Ayako Wakao

A troupe of travelling players arrive at a small seaport in the south of Japan. Komajuro Arashi, the aging master of the troupe, goes to visit his old flame Oyoshi and their son Kiyoshi, even though Kiyoshi believes Komajuro is his uncle (imdb)

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 (imdb)

When Takeo is released from prison for attacking Handa, a rival yakuza lord, the last thing on his mind is taking over the position of his recently deceased father, boss of the Asahina clan. As he and his older brother Aikawa contemplate their options, they soon entertain the idea of falling in love with maidens and leaving the yakuza life altogether. But their exit proves more difficult than planned when their rival clan steps in to exact a little revenge.

In the post-war Gion district of Kyoto, the geisha Miyoharu agrees to apprentice the 16 year-old Eiko... (imdb)

With a price on his head, Ichi seeks tranquillity in a favorite village. Since his last visit, it has fallen prey to Boss Masagoro... (imdb)

Sonoko, a bored housewife entering middle age, finds herself driven to steal a small trinket from a shop. She notices another woman watching her, however, and decides to follow the woman out of the store to explain herself... (imdb)

Yonosuke was lived in insatiable pursuit of love affairs with women and men as well, and a celebrated courtesan; the son first made love to a woman at the age of seven. Thereafter, always devoting himself to the affairs, Yonosuke ended up, at 60, sailing to Nyogogashima ("Isle of Women"). This film was adapted for the famous novel, Koshoku ichidai otoko which narrates 54 years of his adventures in affairs of women. (Twitchfilm.net)

Five prostitutes work at Dreamland, in Tokyo's Yoshiwara district. As the Diet considers a ban on prostitution, the women's daily dramas play out... (imdb)

During the Sino-Japanese war, a nurse is forced to confront the hardship and suffering that war brings, encountering the harsh realities of what it does to men and what it means for the women who find themselves in the midst of the nightmare.

Director Masumura used a full palette of primary colors (with very vivid reds) to tell us about the story of Otsuya, a beautiful young woman from a middle-class merchant family who is abducted into geisha work, and who catches one day the eye of Seikichi, a tattoo master who marks her back with a huge, monstrous spider. From that moment on, Otsuya will take her revenge with every man who shared her bed. (IMDb)

Okane, a beautiful girl from a poor family, must serve as a mistress to a much older rich man. Upon the death of the man and her father, she returns to her village where she meets a young soldier, Seisaku. The locals despise them because of Okane's past, the young woman meets them with arrogance and haughty behavior. The two fall in love and marry against the spite of the whole village, but then Seisaku has to go to war against the Russians and their world falls apart... (imdb)

A young woman on a mountaineering holiday is accused of murdering her husband. Tied to a mountain between her brutalising spouse and her secret lover, disaster strikes. To prevent all three from plunging to their deaths, the woman is forced to choose between cutting her husband's rope or that of her lover. An elliptical narrative structure shot in Masumura's trademark 'scope explores dark themes of gender, guilt and voyeurism in this blistering film.

Having botched his entrance exams to a prestigious university, the dim-witted but earnest Hikoichi Otsu (Fujio) refuses to swallow his pride by doing the decent thing and admitting his failure to his mother back home in the country. (midnighteye.com)

Japan's timeless tale of honor and revenge, the Loyal 47 Ronin is the true story of group of samurai who became ronin (masterless samurai) after their Lord was forced to commit seppuku (ritual suicide) for assaulting a court official, Kira Yoshinaka, who had insulted him... (AnimEigo.com)

Set in a family apartment, an intrigue develops around some missing money as secrets are revealed.

Intrepid ninja Ishikawa Goemon (Raizo Ichikawa) escapes a gruesome fate and sets out to seek vengeance on the warlord who tried to boil him alive as the legendary Shinobi No Mono saga continues in this action-packed sequel. Ishikawa was staring death square in the eyes when the enigmatic Hattori Hanzo rescued him from certain death. (allmovie.com)

Based on a centuries-old traditional Japanese fairy tale, a country couple finds a baby girl in some bamboo and raises her as their own daughter. Not the same as the original tale, though, in which the girl was a fairy from the moon and was finally taken home. Instead, the film ends with the girl taken home by a spaceship. (imdb)

Set among the matrilineal merchant class of Osaka in the early 20th century, this 1960 family drama by Kon Ichikawa follows the son of a prosperous family (Raizo Ichikawa) as he fathers only boys with various wives and geishas, much to the chagrin of his manipulative grandmother and mother. Ichikawa wrote the script with his wife and frequent collaborator, Natto Wada, and despite its sharp satirical jabs, it carefully notates the hero's ambivalence and regret toward women. (Chicago Reader)

The wife (Ayako Wakao) and mother (Hideko Takamine) of a nineteenth-century physician battle for his love in this extraordinary drama from the perennially underrated Yasuzo Masumura.

Ayako Wakao plays good-natured Yuko, the illegitimate daughter of a well-off executive, raised in the country by relatives.

This is essentially the story of Qin from the founding of "China" by his unifying the various provinces, through the building of the great wall on to close to his death.

A rebellious delinquent student puts sleeping powder in a girl's beer and rapes her. She falls in love with him, but he rejects her. Her irate family and other outraged students then punish the boy themselves. (Audie Bock)

A girl who has escaped from an institution falls in love with Tora-san. He decides to marry her, but his family and the girl's teacher break up the romance.

One day, a handsome visiting priest named Anchin fell in love with a beautiful woman named Kiyohime, but after a time he overcame his passions and refrained from further meetings. Kiyohime became furious at the sudden change of heart and pursued him in rage. The priest and Kiyohime met at the edge of the Hidaka river, where the priest asked a boatman to help him to cross the river, but told him not to let her cross with his boat.

Early 20th century Japan. Kiyoaki Matsugae, a young aristocrat falls in love with a girl he grew up with; Satoko Ayakura, who is to be married to a prince of the royal family.

It's near the end of the Tokugawa era. Choshu Clan's Lord has apparently been seeking a Choshu-Satsuma alliance against the desparate Tokugawa regime. But Choshu vassals are divided as to their opinons of this move, as not all are devoted to the idea of the Emperor's restoration. A color remake of the same directors 1925 original Tsukigata Hanpeita and the first version in color. (weirdwildrealm.com)

Satoko is a mistress by trade, or fate: when her master, the silkscreen artist of the Kohoan Temple in Kyoto, dies, she is given to the temple's lascivious head priest Kikuchi. She is drawn to a melancholy young acolyte, Jinen, who has observed the profligacy of his cruel master and Satoko's utter dependence on the man...The story unfolds in a dreamlike manner, a flashback inspired by a now-infamous image on a silkscreen in the souvenir shop at the so-called Temple of the Wild Geese. (KG)

The first story concerns an attractive young woman who works in a Tokyo nightclub. In the second story, a beautiful young woman is employed by an unscrupulous real estate agent to convince male clients to invest in worthless property. The last story is about a widowed geisha who has no real financial worries and when she falls in love with a forger, she opts to wait for him after he is sent to prison, rather than follow societal or family dictates. (All Movie)

Diary of a Mad Old Man is the journal of Utsugi, a seventy-seven-year-old man of refined tastes who is recovering from a stroke. He discovers that, while his body is decaying, his libido still rages on - unwittingly sparked by the gentle, kindly attentions of his daughter-in-law Satsuko. He develops an obsession for her feet. (imdb)

An all-star cast from Daiei Film Company has made "the ultimate Jirocho movie" about the legendary yakuza Shimizu no Jirocho, the biggest Boss in the Tokaido area. Telling the story of Jirocho and his 28 henchmen, some of the greatest actors in movie history play these valiant warriors as they travel the unruly path from a 'Fire Festival' in Akiba to the decisive battle by the Fujigawa River. (The Movie Database)

Once upon a time, Okuro(Ayako Wakao), a young female racoon, lived poorly with her drunken father. One day after they'd disguised themselves as parasols, they were wrongly brought to the Racoon Palace, where the young racoon princess (also Ayako Wakao) made a mess around her arranged marriage with the beautiful racoon prince (Raizô Ichikawa). Pretty princess ran away. (The Movie Database)

A girl rebels against her mother, who runs a brothel in Yokohama, and attempts to find freedom on her own. (The Movie Database)

Japanese film directed by Tadashi Imai. (letterboxd)

Set in the 1860s, the final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate, The Fireflies focuses on Tose (Awashima Chikage), the mistress of the Teradaya, a small inn in the Kyoto suburb of Fushimi.

Haunting melodrama focuses on a young bamboo worker who takes his father's prostitute as his wife. (imdb)

Keizo Tsujiguchi believes his wife Natsue was having an extramarital affair when their child was kidnapped and killed. He believes of her extramarital affair she was unable to watch over their child properly and blames her for their daughter's death. To exact revenge on his wife, he then adopts the killer's child without telling the truth to his wife or their newly adopted child. (filmaffinity)

Starting out with no singing or dancing talents, the young, free-spirited Koen is initially eager to please and happy to do what she is told. With time and experience, however, she gradually begins to notice a change in herself and questions what she wants out of life. (KG)

Following the tragic death of his father, a young boy's family trains his horse to compete in the local derby.

The inventor of a ground-breaking glue, Sanada, becomes thanks to his discovery a high executive in his company. Because of this promotion, his world is changing completely : his wife behaves like never before, considering she's now rich and has the right to do whatever she wants, even having an affair. (KG)

After a random encounter at a bar, two couples collide. Two men, two women, embroiled in a love-and-hate drama that threatens to engulf them. The sexual anxiety between the interwoven couples tautens right up to the nearly unbearable tension of the climax. (imdb）

In the forties in Japan, a group of brilliantly qualified university students are selected to break all ties with their previous lives and form the Japanese spy service. (imdb)

Based on the original novel by Tokuda Shusei, adaptation by Kaneto Shindo, Masumura Yasuzo directs. A battle of woman competing for the same man. Masuko (Ayako Wakao) is the number one hostess at a cabaret, living with her lover, but finds out that he has a wife. (imdb)

Taeko Sayama is happily married, until one day she discovers that her husband, Kunio, is cheating on her with the maid, whom he has impregnated. Meanwhile, one of Kunio's subordinates, Guntarô, is secretly in love with Taeko.

A fun little drama.

For his 1st color film, Ichikawa did an Edo era story of two geishas scheming against each other for control of the Nihonbashi bridge area, and vying for the affections of a young doctor. (imdb)

A father decides to put his delinquent daughter into a temple in Kyoto known for its austere novitiate. Initially resistant to all forms of discipline, she ends up falling in love with the nun who is in charge of her.

Set in Nagano prefecture, "Ohisama" covers the life of Yoko Sudo through World War II. Yoko Sudo with her smile is able to bring brightness to those other around her and she follows her mother's motif to laugh through hard times. During the onset of WW II, Yoko Sudo is a high school student and "Ohisama" follows her as she eventually becomes a teacher and then gets married and has a child. Yoko Sudo then opens a soba restaurant with her student. (Avistaz)

A group of high school students deal with their sexual heartaches and difficulties in growing up and accepting the adult world. Everything is even more complicated and magnified for Eiko, a Christian girl who has a secret about her past.

The entangled relations between the son of a seductive tea-ceremony teacher and the women in his father's life. Based on the novel by Kawabata Yasunari.