Michiyo Yasuda

Zatoichi

Tante Oume

Blind traveler Zatoichi is a master swordsman and a masseur with a fondness for gambling on dice games. When he arrives in a village torn apart by warring gangs, he sets out to protect the townspeople.

Kogarashi Monjiro

Osaya

Monjiro was born into a poor farm family in Mikazuki Village, Nitta County, Ueshu, and abandoned his hometown when he was 10 years old. He has been traveling aimlessly with a long toothpick in his mouth. Monjiro avoided getting involved in anything, but wherever he went, he ended up getting involved in incidents

Bedtime Eyes

Based on a polemic novel by Amy Yamada, Bedtime Eyes is about the intense love relationship between a second rate Japanese jazz singer and a black American GI on the margins of the law.

Ōedo Sōsamō

Set against the backdrop of the reign of the 11th Tokugawa Shogun, Ienari Tokugawa, this drama is a masterpiece of action period drama that broke the mold of traditional detective stories and attracted a great deal of attention.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in the Land of Demons

Shiranui

Ogami Itto is challenged by a quintet of warriors, each armed with one fifth of Ogami's assassin fee and one fifth of the information he needs to complete his assignment.

The Detective Journey

A comedy directed by Mitsumasa Saito about a pair of clumsy detectives who solve a case they become involved in by chance. Shosuke Ikashima and Ryuji Kabaya, who repeatedly screw things up, encounter a real robbery during a bank robbery simulation training...

Zigeunerweisen

Shuko Aochi

A surreal period film following a university professor and his eerie nomad friend as they go through loose romantic triangles and face death in peculiar ways.

Love for an Idiot

Naomi

A middle-aged factory engineer trains, marries, and ultimately loses a teenage bride after she enslaves him to her whims.

Kagero-za

Shinako

A 1920s playwright meets a beautiful woman who may be the ghost of his patron's deceased wife.

Spring Snow

Based on the first novel, Spring Snow, of Mishima Yukio's Sea of Fertility tetralogy, it follows the troubled and illicit affair between two youngsters amongst the aristocracy and rich of early twentieth century Japan.

The Fallen Angel

Madame Ritsuko

The story of a young man who has felt since childhood utterly alien from others around him. Since that time he has learned to put on a face to hide his alienation. He feels incapable of belonging to the human society, especially so by society's refusal to take him seriously. He then follows a descent into alcohol, drugs, & suicide ...

Solar Eclipse

When bribe money from a rigged election funnels into a dam construction project, collusion, lust, greed and even murder are on the ballot.

Zatoichi's Pilgrimage

Okichi

Zatoichi's trek through 88 temples to atone for his violent past is interrupted as he stumbles into a village terrorized by a violent yakuza boss.

Hanging Garden

Satoko Kinosaki

On the surface, the Kyobashis appear to be a happy family. Despite a family agreement that they are all open with each other, the entire household knows the opposite is true.

Face

Ritsuko Nakagami

Awkward and withdrawn, Masako kills her sister in an explosion of pent-up humiliation and rage that sends her tumbling into fugitive life.

Shinran: Path to Purity

In the 12th century, Buddhism was still a relatively new religion in Japan. At that time, one school (Shingon) offered extensive training in complex and very demanding practices which might eventually bring about spiritual purification and realization. Various Zen schools offered students a lengthy path, literally composed of a blank wall and unceasing meditation. Yet another school (Tendai) emphasized complex metaphysics and the study of philosophical systems. Basically, all of them were designed to cater to the few who were able to give up everything else in their lives and focus on liberation, such as scholars and noblemen. In this historical and biographical drama, this is the situation that the young Shinran (1173-1263) discovered when he began exploring Buddhism as an alternative to the violence and ceaseless civil wars that racked Japan at the time.

Someday

Takako Kazamatsuri

The annual kabuki show is the main attraction in a rural Japanese mountain town. However, Yoshi's life is thrown into disarray days before the performance when his estranged wife and former best friend arrive back in town...

Yumeji

Owner of a Hotel

Following the life of Japanese artist and poet Yumeji Takehisa through the imagining of an encounter with a beautiful widow with a dark past.

I'm Flash!

Rui is the charismatic leader of a new religious group. Consequently, he starts to gain attention from the mass media. After becoming involved in a car accident, Rui goes to a remote island with ex-gangster now bodyguard. On the island, Rui reveals more about his religious group, while a set of ominous events are about to occur.

Akame 48 Waterfalls

Kishida Seiko

A man is trying to flee from his past, and he ends up in an underworld filled with strange characters. He finds a job skewering meat in a dirty old room in a shabby old house filled with prostitutes, gangsters and a weird old tattoo master. He clearly doesn't fit in to this new world, and the inhabitants of it immediately despise him.