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 look for the meaning of his life.
Set in post-war Japan, The Lady of Musashino tells the story of Michiko, a disillusioned young woman trapped in a loveless marriage. She confides in her younger cousin, Tsutomo, and the two become close, but decide not to consummate their affair. He instead becomes involved with the flirtatious...
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 of fascism in Japan and becomes involved with two of his students.
Umekichi, a geisha in the Gion district of Kyoto, feels obliged to help her lover Furusawa when he asks to stay with her after becoming bankrupt and leaving his wife. However her younger sister Omocha tells her she is wasting her time and money on a loser. She thinks that they should both find...
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 Nojiri encounter a young woman and her father, as well as Honda, a mountaineer. The inn folk do not realize their guests are wanted criminals and the...
The Life of a Chivalrous Man in Suruga: Broken Swords
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The second film in the "Suruga yukyoden" series, in which Shintaro Katsu plays Jirocho Shimizu. The film features Omasa, Komasa, Ocho, who will become Jirocho's wife, as well as other members of his future family. There is a particularly great swordfight near the end where Katsu and cronies attack...
The film was produced during Second Sino-Japanese War, before the Pearl Harbor Attack in 1941. The film mainly concerns the training of newly-recruited pilots and their daily life, then their subsequent fighting experiences in China. Army supported the production, providing all the authentic...
The Fencing Master tells the story of a man trying to survive as the only world he knows is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Danpei Ichikawa lives for swordfighting – he was once a renowned kabuki swordfight choreographer, and as the Chairman of the New National Theatre Company, he wants nothing...
A sentimental tale of the filial love between shogun Iemitsu (matinee idol Hasegawa) and his loyal old retainer Hikoza (comedian Roppa, playing somewhat against type).
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 main supply wagons and the supply troops to transport materiel to the Uesugi army. To this are added episodes involving an itinerant woman.
Mikami, a Japanese soldier, is captured by Chinese forces. Although able to escape, he is treated with contempt by his peers. After falling in love with a prostitute named Harumi, she convinces him to desert the army and live with her.
In this semi-documentary, an older locomotive driver is tasked with training younger ones and is currently training two in particular. The old man is finding the task overwhelming as it is hard work with practical lessons and classroom components. His wife has died, but he has three daughters with...
An airplane loaded with 50 million yen for the reconstruction of Amami Oshima crashes en route from Kagoshima, Kyushu, but neither the money nor the remains of the pilot can be found.
