Noriko Honma

Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, "Rashomon" is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of...

The story centers on an elderly hibakusha, whose husband was one of 80,000 human beings killed in the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, caring for her...

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 squadron of Japanese Self-Defense Force soldiers find themselves transported through time to their country's warring states era, when rival samurai...

Ushinosuke returns to his hometown to become a farmer. Part three (of four) of the film adaptation of Bunroku Shishi’s novel, Oban.

1962 Japanese movie

Japan and Russia clash in what comes to be known as the Russo-Japanese War. An attempt by the Japanese fleet and army to take Port Arthur fails, and...

In the 19th century Edo period, sisters Oshizu and Otaka have sacrificed their personal happiness to work and care for their ailing father. Otaka...

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

1962 Japanese movie

A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the...

Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him...

Searching for his brother, Ryota stows away on a boat belonging to a criminal alongside two other teenagers. The group shipwrecks on Letchi island...

In an effort to find an economic means of purifying salt water, a joint U.S.-Japanese military command is set up on an isolated Japanese island where...

Based on the life of Hyakken Uchida, a Japanese author and academic. The film opens with Uchida resigning his job as a German professor at the onset...

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to...

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...

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...

A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family.

Ten years into a marriage, the wife is disappointed by the husband's lack of financial success, meaning she has to work and can't treat herself and...

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...

The eldest daughter of a rural family Mon returns home from Tokyo pregnant after an affair with a college student Kobata, which causes a scandal that...

Kiyoko (Takamine Hideko) and her husband want to open a coffee shop. She becomes increasingly close to the bank clerk (Mifune Toshiro) she's asked...

Father of nine children cannot find a job. Despite their aspirations, the children are encouraged by both parents to hold down menial jobs and...

Where Chimneys Are Seen focuses primarily on the interconnected lives of two couples in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Senju, a poor industrial...

Based on an autobiographical story by Toyota Masako.

Soichi Ataka is the eldest son of Ataka family. Although mentally challenged, he's a person with a gentle heart. Soichi's wife, Kuniko is devoted to...

During the mayoral election, two ex-prisoners decide to replace the lucky pen of an annoying candidate with a mini-bomb.

Postwar Tokyo. Pin and Toku live in the squatter area of Kappanuma. Pin and Toku are avid gamblers. They take in Tsuru, a slightly demented woman who...

Japanese "kayo" film based on the song "Ieraishan" by Yoshiko Yamaguchi.

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.

When a rare species of butterfly is found in a mysterious valley in Japan, a pair of entomologists go to investigate and find more. They discover...

The story of a couple, a spoiled son and a down-to-earth girl, in Osaka in the early Showa era. The film won the prestigious Blue Ribbon awards 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....

Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful...

Forced on the road by yakuza obligations, a man sets out on a reckless journey to Tsumagoi. Movie posters for local cinemas were often displayed at...

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 legendary gangster raises himself out of a small town and gathers followers on his rise to power.

A story of unhappy youths and the perils of lack of sex education.

An Ishiro Honda film. The second part of A Rainbow Plays in My Heart released the same day as the first film.

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...

Ultra-perky model likes single freedom but feels ryosai kenbo ("good wife, wise mother") pressure, exemplified by her bored-to-tears sister.

An Ishiro Honda film. The first part of A Rainbow Plays in My Heart released the same day as the second film.

A collection of magical tales based upon the actual dreams of director Akira Kurosawa.

Girls in the Orchard (1953) is about tension between the life of a family in a rural area with all the traditions (continuing family business, taking...

Lonely youth Shinji meets Hatsue, a pretty pearl diver, on the beach and the two fall in love. But Shinji has a rival for Hatsue's affections, Yasuo.

A skilled country doctor's talents are such that he can even perform operations as difficult and novel as removing a patient's kidney for the first...