Sadako Sawamura

Hikarugake

The drama depicts the fateful meeting and falling in love between a man living in the glamorous world of the fashion business and a woman living in the social reality of law and order.

Good Morning

Kayoko Fukui

A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of inter­generational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.

Late Autumn

Fumiko

A woman and her daughter are each forced to contend with an increasing pressure to marry, particularly from three men who knew her late husband.

Street of Shame

Tatsuko Taya

Follows five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation debates the passage of an anti-prostitution law.

Chûshingura

After their lord is tricked into committing ritual suicide, forty-seven samurai warriors await the chance to avenge their master and reclaim their honor.

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

Toshiko

Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her demanding mother and brother, and knowing she's growing older.

The Wandering Princess

Kazuko Sugawara

Pu Zhe, younger brother of the Emperor of Manchukuo, marries Ryuko, daughter of an aristocratic family. To the surprise of all, a deep love between Pu Zhe and Ryuko develops and is put to the test when Japan loses the war.

The Life of Oharu

Sasaya's wife Owasa

During the Edo Period, a noblewoman's banishment for her love affair with a lowly page signals the beginning of her inexorable fall.

Little Peach

Anzukko (Little Peach) is the daughter of a successful writer. She turns down each one of her suitors, until she marries a beginning writer named Ryokichi. Their life quickly sinks into despair.

Whirlpool of Flesh

Tomiko Sekiguchi

During the war a university professor meets a girl and marries her. Very soon however, it is apparent that their needs are not matched. He would much rather be translating Shakespeare than attending to her, and she has a secret in her past - one that results in her sleeping with a great number of men.

Nunnery Confidential

Erotic Pinku film showcasing he life of Buddhist nuns during the Edo Period.

Daikazoku

No description available

A Fugitive from the Past

Motojima's Wife

Three robbers escape with loot from a heist before one of them kills the others. Their corpses wash up near the aftermath of a maritime calamity, provoking a policeman's interest.

Untamed Woman

Oshima's aunt

A woman marries, gives birth to a stillborn child, and divorces, falls in love with a hotel-keeper, only to find herself subordinated to his drive for success, takes up with a tailor who cannot console himself with her strong personality.

Bridge of Japan

Ichikawa's 1956 adaptation of Nihonbashi was the first to take the work of Kyoka Izumi— until then regarded as a writer of common tragic melodramas—and re-evaluate it as a tanbi-ha work of decadence, aestheticism, and intrigue. Ichikawa's film presents the tragic plot of the young geisha who is unable to enact her love for a man publicly in any way other than a histrionic story of torment, a heart-rending tale of lovers being crushed by fate. Instead, Ichikawa shows the contest of wills that transpires as two geisha, Oko and Kiyoha fight for the top spot in Nihonbashi, the pinnacle of the Tokyo geisha world. Nihonbashi is an elegant, if steely, exposition of manners. The young doctor, Shinzo Katsuragi, is the object of affection for both women, but appears to be more the choice reward for the plotting and thieving of these two early modern superwomen, than a lover they swoon over.

Mother

Osei

A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family.

Glory on the Summit

A treasury official passed over for promotion and obsessed with careerism interferes in the lives of his three sons, who seek escape from his relentless pressure in the mortal danger of mountain climbing.

A Wife's Heart

A young woman tries to raise money to open her own coffee shop. She arranges a loan when her rigid family won't help and then her husband becomes jealous of the loan officer.

The Catch

Katsu

Towards the end of WWII, a black American pilot is captured and imprisoned by rural Japanese villagers, who await official instructions as to how to proceed with their 'catch'.

Tale of Army Brutality

Toki, Yahichi's mother

Director Jun'ya Satô's debut film focuses on the inhuman training of recruits, the brutal drill system that reigned in the Japanese army during World War II, where in the first two years of training, ordinary people were turned into inhuman killers. For his first film, the director was awarded the Blue Ribbon Awards in the Debutant of the Year nomination.