Yūnosuke Itō

A high school science teacher is the butt of all his students' jokes, until their bus is hijacked on a school trip. But something more sinister lurks beneath the surface: he's building an atomic bomb in his apartment.

Official Shogunate executioner Ogami Itto has been framed for disloyalty to the Shogunate by the Yagyu clan, against whom he now is waging a one-man war, along with his infant son, Daigoro.

Professor Shiraki arrives at an isolated girls' boarding school to take a new position. Upon arrival, he learns the principal's wife died in a car accident and is being kept in the cellar, according to local tradition. The principal startles Shiraki by asking him to become his successor, but Shiraki soon discovers that the principal has much darker motives.

Minoru visits his home on Okinoerabu island for the first time in thirty years. Seeing the old man who used to be in love with his mother, Minoru recalls the old days spent on the island with his young, beautiful mother.

A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.

In this companion piece and sequel to "Yojimbo," jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a proper samurai on its ear.

Japan, 1860. The men of the Mito clan, victims of the Ansei purge, anxiously prowl around the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle with the intention of assassinating Naosuke Ii of Hikone, tairō of the Tokugawa shogunate and responsible for their misfortune.

Gisuke Hayashida is an illegal dentist during the day and a burglar by night. One night during a burglary he witnesses a train derailment. Some communists are found guilty of causing the incident, but he knows it wasn't them. He can save innocent people but for that he must confess his own crime.

A soldier has been in the Japanese military for the entirety of WWII, and in that time, his dedication to the army has never faltered. However, as the war draws to a close, his commanding officers become increasingly desperate and push their men to ever more absurd extremes. The ridiculousness of the orders from above peak when the hero of the story is assigned to drive a one-man submarine straight into the hull of an enemy battleship.

A dramatisation of the 24-hour period in which the Japanese government was deadlocked over the decision to accept or reject the Allies' demand for an unconditional surrender following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The disturbing story of a physician who conducted the first operation with general anaesthetic, and the women in his life who are both so determined to win his love that they volunteer as subjects for his experiments

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

Warlord Oda Nobunaga seeks to unite a fractured Japan. A young man trained in the arts of ninjitsu is manipulated by a ninja master into attempting to assassinate the warlord before he completes his task.

Based on the life and career of novelist Fumiko Hayashi, she bitterly struggles for literary recognition in the first half of the 20th-century – her affairs with feckless men, the jobs she took to survive (peddler, waitress, bar maid), and her arduous, often humiliating attempts to get published in a male-dominated culture.

Desperate to escape her grueling life caring for her paralyzed husband, Tamiko murders him and burns down their home to start anew. She is soon entangled in the dark web of an influential, elderly power broker, becoming his mistress and a pawn in his political schemes. As she descends further into a downward spiral of moral decay, Tamiko realizes that the freedom she sought is merely a new form of entrapment.

Remake of Akira Kurosawa's films "Sanshiro Sugata and "Sanshiro Sugata Part II". A young man, Sanshiro Sugata, troubled by personal problems, takes up judo. His teacher, Shogoro Yano, is a devout man who has aroused the enmity of the local practitioners of jujitsu, the older and more accepted of the two sports. Sugata uses his newly learned prowess to gain a measure of respect from others; however, Shogoro insists that the sport has a spiritual side, a lesson Sugata has yet to learn. Eventually, in hand-to-hand combat with the father of a young woman he loves, he comes to understand the true meaning of judo.

Charged with insubordination for punching a superior, Sergeant Kosugi is shipped to China in the last desperate days of the Second World War. His commander, Captain Sakuma, is vicious and dictatorial. Sakuma places Kosugi in charge of training for combat what once was the military band. Kosugi must somehow prepare his inept soldiers for the rigors of combat.

A young woman begins murdering all those responsible for her ailing father's condition. Because the girl is so outwardly sweet and innocent, the detective looking into the deaths does not suspect her.

A greedy, materialistic family attempts to cover-up the embezzlement committed by the son while keeping their other schemes active. They discover there are other, equally conniving players involved.

Japan, February 1868. As the Tokugawa shogunate declines and the power of Emperor Meiji grows, Gonzo, a soldier of the Restoration Army, returns to Sawando, his hometown, to announce the end of tyranny.

Chieko, a fifth-grader living with her father, struggles to cope with the absence of her mother. When her father's mistress decides to join the household, Chieko rebels.

Amidst the 1960 Japanese-American mutual security treaty, alienated young nihilist Takuya struggles to find his footing between his do-nothing wealth and the outer Western extremism as major student protests take place.

A youth drama directed by Kiyoshi Horiike, who was adapted from "Young Tokyo no Yane" by Akira Saiga from "Oka wa Hanazakari" based on Yojiro Ishizaka. Miwako Kazuki left the English literature department and joined Toyo Critics. She was attracted by Noro, the editor-in-chief, whose wife died a few years ago and was now living with her two orphans and her old mother....

No synopsis available yet.

Two devious retainers are competing to take control of a fief when the current Lord dies, but involving Kyoshiro in the conflict against his will is the textbook example of a bad idea - especially when the collateral damage starts to tick him off.

Japanese drama film.

No synopsis available yet.

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

An upstanding young man who is popular with the ladies takes on a corrupt group of men in his company.

As Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate nears the end of its rule, Edo North Magistrate Toyama no Kinsan is called upon to judge the most difficult case of his career. In a masterfully woven tale, he has to face the truth about his estranged father’s possible involvement in a nefarious plot to take over rule of the Hizen Shimabara clan by assassinating the rightful lord, his son, and install one of Shogun Ienari’s offspring as daimyo.

Tells the story of Shintaro, a lawyer who quits his job to work at a camera factory, and his love adventures.

[Period Covered: 1570-1573] Towards the end of the Tenmon Era, Shogun Ashikaga`s powers were weakening by the day and many were there who planned to overthrow him. It was the beginning of the Sengoku (Warring States) period. Three men attack a gunpowder maker in a farmhouse, the first chopping off his arm with his sickle-&-chain weapon, the second blinding him with sword, the third giving the killing blow. His son Kojiro Kosume escapes the attackers as everything he has known up to then explodes into conflagration. He grows up & enters the start of the Tokugawa Era, intent on avenging his father.

Toramatsu is a very enthusiastic policeman. Believing that the police should help others he is dismissed the force when his pistol is stolen while doing one of his good deeds. He saves a child from drowning, restores it to his mother, then finds that someone has run off with his gun and later uses it to kill. Then he breaks up a group of hoodlums attacking a young girl named Mieko, and the police, his former friends, deciding he has gone too far, decide to sue him. On top of this the girl gets hurt and, consequently, a child from the kindergarten where Mieko teaches is kidnapped on his way home. Impersonating a policeman he tracks down the gangsters and rescues the boy. Due to this he also uncovers a scandal which allows the police to make a long due clean up in the political world. As a reward for all of this he wins the regard of the girl but now faces a stiff prison sentence for impersonating the policeman he had been and which, at heart, he truly remains.

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.

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.

In a remote village where food is scarce, elders who reach the age of 70 are carried by their children to the top of a nearby mountain to die in solitude. Orin, a vibrant 69-year-old grandmother, has accepted her fate — but struggles to prepare the rest of her family for the ritual.

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.

No synopsis available yet.

A talent scout moves sharply, dead-set on signing a promising baseball player to The Toyko Flowers.

Jidai-geki by Kiyoshi Saeki

A math teacher loses his job while falling in love with a local girl.

Ichiro Yoshida, the father of the boy Kiyoshi, who has been repatriated from China, returns home after a ten-year separation. The father, who has been estranged from his son for many years, pays no attention to the boy, often punishes him unfairly, and gives all his tenderness to his little daughter, who was born after his return. The boy sees all the injustice of his father and, offended, leaves home. The father realized that he was wrong, that he was guilty before his son. The mother finds the boy and brings him home. The father and the son become friends from that day on.

A Chinese medical student named Gan Shosho finds himself cut off from his homeland as he is studying in Japan during the outbreak of the war. Despite his difficult circumstances, he finds love in the form of Sachiko and the two marry. They later travel to Nanjing to live a new life together where Sachiko and Shaochang cooperate with the Japanese-backed government. Their ultimate hope is to secure peace but their idealism is not enough to keep them together through brutal times and with the end of the war the two find themselves facing a divorce... --Osaka Asian Film Festival

In a peaceful town near the Seto Inland Sea, a threatening letter arrives along with the ringing of a telephone... A thriller-comedy that sets this stagnant town ablaze.

Hiroyuki, a married executive, falls madly in love with Ikuko, the mistress of a ruthless jeweler. The two arrange to meet at a hot spring, but Hiroyuki becomes torn between his love for Ikuko and his duty towards his sick wife.

Lending money, job hunting for civilians and babysitting. All these things are usually not listed on a policeman's job description. But for the officers of this local police station, it‘s part of their daily routine. One day, patrolman Yoshii (Hisaya Morishige) finds an abandoned baby and a six year old girl standing in front of the station. When he's declined by the welfare office, orphanage and local health clinic to take them in, he decides to take care of them himself.

This drama centers on an elderly politician and depicts how humans can return to their true selves when they are freed from selfish desires and self-interest.

No synopsis available yet.

In the 15th year of the Meiji era (1882), Ōkuma Shigenobu, expelled from the Council of State by the Satsuma-Chōshō clique, poured his personal fortune into establishing the Tokyo Professional School in a tea field in Waseda Village. With seven professors, including Takada Sanae and Tsubouchi Yūzō, and eighty-seven students, government interference extended even to finances; Ono Azusa, who tirelessly worked to secure funding, died from overwork.

A film by Kiyoshi Saeki

Jidai-geki starring Kanjuro Arashi

Shigeki Kachi, Tosuke Satomura, and Nanako, who belong to the theater company Vuanbert around Dosa, withdrew at the indignation of the chairman Hayashi and seeked their own careers in the film industry.

No synopsis available yet.

Period film about a feudal era judge living in Edo

The inventor of a ground-breaking glue, Sanada, becomes rich thanks to his discovery a high executive in his company. Because of this promotion, his world is changing completely : his wife behaves like never before, considering she's now rich and has the right to do whatever she wants, even having an affair. (Also occasionally known in English as “Overflow”)

Fourth sequel to "Story of Second Class Private".

Melodrama by Kiyoshi Saeki

An ethical, young tax collector new to his area encounters increasingly absurd individuals and groups coping with their post-war woes.

No synopsis available yet.

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.