While her son, Kichi, is away at war, a woman and her daughter-in-law survive by killing samurai who stray into their swamp, then selling whatever valuables they find. Both are devastated when they learn that Kichi has died, but his wife soon begins an affair with a neighbor who survived the war,...
Shows the devastation caused by the atomic bomb, and by use of a fictional storyline, portrays the struggle of the ordinary Japanese people in dealing with the aftermath.
In the Sengoku period, a woman and her daughter are raped and murdered by soldiers during a time of civil war. Afterwards, a series of samurai returning from the war through that area are found mysteriously dead with their throats torn out. The governor calls in a wild and fierce young hero to...
A mother and daughter are stranded in small, isolated cabin, and are starving to death. In order to survive, they plan to entice men that happen to stray to their cabin with sex, and kill them. All goes well until a local cop shows up and, then, an old relation.
A retired actress whose husband has recently died visits her summer home. There she has encounters with old friends and acquaintances who bring various stories and news of death and the past
A gas leak explosion at a yakuza hideout provides a shy nurse and a rental car clerk with the opportunity to take a briefcase full of money. A cross-country chase ensues.
A story of Japanese writer Kafu Nagai (1879-1959), a man about sixty with a huge reputation of seducer who falls madly in love for a young geisha named Oyuki. Meticulous and smartly dressed, Nagai patiently wrote in his diary his thoughts during many years. A melancholy reflection on the passage of...
Rica wanting a fresh start leaves her friends and past life behind or at least that is what she thinks as trouble always seems to find her. Rica's looks into a ship that exploded and everyone who survived this disaster who comes in contact with her dies. Rica only chance of solving the mystery of...
First film of a trilogy following the dramatic life of Rika, a half-Japanese/half-American woman who becomes the tough-as-nails leader of an all-girl crime gang.
Michio Yamada, a recent school graduate, is sent to Tokyo to work as a fruit-packer in a department store as part of a government programme. He takes a gun from a house on an American base and uses it to kill several people. The scene changes to Yamada's childhood. Yamada is born the child of a...
Reform schools are a way of protecting society by ridding it of lawless juvenile delinquents. But who's protecting the juvenile delinquents from corrupt reform schools? Rica could be considered a bit of an expert on reform schools, having spent most of her early life in and out of them. When Rica...
It is based on the story of The Ballad of Narayama updated to the present day, with the substitution of putting a parent into an old people's home for the abandonment of the original. The film won the Golden St. George and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 21st Moscow International Film Festival.
Toward the end of World War II, middle-aged soldier Keita is entrusted with a postcard from a comrade who is sure he will die in battle. After the war ends, Keita visits his comrade's wife Yuko and bears witness to the tragic life she has led.
The story tells of the adoration of Sasuke for his mistress, the blind samisen-teacher Shunkin, who treats him imperiously and subjects him to cruel beatings.
The film is a series of vignettes from Taiji Tonoyama's life and film clips, interspersed with a dialogue to camera by Nobuko Otowa, addressing the camera as if she is addressing Tonoyama himself, recollecting events in his life. The film focuses on Tonoyama's alcohol dependence and his various...
The ship Kaijin Maru is left adrift after losing all means of navigation in a storm. The four people on the ship are becoming increasingly desperate as food and water run out.
“Quit working as a nurse!” “All right, I will!” thus began the married life of Yasuo and Keiko. But the reality is harsh. Keiko even had to work on the first night after her marriage. Ten years later, the married couple is still at it. Yauso tends to the house and their children, while...
Postwar Tokyo. Pin and Toku live in the squatter area of Kappanuma. Pin and Toku are avid gamblers. They take in Tsuru, a slightly demented woman who has run away from a geisha house.
