Kokuten Kōdō

A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six...

In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who...

After years on the road establishing his reputation as Japan's greatest fencer, Takezo returns to Kyoto. Otsu waits for him, yet he has come not for...

A humble and simple Takezo abandons his life as a knight errant. He's sought as a teacher and vassal by Shogun, Japan's most powerful clan leader....

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...

The story is based on the serial novel by Tsunoda Kikuo.

The story is based on the serial novel by Tsunoda Kikuo.

The story of Sanshiro, a strong stubborn youth, who travels into the city in order to learn Jujutsu. However, upon his arrival he discovers a new...

Over more than a decade, the daughter of a Kyoto Imperial University professor comes of age as she witnesses her father fired for opposing the rise...

Jidai-geki by Kiyoshi Saeki

A romantic melodrama about the shifting relationship between Ryosuke and Miki as their precarious employment and social circumstances shift around...

Jidai-geki by Nobuo Nakagawa. Most likely a star vehicle for Kanjuro Arashi

In this government-suggested sequel, Sugata again grows as a judo master, and demonstrates his (and by extension, all Japanese) superiority to the...

Director Hiroshi Inagaki's early version of the life and death of famed swordsman Sasaki Kojiro. Otani Tomoemon gives a brilliant performance as...

The famous showdown at Kagiya corner has been told many times, but never before with the realism and intensity of this version scripted by Kurosawa...

A rural village elder plans an event on the return of a farmer's daughter from the city, unaware that she has become a Westernized burlesque artist.

Hanjiro of Kusama searches for his little sister Oyuki, who went missing after being desecrated by Hikosaku Tokurai three years ago. The first film...

This adaptation of a Hideji Hojo novel, about the historical uprising of the Kuroda clan in 1633, is told through the eyes of retainer, Daizen. As...

Three competing parties all race against time to track down an elusive creature known only as the Snowman.

A humble page fathers a child by the daughter of a clan official and is banished. Years later, the child, now a stable boy, is reunited with his...

The film tells about the life of the former vassal of the Ako clan - Fuwa Katsuemon Masatane.

Yasube Nakayama left the clan and lives in Edo. One day, Yasubei visits his uncle Rokuroemon Kanno to borrow money from a moneylender in the amount...

Momoko and Asako are half sisters, daughters of the famous architect Tsuneo Mizuhara, who also have another half sister in Kyôto, Wakako, whom...

1950s Japanese comedy.

A young scriptwriter with a yakuza upbringing, an iron-fire dancer, a young painter, and a pure-hearted downtown girl fall in love in Asakusa in this...

Japan is thrown into a panic after several ships are sunk near Odo Island. An expedition to the island led by Dr. Kyohei Yamane soon discover...

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes...

A celebrity photograph sparks a court case as a tabloid magazine spins a scandalous yarn over a painter and a famous singer.

Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the...

Kiichi Nakajima, an elderly foundry owner, is convinced that Japan will be affected by an imminent nuclear war, and resolves to move his family to...

Set in Qingdao, China, a Japanese company locates an office there and begins work and cooperation with a local Chinese company for business. Many...

Three bank robbers, Eijima, Nojiri, and Takasugi, flee the police and escape into the mountains. At an inn high in the Japanese Alps, Eijima and...

Japanese horror movie from 1932.

Following Flower Picking Diary (1939), Tamizo directed another film starring Hideko Takamine, based on a story by Nobuko Yoshiya. Takamine plays a...

Okiyo runs a restaurant in Asakusa. She struggles with the times and the relationships around her.

Japanese film.

Ryuta and Mineo Komatsu are brothers, both yakuza (gangsters). Mineo, although complicit in crime, even murder, wants out of the gangster life,...

An attempt is made to suppress a journalist's investigation of collusion between a rural police chief and the local gangster bosses.

An American scientist tells two colleagues about the finding of an abominable snowman living in the Japanese alps, where it is worshipped by a remote...

The story of Yoshinaka during the tumultuous period of warring related to us in the Heike Monogatari. Close in setting to Kinugasa’s famous...

Soldiers Hayate and Yaheiji secretly escape from their besieged castle. Hayate has left behind his lover, Kano. On his way, Hayate is wounded and...

A rare film which depicts the tragic fate of a Christian lord who fought for his fate in the Edo period. Of note is Utaemon Ichikawa's extraordinary...

This epic depicts the battle between Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen. The focus of the story is the struggle by the unit leader in charge of the...

The Ueki family may not be wealthy, but smiles are never in short supply. The father is awarded prize money for 25 years of service to his workplace,...

During an assignment, foreign correspondent Steve Martin spends a layover in Tokyo and is caught amid the rampage of an unstoppable prehistoric...

A married couple looking for an apartment move in with the husband's co-worker, a widower. The husband becomes jealous of the widower and his wife.

A Japanese army engineer (Hasegawa) on the mainland must put his personal feelings for a beautiful Chinese woman (Ri) aside if he is to succeed at...

The Blue Pearl depicts the interplay between a young man from Tokyo and two ama (pearl divers; literally “women of the sea”) in a...

A woman marries, gives birth to a stillborn child, and divorces, falls in love with a hotel-keeper, only to find herself subordinated to his drive...

Based on a 1956 television feature on Japan’s national network, NHK, this is one of Uchida’s rarest films. A socially conscious drama...

Jurobei, a kaisen tonya (wholesaler in port) in Awa, was wronged and killed on the day of the Dance Festival by the evil merchant & the chamberlin....

An onnagata (female impersonator) of a Kabuki troupe avenges his parents' deaths. Remade in 1963 as Yukinojô Henge.

This 1932 adaptation is the earliest sound version of the ever-popular and much-filmed Chushingura story of the loyal 47 retainers who avenged their...

Story about a poor Japanese woman living near an American army base who resorts to prostitution.

A 28-year-old single woman is pressured to marry.

A 1942 Jidaigeki by the veteran jidaigeki filmmaker Kunio Watanabe about the legendary warrior Musashibo Benkei with Hideko Takamine portraying...

Song of the White Orchid was a co-production of Toho and Mantetsu, the railway that served the colonial region of Manchuria, and the first film in...

Hiromasa Nomura World War II era film

Following the tragic death of his father, a young boy's family trains his horse to compete in the local derby.

The lives of five prostitutes employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation is debating the passage of an anti-prostitution law.

A re-edited Italian-language dubbed version of the original Godzilla, using as a basis the U.S. version, "Godzilla, King of the Monsters!" (1956),...

Obscure French version of the original Godzilla. The film combines elements of the original Toho version and the American King of the Monsters! in a...