Romantic melodrama set in contemporary Hong Kong, Japan and Laos. Hiroshi Tanaka (Takarada) is a Japanese journalist on assignment in Hong Kong who meets and falls in love with Wu Li Hung (Ming). He proposes to Wu Li but she rejects him because of her distaste for mixed marriages (her mother was...
Kazuo Miyagawa’s prizewinning black-and-white cinematography draws out the moral shadings of Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata’s 1952 novel Thousand Cranes, a quietly devastating story of a young man, orphaned during the war, who stumbles into a passionate yet tragic relationship with his late...
Tanuma Kandayuu is a high class samurai of the house of Nabeshima. He finds a lavish board of Go (a Chinese Board game) at Kinbei's store. He recommend Kinbei to offer it to his lord. Kinbei hesitates at first, since he knows the board has a mysterious legend surrounding it; it's believed that for...
Fifteen years after Ishida Mitsunari lost in the battle of Sekigahara, Tokugawa Ieyasu foresees his unavoidable battle with Toyotomi Hideyori and goes into Fushimi Castle. At the night, Hattori Hanzo, the leader of 36 Iga members who were performing as guards of the castle, perceives the existence...
This was 1942, so it was a national policy film, no matter what you call it. But when the war was still on the winning side, there wasn't even a little bit of sadness in the film (as the war was getting worse and worse, the burdens on our backs were increasing day by day, and we had to keep forming...
Period piece about a young man who, because of his hard life alone in the world, has become a yakuza. When he hears that his mother may be living in Edo (Tokyo), he travels there, intent on finding her and leaving the swordsman's life behind. But a team of rival gangsters is hot on his heels.
Pretty Oshige is deceived by her first love. After this, she lives a hard lifestyle, working at a number of jobs. Her only pleasure is her nephew, who eventually becomes a merchant marine. When Oshige meets her old love ten years later, she is able to forgive him and even thank him for the path her...
A nurse's tale of self-sacrifice during wartime. The title is borrowed from a patriotic song made popular by singer Hamako Watanabe during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Movie about a devoted and single woman and her daughter. The mother's nickname is "Bokuseki" (wooden head) because of his supposed stubbornness. No.10 in the list of "The 10 best films of 1940" by Kinema Junpo.
