Tanie Kitabayashi

Two sisters move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, and discover the surrounding trees are...

A high school boy and girl in the midst of their youth try to get their parents to remarry.

Special forces officer Ajisawa leaves his paramilitary group to take care of his newly-adopted daughter, Yoriko: the sole survival of a bloodbath for...

Part one of Shin Saburi's Theater of Life adaptation.

Late in the 1500s, an aging tea master teaches the way of tea to a headstrong Shogun. Through force of will and courageous fighting, Hideyoshi...

Film directed by Seiji Hisamatsu and starring Wakao Ayako

A touching story of pure love and tears between a boy and a girl, drawn by the innocent duo of Chieko Baisho and Shinichiro Mikami, based on "Nagashi...

A woman, Tome, is born to a lower class family in Japan in 1918. The title refers to an insect, repeating its mistakes, as in an infinite circle....

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...

Bittersweet shomin-geki drama by Keigo Kimura

Set in Kawaguchi in the early 60s, this simple story chronicles the lives of foundry families and one girl's dreams of higher education.

At the close of the war in Japan, a widowed mother makes every possible sacrifice to bring up her ungrateful son and daughter who are unimpressed...

When dead people starts returning to the small Japanese town of Aso, government official Kawada is dispatched to uncover the “truth”.

The critical establishment was clearly not prepared to accept a woman's prison film featuring former prostitutes recovering from venereal diseases,...

Shows the devastation caused by the atomic bomb, and by use of a fictional storyline, portrays the struggle of the ordinary Japanese people in...

Learning of his family's collapse, acolyte Goichi, sent to study silently at the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, must endure acute psychological...

A soldier has been in the Japanese military for the entirety of WWII, and in that time, his dedication to the army has never faltered. However, as...

A film set in Nagasaki examining prejudice against atom bomb victims.

School teachers responsible for the lives of their students work to evacuate Allied bombings near the end of WWII.

Yuka is a “good-time girl” from Yokohama who is persuaded by her papa to sleep with a foreign business executive so that he can close an...

Husband and wife Michiko and Takao move from their urban existence in Tokyo to the isolated, rural farming village where Takao grew up.

A detective goes out of his way to crack the case of a serial killer who specialises in murdering police officers.

In the dying months of the Meiji era, a sympathetic student befriends a married couple, but soon realizes they share a curiously strained...

A female reporter is fired for writing about police corruption; to make money while hiding from the press, she posts a bounty upon herself.

The Nami family lives in a quiet fishing village at the tip of the Shima Peninsula overlooking Ago Bay. The family of four consists of her...

An ethical, young tax collector new to his area encounters increasingly absurd individuals and groups coping with their post-war woes.

Second part to "River Without a Bridge" (1969)

Masako, a five-year-old girl living, gets a scratch on her finger. After that, she suffered horrible spasms. The doctor checks on her and arrives at...

Akira leaves for the Mt. Gassan foothills before winter's onset, visiting the local temple and interacting with the residents all while falling for...

Set at the end of the feudal period. A woman spends most of her early life in prison, incarcerated by political opponents of her father. When she is...

After an argument with his father a son leaves his home and comes back only, as an adult, many years later just to cause them problem after problem.

Teenage cousins Masao and Tamiko fall in love when she comes to his riverside brewery house to take care of his sickly mother. Family objections...

Kikuji is the scion of an Osaka merchant family whose traditional power is matrilineal. Instructed by his overbearing mother and grandmother to give...

The first postwar war movie depicting the tragedy of a special force that shook the world at the end of the Pacific War, with thrill and speed

1962 Japanese movie

Onna Hitori Daichi wo Yuku (A Lonely Woman in a Lonely Land, Kinuta Production, 1953) was the second feature film directed by Kamei Fumio, who is...

1962 Japanese movie

After the death of a colleague, the workers at a factory form a labor union.

A tribute to proletarian author Takiji Kobayashi (1903-1933)

In a mountainous region of Japan, Lord Arakawa kidnaps the men of nearby villages to use as slave labor, producing gunpowder from his sulfur pits. A...

Winter holidays at the university. Eikichi visits a city in the north of the country, the hometown of Yuko, a classmate for whom he has feelings....

Is it the sin of a woman's heart that casts ripples unexpectedly among peaceful people? In the bustling streets of dazzling colors, where revelry...

Otowa is a former Seto Inland Sea island farmer who has moved to the mainland in order to find work, but instead ends up dead. The film begins with...

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

In this program based on the book of the same name by Ishimure Michiko, Kitabayashi Tanie plays “Goze,” a blind wandering performer who...

Third film of "Mysterious Thirteen Nights" series.

In Osaka's slum, youths without futures engage in pilfering, assault and robbery, prostitution, and the buying and selling of identity cards and of...

Uta married a priest who saved her when she tried to commit suicide at a waterfall. The love triangle between a lustful priest, his second wife and...

An Indian prince leaves his world of comfort and riches behind to wander and meditate for six years in search of spiritual enlightenment. Siddartha...

Kitagawa is an engineer charged with construction of a gigantic tunnel through the Japan Alps for the transportation of equipment in the building of...

A comedy featuring The Golden Bat

In the War's closing days, when a conscience-driven Japanese soldier fails to get his countrymen to surrender to overwhelming force, he adopts the...

A wealthy matriarch is kidnapped by a gang of three. She is insulted by the amount of money they propose to demand as ransom, and a strange...

Oshima, a rich girl married Shinzo, and her cousin girl Sawa has been jealous of Oshima deeply. Sawa cursed Oshima so Shinzo could not hold her and...

The story of a novelist whose wife is confined in a mental hospital. His love for her drives him to write about her, though he runs into trouble when...

Japanese film.

In 1906, after finishing a tough migrant job in the Philippines, Takichi has returned to Japan. He starts to work as a rickshaw driver, but his lover...

Nobuko is a widow who lives with her daughter-in-law Tamiko and her brother Junjiro. The family's gatekeeper, Komatsu, is attracted to Tamiko, but...

A five year old boy leaves his mother and grandparents to see his father who has gone to work in Osaka.

Japanese drama film.

On January 26, 1948, a robbery of the Teigin bank took place in Tokyo - the criminal poisoned the bank employees and fled the scene with a large...

Gisuke Hayashida is an illegal dentist during the day and a burglar by night. One night during a burglary he witnesses a train derailment. Some...

Shinko Terasawa was always considered to be the odd ball of the bunch. At a time when romance was against school regulations, Shinko was the first to...

Two detectives begin a stakeout based on the slim chance of catching a murderer whom they suspect will try to reunite with an old flame.

A middle-aged husband of a younger woman finds her youth intimidating to the point that he cannot become aroused. His solution involves the...

Keiko Inagawa (Asami Kobayashi) pays a visit to neurologist Aizawa about her fiancé Tatsuo Tamura (Kaoru Kobayashi). A mysterious case...

Drama which shows the struggle of Fumiko, a female teacher, at work and at home.

Young Mariko is torn between two admirers, Natsukawa and Rikizo.

A girl suffering from an incurable disease get in a coma, while her boyfriend visit her to the hospital, she visits the beyond.

A promising dancer asks her professor to write a libretto for a Nō play. He then introduces her to a student of classical literature, but also a...

In order to pay back Mrs. Kajiki for her good deed in the past, Hatsu moves from her village in Akita to Tokyo to start working as a maid for her...

Kiku and her brother Isamu are social outcasts, children of a prostitute mother and black GI father, in postwar Japan.

A sake factory worker on holiday returns to his home town, where he rapes the wife of one of his co-workers in the forest. The other man returns home...

A group of five rookie insurance salespersons, driven to desperation by the impossibility of their work in Japan's failing postwar economy, form a...

Young coal miner Takeda leaves Kyushu in search of a better job in Tokyo, only to fall into the lucrative yet dangerous life of a yakuza.

Wakae is a 15 year old girl who lived under the same roof with her alcoholic father and stepmom. Her mother had died years ago. She spends her nights...

Japan in the 1940s. A high school boy went into a magic encounter with Ozuka Hana, a geisha (pub-girl) when he traveled through Amagi Pass. A...

Japanese film.

Two friends, both members of a Japanese cargo boat, return to Japan after a three-month voyage and have just 24 hours shore leave. In those hectic...

In a high school, two men are fighting over a beautiful female teacher who has been assigned as an English teacher.

A car going at 25 mph plunges into the sea at Shinko Harbour, Toyama prefecture. Inside is the local business magnate Fukutaro Shirakawa, who...

Late romance by acclaimed filmmaker Kinugasa Teinosuke.

Yuri Ebara is inexplicably laid off, abandoned by her closest friend, and is suddenly asked to move out of her apartment. As she nears rock bottom,...

Nanjo, a new teacher at a girls' high school, unwittingly becomes the object of gossip when he buys underwear for Shimizu and spends his vacation...

Rumiko Arai, a 20-year-old girl working in a sawmill, meets a driver, Sekiguchi, and they begin a relationship with the promise of marriage. But...

Police beat a murder confession out of four innocent men who are then sentenced to death. Based on a true story.

In the backstreets of Ginza, the boss of a hairdressing salon is found dead, killed by strangulation. The detective on the case soon hears rumors...

The cockroaches of Saito's apartment live in peace with their human host, who gives them lots of space to breed and plenty of leftovers to munch on....

Based on the novel by Torahiko Tamiya.

Aya successfully stages a fashion show in Osaka and in the train on her way home to Tokyo accidentally treads on a man's foot. The man whose name is...

A young girl in an industrial town is saving her money to enter college. But her drunken father loses his job, her mother cannot make ends meet, and...

A woman who grew up in a prestigious household, begins to have an affair outside the marriage.

Fukuzo, Kato and Matsuko, Kato's wife, are operating the "Kurenai Sightseeing Service" in Tokyo. Fukuzo and Kato were comrades during the war. One...

Yoshimura's 48th film is the contemporary story of a well-to-do family showing the frailties and failings of the class, the egotism, and the complete...

In Burma during the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier separated from his unit disguises himself as a Buddhist monk to escape imprisonment as a...

Two obaachans become fast friends listening to music in front of a record store. They both boast about their loving sons but in reality, one had just...

The neglected common-law wife of a Japanese librarian is repeatedly harassed by a young man with a heart condition who seduces her with the prospect...

The fall of an accountant enthralled by the sexual charms of a cabaret dancer.

When a US army sergeant is found drowned in Tokyo Bay, an investigation is launched to determine how and why he lost his life. The investigation...

A woman falls in love with her sister's fiancé.

Part 2 of a 2-part romance (fist part - Kafuku zempen) based on a story by noted author Kikuchi Kan. In the second half, we discover that Toyomi is...

Not too long ago, Soichiro was considered one of the most powerful men in business. But his business had failed, his granddaughter had committed...

A detective sets out on a manhunt to catch a murderer before the crime's statue of limitations runs out.

The story of the silk industry and the young girls who worked as silk spinners in the early 1900s in Japan. The silk mills were located in Okaya...

A young girl knows that she is going to die and in this she is supported by the devotion of the boy who loves her. They originally met at the...

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...

Ginko, a poor cobbler's daughter, becomes a geisha to support her family. She passes from one geisha house to the next, trying to find love and hope...

A story about a wealthy family and the greed and selfishness of three daughters and relatives, after the passing of their old father

The entangled relations between the son of a seductive tea-ceremony teacher and the women in his father's life. Based on the novel by Kawabata...

A man who survived the war carries the will of his comrades in arms, walking across the country visiting the bereaved families.

A young Japanese-American man arrives at his grandmother's old hometown in Yamaguchi, begins to stay at her family's elite but dysfunctional...

Tora-san returns to his family home to learn that his brother-in-law cannot go to Mitsuo's (Tora-san's nephew) athletic event. Tora-san volunteers to...

The life in a small village in Shikoku and the love story between two young people.

Students in a small rural school love their poor but unconventional teacher Mr Matsukuma although he is misunderstood by most of the villagers and is...

From runaway brides to a typhoon, the continued adventures of Ushikata police station.

The university professor Ozeki Hitoshi (Ryu Chishu) is regarded as an eccentric by people in his surroundings. When his daughter Tokiko is asked to...

Comedy of a phony doctor.

A battle for a large sum of money unfolds on the docks near a steel mill in a foggy atmosphere. Manzo, an engineer on the verge of retirement,...

Based on Kakuko Mori's autobiography, about her life and retirement from acting due to her increasing blindness.

Shuhei, a mystery writer, is invited to a dinner party at a country house. The guests include Tanase and his wife Noriko. Next day, Tanase is shot...

A great ambition to portray with sharp satire and humor the course of modern anxiety and love that is about to be driven to despair.

A melodrama of the ups and downs of youth, based on Bunroku Shishi’s popular novel. Chiharu, a ballerina, and Shinichi, a thorough rationalist...