Kumeko Urabe

The tragic, true story about Hachikō, an Akita dog who was loyal to his master, Professor Ueno, even after Ueno's death.

Lonely and love-stricken high-school student Hiroki pursues a girl, but another one mysteriously appears in his life. Is she a figment of his psyche, or is she real?

Erotic drama.

In Meiji Period Japan, the carrying of swords had been outlawed, so Shikai, the Killer Priest carries his sword disguised as a Priest?s staff. One of the strongest entries in the series, Shinkai is badly injured, and must face his worst enemy in what could be their final showdown.

A man is involved in a fatal car accident, and though he is blameless, his company transfers him to a remote branch in a small town. Before he leaves, he gives the man's widow a large sum of money that she uses to move back to her hometown.

No synopsis available yet.

War widow Reiko rebuilds and runs the grocery shop in the house of her husband's family. Many years later, their business is threatened by a newly built supermarket and Reiko's in-laws plan to convert their small shop into a supermarket, to her detriment.

Part 2 of the 'Onna bangaichi' series

The first story concerns an attractive young woman who works in a Tokyo nightclub. Her plan for a solid financial future has a double whammy. In the second story, a beautiful young woman is employed by an unscrupulous real estate agent to convince male clients to invest in worthless property. The last story is about a widowed geisha who has no real financial worries and who falls in love with a forger.

Ushimatsu's father told him never to reveal his lower-caste heritage; years later, he now contemplates confiding in an activist fighting against such discrimination.

When the only son of a working class woman is fatally struck by a car driven by the adulterous wife of a company president in a hit-and-run, the victim's mother changes her identity and infiltrates the couple's home to work as their maid, plotting to murder their similarly-aged son.

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

From 1928 to 1946, the lives of 12 young people and their school teacher in a poor Japanese village are profoundly affected by historical events and personal circumstances.

Ittōsai, who trained in the Itto-ryu style deep in the mountains of Nara, joins a professional baseball team.

Two detectives begin a stakeout based on the slim chance of catching a murderer whom they suspect will try to reunite with an old flame.

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

Two sisters learn about the existence of their long-lost biological mother, but the younger is unable to accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.

A theater troupe master's visit with his old flame unintentionally sets off a chain of unexpected events with devastating consequences.

In post-WWII Osaka, a middle-aged woman is forced to examine her dreary life and marriage when her husband's young and flirtatious cousin arrives for a brief stay to escape an arranged marriage.

A young salaryman and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he embarks on an extramarital affair.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

The eldest daughter of a rural family Mon returns home from Tokyo pregnant after an affair with a college student Kobata, which causes a scandal that will threaten the marriage prospects of the younger sister San, in her cash-strapped family. The ill-tempered eldest brother Inokichi decides to take on the role of disciplinarian, with harrowing results.

No synopsis available yet.

A young woman takes up her new job as the servant of a noblewoman and soon discovers that underneath her facade of luxury lies great unhappiness.

A lighthearted comedy featuring city dwellers flocking to a remote mountain hot spring inn, all entangled in the mystery of hidden gold bars.

No synopsis available yet.

Yosuke Machida of the Daito Shinpo hears from a boy named Toshi-bo, whom he found on the street, that Toshi-bo’s older sister, Toyo, was deceived by a man named Taichi Tachikawa and sold into prostitution in a red-light district. He then set foot in this district for the first time and met Michiko Kawabe, a female reporter known by the nickname “Yoshie.” After hearing various details about the situation from her, he learned that Toyo was at “Kotogawa.”

Based on the famous novel by Junichiro Tanizaki, this is a story of the four sisters of the ancient and reputable Makioka family of Osaka.

In this downbeat, emotionally gripping drama, a lone guardian of some small huts on one of the northernmost, small islands off Japan remembers his once happier past and the events that destroyed everyone he held dear.

A passionate, righteous journalist, burning with indignation, draws his gun of justice in response to the death of his fellow photographer.

No synopsis available yet.

An entertainment film set in a movie studio, featuring songs and hidden talents performed by male and female stars.

Yesterday a gentleman, today a student, tomorrow a stylish man in a casual kimono—Ginji, the pickpocket with seven faces, has his sights set on the gold watch of destiny. A tale of passion, love, human emotion, pistols, and thrills.

A mystery story set on a haunted island: a student is murdered, followed by the suicide of his lover.

1950 daiei movie.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

Pierre Marsac, a French engineer working for the Nagasaki shipbuilding yards, has fallen in love both with Japan and a charming Japanese girl named Noriko. But Françoise Fabre, a French journalist and Pierre's former lover, contacts him while visiting the Land of the Rising Sun. They meet again, find out their love might not be dead. Meanwhile, Pierre gradually becomes estranged from sweet, humble Noriko. One day, a typhoon strikes Nagasaki...

Set against the backdrop of Nagasaki, a love story blossoms between an unfortunate circus girl and a shipbuilding engineer.

No synopsis available yet.

Yoshida Denkichi does loses sight of his wife Chiyoko and daughter Toyoko during the war, and is taken in by a familiar woman, Oshige, and becomes the owner of "Fujimura" in the town of Hato. Eiko is a timid woman who hates Terada, a watchmaker who is obsessed with her; Tamie is a hard worker who asks for money from customers to support her mother and daughter Teruko; Tane, who dreams of the day they can be together, gives money to her lover Takeda; Machiko, an apres girl, is selective about her customers in the name of romance. They are women working in the red light district at "Fujimura."

The story of Kiyoko, a young woman who has successfully managed to make a break with her dysfunctional family who have been trying to arrange a marriage for her with a disagreeable man whom she has rejected.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

A moving story depicting the spirit of a young marathon runner who set a new world record in Boston, encouraged by the love of his family, a young woman’s prayers, and warm friendship.

A Tokyo family running a liquor store overcome impotence and dysfunction as they induce an understanding through each other of how to deal with their individual problems.

In 1945, in a Shanghai filled with a palpable sense of unease as the war was still raging, Atsuko Kijima and Ryuji Kudo fell in love and exchanged promises of marriage. Ryuji was deployed shortly thereafter, and after the war ended, he was taken to Siberia as a prisoner of war. Atsuko, who had returned to Tokyo, clung to the promise she had made with Ryuji—that if he were safe, he would “come to the garden of St. Nicholas Cathedral at noon on Christmas Day.” Relying on that promise, she went to St. Nicholas Cathedral at noon on Christmas Day in both 1946 and 1947, but Ryuji never appeared.

A sweet and melancholy melodrama set against the backdrop of the beautiful Seto Inland Sea, in which a pair of twin sisters, one a young lady of high birth, the other a maid, are manipulated by the threads of fate as they vie for the affection of the same young man.

The tale of Katakana Yonetaro aka "The Shark," a rough-and-tumble horse trader in Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido, despite being a father and a husband he is frequently drawn to taverns.

Where Chimneys Are Seen focuses primarily on the interconnected lives of two couples in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Senju, a poor industrial section of Tokyo.

It's a man's world. Shimamura, an artist, comes to this snowbound town to rejuvenate himself. He connects with Komako, a geisha he met on a previous trip, and it seems like love. She's the foster daughter of a local family, almost engaged to the family's son Yukio, now dying of consumption. He's tended by his sister Yuko who's angry at Komako for abandoning her brother. Shimamura returns to Tokyo but promises he will be back soon. In anticipation of his return, Komako breaks with her patron and her family loses their home. Complications arise when Shimamura doesn't come back as promised. Then Komako discovers that he and Yuko knew each other in Tokyo. Can Komako escape destiny?

A young woman, who must support her father as a middle-aged man's mistress, finds herself falling in love with a student closer to her age.

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.

In early post-war Osaka, three women—war widow Fusako, her Korean expat sister Natsuko, and Kumiko, Fusako's sister-in-law—descend into prostitution, all for their individual reasons.

When a young woman is named as the prime suspect in a murder, her girlfriend and her girlfriend's boyfriend set out to prove her innocence. Their investigation leads them to an isolated, creepy house in the middle of nowhere, where sinister goings-on abound.

A servant girl is seduced and abandoned by her lover, a man from a higher social class, forcing her to navigate a harsh world as an itinerant performer to survive and raise their child.