
01 Sep 2023

September 1923
Based on the murder of nine street peddlers in the aftermath of the Great Kanto earthquake.
A dancer girl in a touring company met a high school boy in a port town. The story is about their first love that is very touching and sorrowful. An adaptation of the Kawabata Yasunari short story.
01 Sep 2023
Based on the murder of nine street peddlers in the aftermath of the Great Kanto earthquake.
28 Dec 1974
While vacationing in the Izu peninsula, a high school student Kawashima becomes intrigued by Kaoru, a pretty young dancer in a troupe of travelling performers, and he tags along with them on their journeys.
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.
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.
22 Nov 1957
Ichiro’s family used to be a large landowner, but now he is living in poverty with his mother. His mother works hard to get her son through school. Under such circumstances, Ichiro meets Wakako, the daughter of a wealthy man, and they fall in love with each other, but they are opposed by those around them because of their different social status.
11 Nov 2017
The story follows Benio "Haikara-san" Hanamura, who lost her mother when she was very young and has been raised by her father, a high-ranking official in the Japanese army. As a result, she has grown into a tomboy - contrary to traditional Japanese notions of femininity, she studies kendo, drinks sake, dresses in often outlandish-looking Western fashions instead of the traditional kimono, and is not as interested in housework as she is in literature. She also rejects the idea of arranged marriages and believes in a woman's right to a career and to marry for love.
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?
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.
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.
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.
28 Jun 1967
A man who was released from prison wanders around the Kanto region and gets involved with the local yakuza.
13 May 1960
Love story between a student and girl whose parents are itinerant entertainers. Set in Japan in the 1920's.
09 Oct 2005
Based on the first novel, Spring Snow, of Mishima Yukio's Sea of Fertility tetralogy, it follows the troubled and illicit affair between two youngsters amongst the aristocracy and rich of early twentieth century Japan.
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.
31 May 1991
Following the life of Japanese artist and poet Yumeji Takehisa through the imagining of an encounter with a beautiful widow with a dark past.
29 Sep 1962
Considered one of the finest late Naruses and a model of film biography, A Wanderer’s Notebook features remarkable performances by Hideko Takamine – Phillip Lopate calls it “probably her greatest performance” – and Kinuyo Tanaka as mother and daughter living from hand to mouth in Twenties Tokyo. Based on the life and career of Fumiko Hayashi, the novelist whose work Naruse adapted to the screen several times, A Wanderer’s Notebook traces her bitter struggle for literary recognition in the first half of the twentieth 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.
15 Jan 1985
Drama about the difficult relationship between a former wrestler, his wife and their adopted children.
17 Mar 2023
An unhappy young woman from an abusive family is married off to a fearsome and chilly army commander. But the two learn more about each other, love may have a chance.