Zenzô Matsuyama

In this third part of the trilogy Kaji, a Japanese WWII soldier, finds himself struggling to survive behind enemy lines towards the end of the war.

Second part of a trilogy. Conscientious objector Kaji, now forced to serve in the Japanese army during the Second World War... (imdb)

First of a trilogy of films. During the Second World War, a Japanese conscientious objector named Kaji works as a supervisor in a Manchurian prison camp. He hopes to avoid duty as a soldier, but he also hopes to be helpful to the welfare of his prisoners. An escape attempt by Chinese prisoners results in Kaji's arrest for collusion. He faces the possibility of transferral to combat -- or worse

Eight filmmakers collaborate with Teshigahara to bring a newsreel-style snapshot of Tokyo in 1957-58, when it had eight and a half million people and was the largest city in the world... (imdb)

Sanae Sakanishi, widowed at the film's outset is left a substantial inheritance that soon becomes the instigator of much familial discord. (Slant)

A 19 year old girl loses her husband in war. Bombing destroys his family's shop and the widow stays to rebuild it as the rest of the family flee and runs it for 18 years out of love for her dead husband and his mother. After 18 years when a new supermarket threatens to put them out of business, the sisters conspire to turn the shop into a supermarket and get rid of their brother's widow. (imdb)

The story is set around an American Air Force base which has attracted bars and brothels and the native Japanese who need this sordid world to scape by and make money to just barely survive. A love triangle develops among the dwellers of a falling down apartment building and a local gangster called Killer Joe. (imdb)

Keijiro and Ayako Kono (Masayuki Mori and Chikage Awashima) seem like a picture-book upper middle-class family. He is a respected professor and the couple has two amiable children (a high school-aged girl and middle school-aged boy). But the Kono's domestic siutuation is more complicated than it seems on the surface. The children are actually the illegitimate children of Kono's long-time mistress, Miho. To compensate for giving up the children, the Konos subsidize a bar which Miho operates. (imdb)

When an American is murdered in a Japanese inn, Tokyo police detective Munesue follows the trail of the killer to New York. There he is joined by a New York City detective named Shuftan and together they sort out the crime. (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)

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)

A pitiless take on Japan's professional baseball industry. An excoriation of the inhumanity bred by a mercenary, bribery-fueled business, it follows the sharklike maneuvers of a scout dead set on signing a promising athlete to the team the Toyo Flowers. (criterion.com)

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

A botanist woos the secretary of an industrialist whose company threatens the local water supply. (KG)

The film centers on the working class families struggling to survive with menial labor in a rapidly modernizing city. Keiko and Saeko Hibino (Noriko Maki and Chieko Baisho) are sisters who support their parents by working at a local factory. The sisters must bear the burden of their traditional father (Eijiro Tono), who is pressuring Keiko to marry to save the family business, and compete with the modern city girls who get by on their looks to get ahead. (ADC)

A widow's decision to return to her ex-lover is met with disapproval from her family. (hulu+)

The story is of two people. One is deaf, the other deaf and dumb. They marry after meeting at a school reunion, and the film follows their trials and tribulations ... and joys. (Letterboxd)

Ishibumi is a film about the Hiroshima bombing. It's Hirokazu Koreeda's rework of a classic 1969 TV program produced by Hiroshima Television. (imdb)

Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign Film in 1956

A taut, economical policier-cum-gang-hostage thriller.

A young man and woman are determined to marry despite opposition from her parents. (imdb)

An undercover Japanese cop meant to operate within a gang, which deals in drugs is killed, by a sniper. The police are searching for a left-handed man as they determined the killer to be. The investigation into the assassination sets two detectives, Sumikawa and Akine, into a sprawling investigation through Tokyo’s underworld. (imdb)

In 1919, a group of Japanese immigrants arrives in Hawaii. Among them Yoshio Inoue and his wife Kishimo and Sumi, a young woman ready to get married soon. With soil that is hard to work & a warm/hot climate, the immigrants have a hard life in near slave-on-a-plantation conditions. However their toil allows them to progress in the then American way to become middle class citizens. Now their kids are young adults... are they all American or Japanese? The "day of infamy" dawns. (ACM and me)

Pierre Marsac, a French engineer working for the Nagasaki shipbuilding yards, has fallen in love both with Japan and a charming Japanese girl named Noriko. But Françoise Fabre, a French journalist and Pierre's former lover, contacts him while visiting the Land of the Rising Sun. They meet again, find out their love might not be dead. Meanwhile, Pierre gradually becomes estranged from sweet, humble Noriko. One day, a typhoon strikes Nagasaki... (Guy Bellinger)