During the tumultuous end of the Tokugawa shogunate, the Tengu Party rose in rebellion in Mito. Friends from their hometown, Tanaka Genzo and Fujita Koshiro, each walked different paths. Koshiro, who upheld the philosophy of "Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians," became a leader of the Tengu...
French docu-drama which chronicles the chain of events that lead to the hanging of German-journalist Richard Sorge, who was executed in 1944 after he was found supplying classified information to the Russians.
During the middle of the Kanei Period (1624-1644) Japan was in the early stages of its most peaceful era. This left a large number of unemployed samurai with nothing to do, and their morale suffered. In order to raise their spirits, the Shogun's Chief Advisor suggests that they hold a "Festival of...
Ishihara Kiyoshi plans to marry the woman he loves, Chiee, a coffee shop girl. After an accident, Chiee loses her memory. A romance movie whose original work by Ayako Sono was made into a melodrama by a combination of Shinoda Masahiro and Terayama Shuji.
An early example of the Japanese war film, closer to documentary realism than the kind of propaganda produced at the height of the Pacific War. "A company commander calls on five men. They are to reconnoiter, but on their way they are attacked. Only four of them return. While his companions mourn...
This film begins with a teacher describing to his students how brave the crew was which died as result of Japan's first submarine accident. The film then follows two of the pupils, one becomes a submarine captain and the other designs submarines.
Asako works in a hostel for troubled young women. When a beautiful young girl is brought in one day after committing theft, Asako finds out from the older widow she works with that the new girl is undoubtedly her half-sister. When the younger sister suddenly flees on account of a misunderstanding,...
A young man longs to travel to Hawaii, the birthplace of his deceased father, against the wishes of his family, who are estranged from those relatives in Waikiki.
One of Uchida’s early sound films, Unending Advance is based on a curious story by Yasujiro Ozu, in which an examination of the quotidian problems of a middle-aged salaryman and his family segues into an idyllic dream of an implausible future. The surviving print, although incomplete, offers an...