Kei Satō

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...

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money...

Zatoichi comes upon a dying man who asks him to give a bag of money to "Taichi". Zatoichi has no idea who this is but when he comes upon a small town...

Kaji is sent to the Japanese army labeled Red and is mistreated by the vets. Along his assignment, Kaji witnesses cruelties in the army and revolts...

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...

Ishihara Kiyoshi plans to marry the woman he loves, Chiee, a coffee shop girl. After an accident, Chiee loses her memory. A romance movie whose...

Two young women must come to terms with the fact that a man they're deeply linked to is a murdering rapist.

An ambitious Kansai yakuza don moves in on Tokyo using financial and political tactics, sparking conflict with a local criminal association.

The lord of the Oshi fief is killed by his trespassing neighbour, the cruel and despotic Nariatsu, son of the former Shogun. After an investigation,...

A seemingly run-of-the-mill corporate salaryman leads a double life as a vicious criminal by night. In a delicious scheme of payback, he seeks to...

1962 Japanese movie

Kaiji Ito moves to Japan after graduating from high school. Unable to find a job and frustrated with society at large, Kaiji spends his days...

A drama about a father and his son centered around the Great Hanshin earthquake.

Against the backdrop of the Edo treasury devaluing currency and driving many into poverty, Hanzo Itami enforces the law without regard to status. He...

Originally released in Japan as "The Return of Godzilla" in 1984, this is the heavily re-edited, re-titled "Godzilla 1985". Adding in new footage...

Years of warfare end in a Japan unified under the Tokugawa shogunate, and samurai spy Sasuke Sarutobi, tired of conflict, longs for peace. When a...

Temari, a geisha, dreams of opening a small restaurant with her little brother.

A sex-obsessed woman, a suicidal man she meets on the street, and a gun-crazy wannabe gangster become trapped in an underground hideaway.

Schoolgirl Kuniko is kidnapped by a middle-aged man Iwazono when she is jogging. He tells her that he had a failed marriage which leaves him a deep...

On the night of August 19, 1980, a bus was set on fire by the vagrant Hirofumi Maruyama at the Shinjuku West Exit Bus Terminal. In the burning...

Ryunosuke, a gifted swordsman plying his trade during the turbulent final days of Shogunate rule, has no moral code and kills without remorse....

A corrupt businessman blackmails the lovelorn reprobate Atsushi into watching over his suitcase full of embezzled cash while he serves a jail...

A man wanders into a seemingly deserted town with his young son in search of work. But after a bit of bad luck, he joins the town's population of...

Zatoichi, the famed blind swordsman, returns to his home village for the first time in many years. He is befriended by Omiyo, who had the same...

A touching drama about human life and love A 24-hour probation has been given to a man who should have died!

Murase is a bodyguard of yakuza group. Ochiai is a police officer who once was a student activist. When they meet, they are surprised how identical...

Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional...

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...

Four ninja are hired to fight against the Shogunate’s plot to abolish the Gamo Clan, the regional barons struggling to reinstate their young...

Hanpei is a gentle young samurai that loves flowers. One day, he witnesses an old man's quick draw of the sword. He is so impressed that he becomes...

The story takes place in feudal Japan, when any commerce with the rest of the world was strictly prohibited. An idealist suddenly appears in an...

A budding gangster enthralls a freeloading young woman, soon taking advantage of her knack for hitch-hiking to rob middle-class, middle-aged men.

A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but somehow survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.

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...

Arrested and interrogated by the police for a murder, Kiyoshi Ōkubo remembers his past and ends up confessing to several murders. Inspired by...

In Tokyo's Shinjuku district, the lives of a young man prone to theft, a young woman he meets at a bookstore, and a kabuki actor intersect.

A lower-middle-class policeman lives decadently, chasing cheap beer and girls at the same time he's running from loan sharks and his personal...

Three students spend their holidays at the seaside where they are mistaken for Koreans, a minority which is looked down on in Japan. The action...

A young boy joins a band of ninja during a peasant uprising, all depicted through an experimental form of filming pages from the original manga set...

Near the end of Japanese civil war, several disgraced ronin living in Edo's red light district attempt to regain their honor by defending a brothel...

The crescent shaped scar on his forehead is a license given him by the Shogun to kill anyone he deems to be a villain. A strong performance that...

A detective goes out of his way to crack the case of a serial killer who specialises in murdering police officers.

An abandoned temple in the mountains outside of the old capital city of Kyoto is the scene of a fated meeting between a traveling priest, two women,...

A banker and a high school girl start a brothel in the snowy countryside of Hokuriko.

At a seaside city somewhere in the Tohoku area, the corpses of Nozomi, daughter of an affluent family, and Yamazaki, son of an engineer at the local...

Loosely based on a 1926 short story by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, the film opens as an artist and a young woman are in a dentist's waiting room....

The Byakkotai was part of Aizu’s four-unit military, set up in the domain’s drive to finalize its military modernization, in the wake of...

Zensaku, middle-aged and deaf in one ear, learns that his son's fallen for the daughter of a war officer responsible for the maiming.

A motorcycle cop and a freelance photographer, having learned the location of 1 billion yen's worth of the Imperial Navy's gold, team up to salvage...

Third part in Tadashi Sawashima's Theater of Life trilogy.

Based on a true story, an elderly woman resiliently spends nine months attempting to retrieve her husband's dead body, fighting government...

Movie directed by Sadatsugu Matsuda

Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of...

In war-torn Japan, the Tokugawa Shogun, desperate to restore peace to his people, orders the assassination of the hostile warlords. A beautiful young...

Mika Hino is a sharp-shooting investigator that belongs to the infamous "Gator Branch.” When an executive board member of a trading company is...

This film tells about the murder of Lieutenant Colonel Aikawa, the head of the Bureau of Military Affairs, about the beginning of the incident 2.26...

Asian Blue focuses on Koreans brought to Japan to work in forced-labor brigades during World War II

A moodo/akushon yakuza picture with heavy emphasis on poignant seishun romance.

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...

Writer Jippensha Ikku hears Tsutaya Juzaburo, a wholesaler of picture books, mutter on his deathbed, "Where has Sharaku gone?" He begins to figure...

About 1786 the doings of a demented lord results in many masterless samurai, including Iyemon (Kei Sato) who is used to luxury and cannot adjust to...

Otsuya, the daughter of a rich merchant, elopes with her lover Shinsuke, an employee of her father's. During their flight, Otsuya's beauty attracts...

A low-key private detective agency in Paris is run by Rie and her lover and partner Kishin, two ex-pats who tick along between cases by giving guided...

Rou has returned to the monastery he was raised in. As he listens to the whispering of the Gods through his germanium radio, Rou defies God in every...

A man sets out to search for his brother among the survivors of Hiroshima after an anonymous letter.

The second movie of Tôru Murakawa's "Game" trilogy. After making a sensational hit, a hitman has gone into hiding for five years. When he comes...

Seeking revenge against the guard who tormented him, a young man returns to the island where he was imprisoned in reform school. But his plans for...

Uninvited guests crash a former student radical's wedding and accuse him, his bride and other guests of ignoring their political commitments.

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...

In Osaka's slum, youths without futures engage in pilfering, assault and robbery, prostitution, and the buying and selling of identity cards and of...

An NHK adaptation of the famous manga by Moto Hagio.

14-year-old Sunaoko travels from Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa, with her father’s young fiancée Momoko in search of her half-brother whom she...

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...

1973 Toei movie.

Global South guerrillas hijack the Japanese oil tanker Arabian Light, threatening to blow it up in Tokyo Bay, unless the Cabinet complies with an...

The Wayside Pebble is an effective drama about the hardships of a childhood spent with a brusque, cold-hearted father and a submissive mother. The...

A dying businessman intends to will his fortune to his three illegitimate children, whose whereabouts are unknown, so a bevy of lawyers and...

Eiji lives a quiet life running a small Izakaya with his wife. He spends his days cooking for and serving the lively residents of his small hometown.

Elite college graduates commit perfect financial crimes though loopholes in the law during the 1950s.

Mondosuke ventures alone into the land of Nagasaki. There, he encounters young lady named Kinue, the daughter of Nagasaki's former magistrate office...

Three stories revolve around independence, a man searching for his wife, and a poor craftsman trying to make money.

1977 Japanese film directed by Tengo Yamada.

Three Iga ninja are on a hunt for Chidoken, a Takeda ninja sent out to assasinate Lord Nobunaga.

This story is based on the novel "Jo no mai" by Tomiko Miyao which is based on the life of painter Shōen Uemura (1875–1949), the first...

A wandering vagrant, Hantaro, risks his life to save a beautiful blind girl and her father from con artists.

One of the major documentaries on a specific chapter in modern Japanese history, this look at the trial of Japanese militarists accused of war crimes...

A young leader of the Yamazaki family of Nagasaki, Takida (Ken Takakura) is an A-bomb survivor. He fiercely battles violent elements in southern...

In the fourth film in this exciting series, and the first since losing his left eye, Yagyu Jubei is charged again with the task of protecting the...

After a fishing boat is attacked, the sole surviving crew member realizes it is none other than a resurrected Godzilla. However, efforts to bring the...

Terrorists hijack an oil tanker and threaten to blow it up unless Japan meets their demands.

The classic tale of the shogun's illegitimate son Aoi Shingo is told in three parts as he strives to become the greatest fencer in Japan, while his...

A story of the skilled brain surgeon, Todo, whose talent and ambition are put to test through a series of high risk surgical procedures.

In the fifth installment, Yagyu Jubei must prove the innocence of his family who is suspected of conspiring to take Shogun's life.

Frustrated with the bad behavior of his lord, Inaba Yajuro (Otomo) declares that he is leaving the clan and sets off on a journey that leads him...

While her husband is in prison doing time, Tamaki, the wife of a yakuza capo, runs her spouse’s gang with an iron hand. Meanwhile, Makoto, her...

A black comedy about a former Rock'n'Roll singer, who becomes the mayor of Tokyo.

The third movie in Tôru Murakawa's Game trilogy about a hitman. Narumi is set up by a mysterious woman. Abducted and tortured, Narumi is forced...

Two outsiders start a relationship in a mining town.

Two killers revenge a wirepuller of the underworld in Yokohama.

This film describes how the Hopi and Navajo tribes in the southwestern United States have responded to the resource colonization of their lands that...

An investigation into a drug smuggler who is assassinated in front of an insurance building sets two detectives, Sumikawa and Akine, into a sprawling...

A police investigator cracks down on yakuza business, but once he realizes the police are in negotiations with certain factions, he sides with his...

An assassin is mistaken for a doctor and threatened by a band of masterless warriors, but they realize their mistake and retreat into the darkness....

A divorced woman enters a marriage arranged by her mother in exchange for money to save the life of her seriously ill son.

The story of the desperate struggle between the police and a large crime syndicate.

A sequel to the popular "The School of Spies", this film continues the adventures of one of the graduates who is assigned to crack a powerful spy...

Osaka in the early 1600s, aftermath of the historical Battle of Sekigahara; a group of orphan children are wandering through the battlefield...

After a salary-man's fiancée attempts suicide, he recounts his gruesome family history which saw generations of his ancestors suffer and...

In the fourth installment, Musashi's potentially greatest opponent Kojiro jumps in and out of the story at the oddest and most coincidental moments....

A father and son are both heavy drinkers. However, the son dies in an accident at a bar, leaving behind a fiance…. A unique social satire that...

The daughter of the wealthy Soga family is kidnapped and her fiance is murdered. But the kidnappers, Tatsu and Sanko are unaware that Tatsuko is the...

When the country is in peril, Lord Yagyu Tajima summons his son Yagyu Jubei to retrieve the mystical Yagyu Scroll in order to save all of Japan. This...

Japan, 1948: Hiroki Matsukata stars as a man facing a nine year prison sentence. He incites prisoners of Shimane Prison to the biggest riot in jail...

Based on the comic book by Kenshi Hirokane

A dark tale of murder and revenge set in old Kyoto.

The three-film saga comes to a conclusion as three leaders of the underworld battle it out to determine who will become Don of Japan.

The continuing adventures of Matsuzaki, a racing tipster for a sports paper. Matsuzaki befriends a mysterious old track bettor named Tokudaiji. The...

A ryokan maid is on trial for pushing a familiar guest off a cliff to his death. An eager attorney offers to take the case to gain notoriety.

A yakuza is released from prison after serving a long sentence. He immediately sets about creating a new gang and attempts to pull off a huge ransom...

In the year 1637 in Shimabara of Tokugawa-era Japan, oppressed peasant Christians revolt against the shogunate with the aid of a charismatic...

Deep in the mountains of feudal Japan, a group of children endure cruel and unorthodox training in order to become the Shogunate's most secret and...

A policeman is murdered and his gun, stolen, used to commit the next crime. Detective Kashiwagi, who is leading the investigation, learns that the...

After a yakuza boss is assassinated by a rival, his naval officer son returns home to take over the gang.

Yoshida's first feature follows the lives of young students against a background of jazz, emptiness and boredom. The plot is fairly simple: a...

Too shy to speak out the word of appreciation, too busy to show that you care... Many excuses lie between each and every couple, when they look back...

Kingoro Tamai moves with his wife and son to the port city of Wakamatsu. He organizes the Tamai-gumi, a stevedore group, to vie for work with two...

When a young soldier is killed while trying to prevent his younger sister, Kaoru, from being sold into a life of prostitution, his commander, Col....

A man returns to his seaside roots to confront a yakuza boss. Along the way, he charms young men, softens a hard woman and busts a few heads.

This horror anthology is featuring nine independent episodes, each 30 minutes long, that are revolving around bad karma and terror.

A lavish retelling of the true story of the final voyage and ultimate destruction and sinking of the battleship Yamato, Japan's greatest flagship...

An opportunistic department store clerk gets involved with three women and attempts to manipulate them so he can move up the social ladder.

Following the lives of three college rugby players drafted to serve in the military during WWII. Though they believe their service will help to...

On a cold winter day, Goro Fujikawa (Tetsuya Watari) and Masahiko murder the mob boss of Meishin-Kai. The deed costs them time in prison, but Goro...

A story of manly life and the beauty of conjugal love. A story about a man and a woman establishing a family of longshoreman, centering on their love...

In turbulent 16th-century Japan, the leaders of a minor fief have their child taken from them as a political hostage. His mother and his clan endure...

The Man Who Assassinated Ryoma is a movie about a haunted blood-thirsty Bakufu officer who might have killed Ryoma Sakamoto.

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...

Wicked woman Ogin is a concubine of a powerful feudal lord Tayu. At first Ogin gains power by poisoning lawful wife of Tayu. To gain more power Ogin...

In the late Taisho era. Umeshima Jinbei, the president of the Kanto Umeshima Kai, divided the area into the Kuroda family to the south and the...

Eight villains, former pirates, gather to attack the magistrate's office. They develop a plan and begin their actions in secret, making full use of...

The sequel to "Flowers and Dragons". Kingoro Tamai founded a family in the port of Wakamatsu. He unites people with his courage, and revolts against...

A Japanese soldier deserts his position and travels to a small town on the Sea of Japan to start over. When a young maid falls for him, he talks her...

Nomi-gumi, who plans to control Tama City, has begun to hurt Takase-gumi. Muraki, an executive, was entrusted with the destruction, but he was a...

War between North Korea and Japan

Yuzo Kayama is an American-Japanese operative working for the US to uncover an arms deal between an American seller and Chinese communists, and to...

The most dangerous hired gun in Kyushu's underworld has managed to trigger a vicious gang war, and now, there's a contract on his life. Though nobody...

Bored Hatamoto film

Known as the ”Last Samurai” Saigo Takamori was a stout giant of a man with a huge head and a neck like a bear. As the leader of...

Psychological noir drama involving the tangled web of a disgraced yakuza, an innocent school girl, a blackmailed singer, and a corrupt lawyer.

Short anime adaption of the Osamu Tezuka manga Neo Faust.

In a small Japanese village at the end of the 19th century, a rickshaw driver's wife takes on a much younger lover and the two conspire to murder him.

Police detective Heiji is assigned to catch the masked Maboroshi gang of robbers who have terrorized all of Edo, leaving few clues as to their...

The Dawn of Asia (アジアの曙) is a TV drama consisting of thirteen episodes about the trans-China/Japan collaboration...