Chieko (Momoe Yamaguchi) has been raised as the only child of parents who run a dry goods store. When Chieko was a middle-school student, she learned that her parents are…

This impressionistic portrait of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics pays as much attention to the crowds and workers as it does to the actual competitive events. Highlights include an epic…

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

Based on renowned Japanese writer Natsume Soseki’s same-titled short story collection, Ten Nights of Dreams brings ten fantastical dream sequences to film with great visual and psychological panache. Representing the…

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

Nakadai is an English teacher at a local school. He’s put-upon like the patron figure of dozens of films and televisions shows. Viewers who are especially fans of Nakadai will…

Inugami Sahei, who built up the wealth of the Inugami Clan, passes away, leaving a will with Furudate, his legal adviser, for his daughters Matsuko, Takeko and Umeko, all of…

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)…

Kenichi Horie is determined to challenge his family, the law and the nature crossing the Pacific to America in a small sailboat. Despite his careful planning many unforeseen events will…

Kôsuke Kindaichi, a somewhat peculiar private detective, visits a remote town. He meets a police detective and they start to investigate an old unsolved murder. Then some murders happen. Kindaichi…

Two poor, married farmers have recently lost their only child; after a freak visitation, they pry open an alien cocoon to greet their new daughter.

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…

Follows the fluctuating fortunes of three ronin in feudal Japan who wander from castle to castle, selling their services to whichever lord will fill their rice bowls. Though they use…

While performing in a touring kabuki troupe, leading female impersonator Yukinojo comes across the three men who drove his parents to suicide twenty years earlier, and plans his revenge, firstly…

In the closing days of WWII remnants of the Japanese army in Leyte are abandoned by their command and face certain starvation.

In the War’s closing days, when a conscience-driven Japanese soldier fails to get his countrymen to surrender to overwhelming force, he adopts the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk.

When Milo the cat and Otis the dog are separated, they each set off on an adventurous and often perilous quest across mountains, plains, and snow-covered lands to reunite with…

Kikuji is the scion of an Osaka merchant family whose traditional power is matrilineal. Instructed by his overbearing mother and grandmother to give them an heiress for the family business,…

This extraordinarily complex film is not only a send-up of every samurai film ever made, it is also an extrapolation of the value of life. The Yamatai, represented by Prince…

A young man rents an apartment in Tokyo and discover it was built by his father. He falls in love with the daughter of the mistress of the house and…

This sensuously beautiful film chronicles the activities of four sisters who gather in Kyoto every year to view the cherry blossoms. It paints a vivid portrait of the pre-war lifestyle…

Eight acclaimed filmmakers bring their unique and differing perspectives to the 1972 Summer Olympic Games held in Munich. The segments include Lelouch’s take on Olympic losers and their struggle to…

When a tycoon passes away, he unexpectedly leaves the family fortune to outsider Tamayo on the condition that she marries one of the grandsons, pitting blood against blood.

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.