SOMEWHERE BENEATH THE WIDE SKY (1954, aka KONO HIROI SORA NO DOKOKA NI) came near the end of Masaki Kobayashi's formative period as a director -- scripted by the sister of his mentor Keisuke Kinoshita (and scored by Kinoshita's brother), this drama of middle-class life in postwar Japan tells the story lower-middle-class workers in the city of Kawasaki, and their troubles and travails. (KG)

A romantic drama depicting the lives of two generations of a family who run a florist shop in Tokyo. (KG)

Set in a rural village in the Shinshu region, this melodrama about lovers of different social classes spans two generations: that of a mother, and her son. It depicts the anguish of people entangled in an old and exclusionary value system, and their escape from it, with numerous long shots and an experimental approach that intertwines two timelines. (filmex.net)

This is a biographical film about the late Yoko Araki, who was the wife of Japan's leading photographer, Nobuyoshi Araki. (imdb)

In this Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign-Language Film, director Heinosuke Gosho -- a master chronicler of Japanese middle-class life -- presents the story of Kiyoshi Yoshida (Koji Shitara), who feels estranged from both parents after his father returns from war. How the boy adapts to life with the virtual stranger his father has become is the film's focus. (Netflix)

Very fast-moving sketches of a corrupt politician, a jaded geisha, an impoverished family with 18 children and a boarder who works as a day-laborer and manufactures atomic bombs at night. (Audie Bock)

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.

Based on a screenplay by Keinosuke Kinoshita, "Koibumi" explores the wounds of war, the limits of love and the need to forgive. (imdb)

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

Ignoring the protests of his working-class mother, a young man becomes wrapped up in the world of delinquents and yakuza. (Hulu+)

A young wife looses patience with her career-minded husband and returns to her parents' home while an unpaid mortgage force the couple to rent out their home for the summer to the husband's boss. (imdb)

When a wealthy, selfish family decides to take care of an elderly hobo who collapsed near their home, they are beset by visits from his numerous friends. (Criterion)

Hyodo Reiko, a restless young woman whose arthritic left arm makes her feel like an outcast, begins an affair with Katsuragi, an unhappy middle-aged architect whose wife, Akiko, is having an affair with a Young medical student. Intrigued by Akiko, Reiko spies on her; insecure in her relationship with Katsuragi, Reiko taunts him about his wife's infidelity...

Omnibus of love stories from 1947 directed by famous directors, featuring big stars. (The Movie Database)

During the raging war between the Toyotomi and Tokugawa clans, the swordsman Mohei (whose family has been completely decimated) is recruited by Toyotomi to overcome the seat of power, Osaka Castle. Mohei's daredevil skills will be put to severe tests. (The Movie Database)

In a village subsisting on it herring fishery, a one-eyed criminal named Jakoman terrorizes the inhabitants. One of them, the son of the head of one of the fish companies by the name of Tetsu, decides to overthrow Jakoman and his cohorts. (imdb)

The story of a selfless mother and her family throughout the decades, from the 1920's to the 1960's. (themoviedb)

The woman-only prison has a cast all with a story of their own and with no dull or routine day. There is an employee who is divorced after her husband had an affair. She loves the jailed criminals and almost sees them as family. One day at a workshop someone faints while working hard to make money because she has a poor boyfriend. Another inmate is knocked up Another is a mother and has her child with her. (imdb)

After defeat at the Siege of Osaka several survivors attempt to deliver a young prince to safety. (imdb)

After WWII, an ex-soldier and his wife spend their lives working at modest jobs to raise their son and put him through school.

A high-school girl acquires the ability to time travel.