In August, 1918, Matsuura Ito lives in a coastal village of Toyama with her husband and three children. During the summer, there wasn't much fish to catch, so her husband has been far away from home to catch fish. To support herself and her children, Ito carries goods from ships like the other women in the village. Meanwhile, the residents encounter rising prices for rice. The women are unable to feed their family due to the high prices of rice. The women ask a nearby rice store to sell rice at lower prices, but it fails. The price of rice continues to rise daily. Due to an incident, Ito and the other village women step up to the plate.
Ito Matsuura
Taki
Toshio
18 Oct 1948
Shogi, a Japanese form of chess, is a game that requires skill and determination. When poor sandal-maker Sakata decides to pursue his dream of becoming the Shogi Grand Master Champion, everything is at stake – including his family. What will it cost for Sakata to follow his passion?
24 May 1964
After her mother runs away from home, Tomoko is raised to be a geisha. One day Tomoko meets her mother in a red-light district in Tokyo and her life deeply gets in trouble.
27 Nov 1980
An adaptation of Akira Yoshimura's original suspense novel starring Rentaro Mikuni. 4th year of the Taishō era. About 15 families who moved in search of agricultural land to the land of the pioneers in Hokkaido led a peaceful life. One day, one of the pioneers, Mikio Shimakawa's wife Yura, and her child Taichi are attacked and killed by a bear that cannot hibernate. To resolve the situation, Shimakawa goes against all odds and turns to Ginshiro, the most hated hunter in the village, for help. While Shimakawa was away from the village, Yura and his friends were holding a funeral, the bear attacked again...
06 Sep 1967
Late Taishō period. The Shibatora family, led by Naojirō, held power over the Tomigawara area in Jōshū. After launching an attack on the Takayasu family for encroaching on their territory, they were instead ambushed by Takayasu's forces. Taking full responsibility, Naojirō turned himself in to the police. Six years later, upon his release, he is enraged to find that everything has changed drastically from how it once was.
07 Jul 2018
In the wake of the social unrest caused by the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, two female sumo athletes, Kiku and Tokachi, and an anarchist group called the Guillotine Society, spark an unlikely connection.
04 Jul 1992
Faraway Sunset tells the story of the famed bacteriologist who is known to have discovered the agent that cause syphilis, and for his relentless search for a cure to yellow fever. As a toddler, his mother's neglect had caused an accident to his left hand, fusing together all the fingers in a bizarre twist of fate. Naturally extremely remorseful for being the cause of her son's handicap, she does everything she could to ensure that he gets to lead a normal life, despite having to fend off bullies and unfair prejudices.
02 Dec 1937
Pre-war Asakusa was a riotous district of cabarets, dance-halls and brothels - a striking backdrop for Shimazu's story of innocence and experience. Pretty, young Reiko is the new dancer in an infamous theatre troupe, and her fellow performers try to protect her virtue in a land of vice. Meanwhile, an ageing actor wants to be a hero off stage as well as on, and the troupe matriarch Marie has to keep them all together.
17 Jun 2006
Based on the true story of the Bandō prisoner-of-war camp in World War I. It depicts the friendship of the German POWs with the director of the camp and local residents at the stage of Naruto, Tokushima Prefecture, in Japan.
23 Nov 1962
The film takes place at the junction of the two eras of Meiji and Taisho. Sakata Sankichi, an uneducated zori sandal maker, becomes a professional shogi player through his genius shogi skills and lives a fanatically devoted shogi game supported by the love of his family. This is the 3rd adaptation of Hideji Hojo's famous play.
03 Jul 1999
Veteran filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi rounds out the second of his two trilogies about his hometown of Onomichi with this film about the budding relationship between a young lad and an eccentric old man. Fifth-grader Yuta (Takuro Atsugi) is a typical city child looking forward to a summer of reading comic books and playing video games. Instead, he is bundled off to his grandparent's house on the Inland Sea. His grandfather, Yuta's parents explain, has been acting strangely as of late -- he eats the offerings in the family altar and once tried to lead attendants at a funeral in a rousing round of calisthenics. Since his mother and father are swamped with work, and his elder sister (Nana Sano) is studying for college entrance exams, Yuta has been asked to look after Grandpa. The old man takes Yuta on a tour of Onomichi, regaling him with 70 years of its history. Along the way, Grandpa slips in and out of the past, increasingly unable to discern between the two.
21 Feb 2025
In the early 1920s, Yasuko, a budding actress, crosses paths with Chūya Nakahara, a young poet destined to be revered as a genius. Drawn to each other by their shared pretentiousness, they begin living together and quickly fall into a complex relationship. Their lives take a dramatic turn when they move to Tokyo and are visited by Hideo Kobayashi, a friend of Chūya’s who would later emerge as one of Japan's foremost literary critics. This seemingly chance encounter not only alters Yasuko's fate but also entwines the three of them in an intense and inescapable destiny.
13 May 1960
Love story between a student and girl whose parents are itinerant entertainers. Set in Japan in the 1920's.
16 Nov 1963
A woman, Tome, is born to a lower class family in Japan in 1918. The title refers to an insect, repeating its mistakes, as in an infinite circle. Imamura, with this metaphor, introduces the life of Tome, who keeps trying to change her poor life.
19 Oct 2018
In turn of the 20th Century Japan, a period characterized by widespread innovation and social restructuring, Benio Hanamura endeavors to take modernization to new heights. With a tomboy nature, Benio rails against traditional ideas that women should take care of the home—serving their husbands rather than pursuing their own dreams. Her values as a modern woman come under fire as the one man who supports her independence, Lieutenant Shinobu Ijuin, goes missing in action. Resurfacing back in Japan, Shinobu has lost all memory of his true identity. In this stunning sequel, will Benio be able to reconnect with Shinobu before she is married off to a new man?
01 Aug 1987
The tragic, true story about Hachikō, an Akita dog who was loyal to his master, Professor Ueno, even after Ueno's death.
13 Dec 2019
Set at a movie theater in a small village around 100 years ago. Silent films are play at the movie theater. A young man aspires to become a benshi, a performer that provides live narration to silent films.
04 Jul 1973
A marquis' mistress becomes pregnant with fraternal twins. He keeps the boy, but sends his bodyguard to dispose of the mother and the girl. Years later…
28 Jun 1967
A man who was released from prison wanders around the Kanto region and gets involved with the local yakuza.
01 Apr 1980
A surreal period film following a university professor and his eerie nomad friend as they go through loose romantic triangles and face death in peculiar ways.
21 Aug 1981
A 1920s playwright meets a beautiful woman who may be the ghost of his patron's deceased wife.