Asao Sano

In the middle of the Edo period, when the finances of the shogunate were in a desperate situation, the shogunate sent its shadow spies to each clan, who secretly planned the abolition of the clans and the seizure of their territories. The Inami clan has mastered the essence of making weapons, thus breaking the law. To protect the clan, its elders hire three "Shadow Hunters"... TV movie based on the popular manga by Takao Saito.

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

A tragic love story between a prostitute and a young trainee monk.

Jo has just come back to Japan for the funeral of his parents, who were killed in tribal warfare in Africa where the family had been living throughout most of Jo's life. Once the funeral was over, he missed the boat that was going to take him back home, and, because of an altered itinerary, he ends up stopping in a town for awhile -- striking up an acquaintance with a teenager and her grandfather when he captures their runaway horse. He would have been glad to leave after the proper amenities were completed, but the girl's journalist brother is murdered -- he was getting too close to wrapping a major news story. At that point, Jo and a friend cannot easily drop the matter as though nothing had occurred, and the two start to track down the source of the trouble -- a factory that makes poison gas for Third World buyers. Now their task is to dismantle the operation, prevent one train shipment from arriving at a transfer point, and find the journalist's killer.

One year after the Kidojis' eldest son Otohiko was arrested for his part in a terrorist kidnapping, which resulted in multiple deaths, all the other perpetrators' parents have either resigned from their professional positions or taken their own lives, Nobuyuki Kidoji remains adamant that he is not responsible for his son's actions.

The film follows the story of Sugi Toranosuke, a ronin, who returns to his home town of Edo many years after his attempted suicide as a sickly child. Rescued and adopted by a master swordsman, he has grown into a master swordsman and a very kind gentleman. The time is around 1868 the year that the nails were finally put into the coffin containing the feudal system that nurtured and sustained the samurai. Sugi is confused and unsure about what is happening but his teacher wants him out of the chaos of the multiple power struggles between the various clans.

Tora-san arrives in Shibamata on Mitsuo's first day of school only to find that on his account, Mitsuo was embarrassed. After a fight with his family, he goes to a bar to drink, then brings home a surly old man with a sad story, whose identity will surprise everyone. Later, Tora meets Botan, a geisha.

The body of Sakai Hatsuko, a woman of 23 who has been slain with a knife, has been found in a forest. Some days later, Ueda Hiroshi, a 19-year-old shipyard worker, is arrested and charged with the murder. At Ueda's trial, a complex story unfolds.

When a lucrative waterfront development becomes available, the Kawade gang quickly use their political connections to secure the land. However, the acting boss of the Ohara gang also has his eyes on the property and recruits crooked detective Tokumatsu Kuno to help him hijack the deal. With relations between the rival gangs at breaking point, it's not long before all-out war breaks out as the gangsters, police and local politicians battle for control of the city.

No synopsis available yet.

About a girl who marries in the middle of the Pacific War, is widowed at 18, and her unflagging struggle to survive during and after the war with her son.

In a fishing town by the Seto Sea, a student discovers a woman motionless on the beach and takes her back to his family's inn to nurse her, but he soon discovers than she is an extremist on the run from the police.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

Undercover cop Kikuchi teams up with the Okinawa local police to clean up the narcotics and prostitution underworld.

A harsh young man seduces a freeloading young woman and eventually takes advantage of her knack for hitchhiking to rob middle-class men.

Ryoji, a wanderer, arrives in a remote mountain town, carrying a shotgun and claiming to be a hunter. He quickly becomes embroiled in a web of trouble surrounding the town's mill.

Newly out of prison after killing his boss' rival, Akio Maki is eager to move on and start a new life with the boss' daughter. However, the chains of the past are not so easily broken and Maki is soon ordered to kill again.

Kiroku boards with a Roman Catholic family and falls for the daughter Michiko. He ignores his feelings, joins a gang, gets in fights and, eventually, becomes involved with the radical Kita Ikki group.

Like a girl runaway, Tsuyu moves to Osaka to work as a bar hostess. She meets the owner of a model school, Yoko, and seriously thinks about becoming a fashion model. Yoko tells her that she can move in to Yoko’s house to take lessons, while making a living at the same time.

A young doctor falls into a despair of developments. He plans to revenge the disgrace inflicted upon his sister, whose engagement was broken as a result.

Based on the loosely autobiographical novel of the same name by Toko Kon. Ken Yamanouchi stars as Togo Konno, the titular bastard.

1967 Nikkatsu film.

Sentaro is been severely beaten for his defiance of the government and the high taxes during a time of famine. He is befriended by Kada Gentaro, a leader in the Mito Tengu group, which plans to overthrow the shogunate.

1962 Japanese movie

It's a thrilling, action-packed entertainer with sparks of men versus villains in an up-and-down tale of brothers burning with masculine will and passion.

Tajima is a private detective in charge of his own company, Detective Bureau 2-3. When warring criminal gangs go overboard by robbing U.S. military munitions, Tajima steps in to stop what the cops can't.

When Toru Sagara (Yujiro Ishihara) returns home from a foreign cargo route, he proposes to his beloved girlfriend Akiko (Ruriko Asaoka). She joyously agrees, promising a life together. On the day they were to be joined in matrimony, Akiko suddenly goes missing. Toru waits hours for her to show, but he is only greeted by the darkness of night. Four years later, his fiancée turns up at a night club in Yokohama with another man.

Tsutomu Yoshioka, a Tokyo office worker, is engaged to Mariko, the niece of his company's president. But Yoshioka has a crisis of consence when he remembers his former love Mitsu, a rural girl whom he met and later left while in college. Shimako, a former friend, persuades Yoshioka to meet with Mitsu while she plots to blackmail Yoshioka by photographing the meeting to break up Mariko and Yoshioka.

Hideo Ishizaki, who was painting on the shore of the lake, saves a woman named Keiko.

No synopsis available yet.

A Western-inspired film where a pair of traveling beekeepers odyssey by covered wagon from Kyushu, the southernmost of the Japanese archipelago's major islands, to Hokkaido, it's northernmost.

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 incident.

A celebrity, dissatisfied with his personal and professional lives, impulsively leaves fast-paced Tokyo to deliver a much-needed jeep to a remote village. When his controlling manager, the woman he loves, follows, the two must reconcile while dodging reporters.

Kitagawa is an engineer charged with construction of a gigantic tunnel through the Japan Alps for the transportation of equipment in the building of the massive Kurobe Dam. The tunnel crosses an earthquake fault and Kitagawa is beleaguered not only by cave-ins and flooding, but by strife between management and the workers's union. Adding to Kitagawa's stress is the knowledge that as his attention is pulled inexorably toward the tunnel construction, his youngest daughter is dying from leukemia.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

A high-school vigilante protects his community from the extortions of mobsters from a neighbouring city.

An unofficial sequel to Million Dollar Match (1961) which also starred Koji Wada as a young energetic boxer. This story deals more with betting action surrounding a boxing match, concentrating mostly on the high-powered Yakuza gambling dens.

When a US army sergeant is found drowned in Tokyo Bay, an investigation is launched to determine how and why he lost his life. The investigation uncovers a black market scheme involving counterfeit money, murder, and conspiracy.

A 1960 crime film

The wandering gambler (Akira Kobayashi) once again picks up the dice he forswore in order to take revenge of the gangsters who exploit good citizens. The second installment in The Gambler series.

The love story between a traveling guest and a geisha who inadvertently becomes the leader of her father's yakuza clan, after his death.

1961 Japanese movie

An employee in an assurance company threatens to commit suicide when management announces a massive layoff, the company uses this threat to its own advantage by turning the incident into an advertising campaign. With the success of the campaign, however, he is no longer a desperate man pointing a gun to his head, but a potential leader who wishes to take advantage of his failed suicide.

Joe, a master diver, explodes his fighting spirit and friendship across raging seas and scorching deserts in this gorgeous and entertaining epic.

This film depicts the pure love between a girl raised by a strict father and a young man working in a small factory to support his family. The friendship that had blossomed between them eventually grew into love. Yet the purer it was, the more it seemed destined for a tragic conclusion...

An elderly detective and a young detective fall into a trap set by a gang of vicious robbers while escorting a suspect to the Metropolitan Police Department.

In Burma during the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier separated from his unit disguises himself as a Buddhist monk to escape imprisonment as a POW.

A group of rank-and-file soldiers are jailed for crimes against humanity, themselves victims of a nation refusing to bear its burdens as a whole.

In the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier afflicted with tuberculosis is abandoned by his company and left to wander the Philippine island of Leyte.

Just before the end of the war, Japanese soldier Kitani is released from prison, having served his term for theft. Told in flashback, viewers learn about Kitani's past and reasons behind his prison sentence.

In the thriving Tokyo neighborhood of Ginza, a woman in the process of selling her estranged husband’s art collection attempts to identify the man who painted her own portrait fifteen years prior.

This historical film depicts the life of a man who was at the mercy of the waves during transition from the end of the Edo period to the Meiji Restoration, and therefore, shows audience the dynamic change from Edo to Meiji. Before the war, the director, Eisuke Takizawa, together with the writers, formed a scenario writer group "Narutaki-gumi and they shot many historical masterpieces.

A man is wrongfully accused of murder.

A love triangle develops between a benevolent student, his innocent girlfriend, and a cruel petty criminal, all as a point of diagnosis of a social disease that had Japan slowly succumbing to lawlessness during the post-War era.

Private Detective Ippei Shizuno faces off against a serial killer and a wealthy woman's society who runs an illegal gun trade.

Ginko, a poor cobbler's daughter, becomes a geisha to support her family. She passes from one geisha house to the next, trying to find love and hope in the process. No matter how hard she tries, she just can't escape her sad fate.

Television production of I Want to Be a Shellfish. On a post-war peaceful day in Japan, Toyomatsu Shimizu, a barber as well as a good father and husband, is suddenly arrested by the Prefectural Police as a war criminal and sued for murder. According to the accusation by GHQ, Toyomatsu "attemped to kill a US prisoner", which was nothing but an order by his superior and failed after all with hurting the prisoner by weak Toyomatsu. Also, Toyomatsu was driven to corner at the trial by the fact that he fed the US prisoner some burdock roots to nourish him. Toyomatsu believes nothing but being not guilty, but he is sentenced to death by hanging. Prior to the execution, Toyomatsu writes a long farewell letter to his family, the wife and the only son: "If I ever incarnate, I hate to be a human being any more.... Oh yes, I would like to be...a shellfish living on the rock-bottom of the sea."

The story of a novelist whose wife is confined in a mental hospital. His love for her drives him to write about her, though he runs into trouble when her parents accuse him of cashing in on her misfortune.