Tatsuo Matsumura

A group of travelers is stranded in a small country inn when the river floods during heavy rains. As the bad weather continues, tensions rise amongst the trapped travelers.

Takayuki is an elementary school teacher in Tokyo. He is seized with Behçet's syndrome, and will gradually lose his sight. He resigns from his job and leaves his girlfriend, Yoko (Yuriko Ishida) to return to his hometown, Nagasaki, where his mother lives. Takayuki spends his days strolling around Nagasaki, to imprint familiar scenes on his memory. Yoko visits him and insists on staying. Takayuki has major concerns for her future, and his own life. He drives her away, for her own good. After days of affliction, the two reunite. The story leads to an emotive conclusion, the end of his spiritual journey.

After serving a jail sentence, a former leading yakuza (Takaaki Ishibashi) has gone straight. He has married and is now holding a regular job. However, he is continually harrassed by a police inspector who cannot forgive his past. Meanwhile a major gang war erupts. With his former gang in danger of being exterminated, will his loyalties draw him back in?

An appassionato art student and a dispassionate college girl make a vow, saying they would meet each other again in the Florence Cathedral after 10 years.

Screen icon Sayuri Yoshinaga stars in this historical melodrama about geishas in the southern city of Nagasaki set during the 1920s. Though she was sold to a geisha house at a young age, Aihara (Yoshinaga) has since become a master samisen player and woman of great elegance. Though not especially rich, she doles out money to street kids, in particular, a pretty young flower vendor named Oyuki, who becomes Aihara's godchild of sorts. Yet when a geisha (Reiko Takashima) from a rival red-light district insults Aihara and her brethren, she fights back. Soon an all-out geisha war looms. Dapper businessman and amateur scholar Tojiro Koga (Tetsuya Watari) appears on the scene and defuses tempers -- suggesting that difference be settled through a competition of artistic abilities. Smitten with her talent and mature beauty, Koga invites Aihara to record Nagasaki folk songs before they disappear forever

Kon Ichikawa's retelling of the classic true story of Samurai honor. When a young clan lord is forced to commit seppuku (ritual suicide), his loyal followers (now Ronin, masterless Samurai) dedicate their lives to avenging his death.

In postwar Tokyo, beloved writer-professor Hyakken Uchida retires and is buoyed through hardship by the fierce devotion of his former students, who honor him each year with a raucous “Not yet!” birthday toast. Told in warm, gently comic vignettes, Kurosawa’s farewell celebrates aging, friendship, and the sustaining ritual of teacher and pupils refusing to say goodbye.

Hatano is living as an insomniac freelance typesetter alone in his bayside apartment. One day, Aikawa, a high school classmate he hasn’t seen in over ten years, shows up on his doorstep bearing a bag of clams. Though he claims to be the director of a fast-growing trading company, Aikawa crashes on Hatano’s couch for days on end. When the sleeping pills he was offered produce a strange side effect, Hatano is slowly dragged into Aikawa’s con-artist lifestyle. Soon afterward, they cross paths with the representative of a big-name publishing company and Aikawa’s ultimate scam begins to unfold.

An auto repairman's daughter questions him about what happened to her aunt during the war, but the father remains reticent. Finally the man opens up, and the girl is able to piece together her aunt's tragic story.

Tetsuo is a young man living in Tokyo, who falls in love with a deaf-mute factory girl. He has always felt jealous of his college-educated brother, but ultimately wins both the girl and his father's acceptance and support in a touching and refreshing way.

Hiroshima is a 1995 Japanese / Canadian film directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara and Roger Spottiswoode about the decision-making processes that led to the dropping of the atomic bombs by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki toward the end of World War II. Except as actors, no Americans took part in the production. The three-hour film was made for television and evidently had no theatrical release, but is available on DVD for home viewing. A combination of dramatisation, historical footage, and eyewitness interviews, the film alternates between documentary footage and the dramatic recreations. Both the dramatisations and most of the original footage are presented as sepia-toned images, serving to blur the distinction between them. The languages are English and Japanese, with subtitles, and the actors are largely Canadian and Japanese.

Tora-san visits brother-in-law Hiroshi's hometown to attend a memorial service for his late father. When the local temple priest becomes intoxicated, Tora-san wearing the priest's robe delivers the memorial speech, much to his family's surprise. Thinking he's found his true calling, Tora-san decides to join the order, and falls for the priest's divorced daughter.

A playboy-gambler friend of Tora-san’s dies and, abandoned by his mother, his little boy suddenly turns up in Shibamata. Searching for the boy’s mother, Tora-san meets a cosmetics saleslady and the three become a surrogate family, with Tora-san as “daddy”.

This is James Miki's first directorial work, and he is also the original writer and scriptwriter. Noritaka Sakamoto was in charge of photography, and Kentaro Haneda was in charge of music direction. It depicts how an honest candidate aiming for a clean election campaign gradually collapses in the face of various realities. Kiyokawa, the mayor of Higurashi City, died at his lover's house. Yoshihiko announces that he will conduct a clean election campaign, but his sponsors and backers are reluctant.

A car going at 25 mph plunges into the sea at Shinko Harbour, Toyama prefecture. Inside is the local business magnate Fukutaro Shirakawa, who perishes. Riding alongside him and surviving unhurt is his second wife, Kumako. It soon comes to light that Kumako’s husband was insured for 300 million yen and she is arrested on suspicion of murdering her husband for the insurance money. The newspapers denounce her as an evil woman, while the public is in no doubt about Kumako’s crime. Ritsuko Sahara is chosen as her defence attorney but the pair clash over almost everything...

In Nagasaki, Tora-san and an acquaintance help an old woman who has fallen and injured herself. She invites them to her home where the three share a night of eating and drinking. The old woman's health deteriorates and she dies. At her funeral, Tora-san falls in love with the old woman's daughter, but winds up acting as a go-between for her and a young law student.

After a friend and business colleague dies, Tora-san visits the man's daughter, then takes her to Tokyo so she can study for a night school exam.

The story of a teacher who comes to a village on the Inland Sea and the relationship that develops between her and her 12 pupils.

By all indications, an anti-government conspiracy is brewing in the Satsuma Domain. Already seven oniwaban spies sent by the shogunate have infiltrated Satsuma in order to scout everything on the spot. However, they had all disappeared, and it was unclear whether they were alive or dead. Kenzaburo Kamiya and Iori Matsumura successfully infiltrate as the eighth and ninth spies and witness law-breaking exercises using a cannon. However, soon Satsuma men found them and drove them to the cliff...

On a Tokyo dump’s shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who “drives” an imaginary trolley, a homeless father and son designing a dream house, a young woman brutalized at home, drunks, schemers, and saints of small kindnesses. Kurosawa crafts a ragged mosaic of hardship, fantasy, and flickers of grace that keep people moving forward.

Torajiro becomes homesick during his travels after watching a television report about his hometown and meeting a young woman that reminds him of his sister Sakura. Meanwhile, a new tenant moves into Toraya restaurant.

A scruffy detective investigates the murders of three sisters on a small Japanese island in 1946.

Tora-san helps out a runaway bride.

On the road again, Torajiro meets a kindred spirit in Lily, a lounge singer.

When Tora-san returns to visit his family, he is surprised to find an arrogant professor occupying his room. The professor and Tora-san become rivals for the affection of Chiyo.

After Torajiro's latest attempt to find a bride goes awry, he starts traveling again and runs into Utako (last seen in Tora-san's Dear Old Home), now a widow.

While Sakura and Hiroshi struggle to save funds to build a house, Torajiro befriends three young women on vacation during his travels.

Tora-San returns to Shibamata just before his family leaves on a trip for Kyushu. Later, he encounters an old school chum and begins to have feeling for his artist sister.

A film by Katsumi Iwauchi.

Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual. The senior counselor for the Iyi clan questions the ronin’s resolve and integrity, suspecting Hanshirō of seeking charity rather than an honorable end. What follows is a pair of interlocking stories which lay bare the difference between honor and respect, and promises to examine the legendary foundations of the Samurai code.

The advertising director of Pacific Pharmaceuticals, frustrated with the low ratings of their sponsored TV program, seeks a more sensationalist approach. He orders his staff to Faro Island to capture King Kong for exploitation. As Godzilla re-emerges, a media frenzy generates with Pacific looking to capitalize off of the ultimate battle.

When an underhanded pharmaceutical company goes to a remote tropical island to steal King Kong for advertising purposes, they get more than they bargained for when the gigantic ape attacks an unsuspecting village and an enormous octopus.

The mother of a feudal lord's only heir is kidnapped by the lord. Her husband and his samurai father must decide whether to accept the unjust decision, or risk death to rescue her.

A failed science experiment gives a librarian the ability to turn into a gaseous substance. He goes on to rob banks to fund his dancer girlfriend's career, killing those who interfere. Now Tokyo's most wanted criminal, can authorities stop him?

Men are being murdered by a killer who uses a matter-transmitting device to locate his victims.

Ichi is staying at an inn when a woman dies. Her dying wish is that Ichi take her son to his father, an artist living in a nearby town. After arriving in the town, Ichi finds out that the father has been forced by a local boss to create illegal pornography to pay off his gambling debts. Ichi makes it his mission to save the man and reunite the family, even though it brings him into conflict with a samurai he sort of befriended on his way to the town.

An intoxicated man promises two magazine editors that he will write a masterpiece. Once he sobers up, he commits to his promise and writes a story based on his life.

Set in the postwar turmoil, Akasaka no shimai paints a vivit portrait of the life of three sisters who struggle to live in Tokyo.

Driven by greed and a desire for his cousin's wife, Jiro orchestrates a complex frame-up to have his cousin arrested for murder.

Contemporary comedy.

After being fired from his company, Hitoshi Ueda opens a arbitration company. Experts from various fields gather around him and with their natural vitality, they solve one dispute after another. But as it turns out, their next dispute will be at a global scale.

Police detectives investigate the link between a serial killer's machinations and a teenage boy who committed suicide.

In a corner of a warehouse at Shiodome Station, a alumni trunk, is found with the terrible smell of decay. The dead body of a woman is inside. Since the trunk was shipped from Osaka Tennoji Station, the murder investigation headquarters were established in Tokyo and Osaka

A Hiromichi Horikawa movie

The executive director of the «Chuo Shoji» company, Hidaka Shiro, is called a "demon of work", but the hostess of the bar calls him "the loneliest person in Japan." He lost his wife ten years ago and has been living as a widower ever since. He plotted to marry off his 22-year-old daughter Keiko for political gain, but Keiko is in love with Okuda, who is her father's subordinate. A story full of sadness and joy, depicting a man gripped by different thoughts, as an employee of the company and a father.

Miyoko Sekiguchi, who works at a second-rate trading company, and car mechanic Koji Fukumoto are in love. The morning after Koji and Miyoko went out for a drive, the strangled corpse of a call girl is discovered in Toyamagahara. Chief Akagi, Detective Sergeant Sawada, and the other detectives begin to suspect Koji during their investigation. Koji insists he's innocent, but has no evidence to prove it. Even when detectives come to Miyoko's home and workplace and her coworkers begin to look down on her, Miyoko continues to trust and love Koji...

Director Iwauchi Katsuki adapted this melodrama from Sasazawa Saho's award winning novel about two young lovers from different sides of the tracks set against the backdrop of the Roppongi district in Tokyo. Masaaki (Minegishi Toru) is the son of a prominent judge and a Law student at university. Chikage (Nakagawa Yuki) is a teenager from an underprivileged home. Both are desperately looking for an escape from their lives when they meet in Roppongi one night and fall in love. But coming from such different backgrounds, their happiness isn't assured.

A drama film based on Ken Domon's photography of the children around the Chikuho coal mines.

A sake factory worker on holiday returns to his home town, where he rapes the wife of one of his co-workers in the forest. The other man returns home to find his wife changed and suspects that she has been unfaithful.

No synopsis available yet.

Picked up and raised on an island in the Seto Inland Sea, Yasukichi's only trait is his innate mischievousness. However, because his love for his hometown is exceptionally stronger than anybody's, he is trying everything he can to somehow help the inhabitants of the island which are going through a recession. He saddles himself with a debt to bring a cheap band onto the island and tries to market the underwater sightseeing ship on the island without regards for the Marine Act.

In this Japanese drama, a village girl goes to Tokyo and becomes a sex worker to support her ailing mother. While there she meets a teacher and falls in love.

1962 Japanese movie

Third film in the "Ekimae" series, this time set in Hamamatsu. A widow named Keiko and her brother Jiro run the bento shop, "Goraku." One day, Keiko asks for advice from her childhood friends Kintaro, a textile manufacturer, and Magosaku, an entrepreneur, about a big-shot from Osaka who wants to invest in her shop. However, Kintaro and Magosaku suspect that things are not what they seem...

The tragic, yet exciting story of the friendship between Nakayama Yasubei, a member of the 47 Ronin, and Tange Tenzen, a relative by marriage of the vile Lord Kira.

The 10th "Ekimae" feature.

Sequel to the 1955 movie.

1962 Japanese movie

An irresponsible salaryman works his way to the top of the corporate ladder.

The 11th "Ekimae" feature.