On the night of the summer Obon festival, Hagiwara Shinzaburo meets a beautiful courtesan named Otsuyu. Not knowing she's a ghost, he becomes infatuated by her.
One of Japan's most popular stories is the tale of Kutsukake Tokijiro, a traveling gambler who finds that he must take care of the wife and child of a yakuza he had been forced by the code of the gamblers to fight man to man. In a brilliant performance from super-star Ichikawa Raizo, with strong...
As winds of change sweep Japan, an honest man joins the Shinsengumi out of admiration for its leader, and because he wants to live and die as a samurai. However, as his involvement grows, reality and idealism come into deadly conflict.
A sequel to the popular "The School of Spies", this film continues the adventures of one of the graduates who is assigned to crack a powerful spy ring working out of Kobe. Various people are suspected but, finally, it seems that an Army captain and his geisha friend might lead them to the ring.
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...
Hikaru Genji, the haunted romantic hero of Lady Murasaki Shikibu’s “Genji Monogatari” (Tale of Genji) comes to life in this new tale of his further romantic adventures. Young Genji, the emperor’s illegitimate son cuts a swath through the women of the imperial court, while still mourning the...
About 1786 the doings of a demented lord results in many masterless samurai, including Iyemon (Kei Sato) who is used to luxury and cannot adjust to the hand-to-mouth conditions & piecework of umbrella making. Having hired ruffians to make him look like a superior swordsman, he arranges for himself...
During the reign of Hidetada, the second shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty, the advisor Okubo Hikozaemon (Ganjiro Nakamura) entrusts the young Takechiyo (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) to the fishmonger Isshin Tasuke (Kazuo Hasegawa) to help him understand the world. Tasuke, who does not know that Takechiyo is...
