Shinko Terasawa was always considered to be the odd ball of the bunch. At a time when romance was against school regulations, Shinko was the first to take a bite out of the forbidden fruit. Expelled from her former school, she finds herself in an all-girls school in Jokamachi, where rumors fly. One...
Gisuke Hayashida is an illegal dentist during the day and a burglar by night. One night during a burglary he witnesses a train derailment. Some communists are found guilty of causing the incident, but he knows it wasn't them. He can save innocent people but for that he must confess his own crime.
On January 26, 1948, a robbery of the Teigin bank took place in Tokyo - the criminal poisoned the bank employees and fled the scene with a large amount of money. In parallel with the investigation conducted by the Japanese police, journalists are also trying to find the culprit. Based on a true...
A soldier has been in the Japanese military for the entirety of WWII, and in that time, his dedication to the army has never faltered. However, as the war draws to a close, his commanding officers become increasingly desperate and push their men to ever more absurd extremes. The ridiculousness of...
Students in a small rural school love their poor but unconventional teacher Mr. Matsukuma, although he is misunderstood by most of the villagers and is forced to leave. After his departure there is great depression, but there is a chance to rekindle the lantern of the title and the values Matsukuma...
The entangled relations between the son of a seductive tea-ceremony teacher and the women in his father's life. Based on the novel by Kawabata Yasunari.
A young girl in an industrial town is saving her money to enter college. But her drunken father loses his job, her mother cannot make ends meet, and then the boy she likes loses everything when his factory fails. She takes all her savings out of the bank and offers them to him to make a new start....
A group of five rookie insurance salespersons, driven to desperation by the impossibility of their work in Japan's failing postwar economy, form a plan to rob a cash delivery truck in order to provide for their families.
Otowa is a former Seto Inland Sea island farmer who has moved to the mainland in order to find work, but instead ends up dead. The film begins with the discovery of her corpse, which leads to an investigation that uncovers the narcotics, prostitution, and murder in which many poor farmers had found...
In order to pay back Mrs. Kajiki for her good deed in the past, Hatsu moves from her village in Akita to Tokyo to start working as a maid for her family. She grows close to their youngest son Katsumi, experiencing things that will change her view on life.
Part 2 of a 2-part romance (first part - Kafuku zempen) based on a story by noted author Kikuchi Kan. In the second half, we discover that Toyomi is pregnant -- and while Shintaro and Yurie are on their extended honeymoon, she bears his child, a girl named Kiyoko. She is supported in adversity by...
Wakae is a 15 year old girl who lived under the same roof with her alcoholic father and stepmom. Her mother had died years ago. She spends her nights at a rundown bar, sharing drinks and cigarettes with the lowlife drunks. She has nowhere to turn and no one to talk to, until she is reunited with...
A melodrama of the ups and downs of youth, based on Bunroku Shishi’s popular novel. Chiharu, a ballerina, and Shinichi, a thorough rationalist and childhood friend. A woman named Tomi Funakoshi appears in front of the two, who are thinking of getting married someday.