Chieko Higashiyama

A dynamic woman who aspires to be a writer, living a wild life in constant search of freedom while indulging in lust with four men. (imdb)

A college student rises to unexpected fame as a TV star and his three closest schoolmates adapt to becoming part of his entourage.

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)

A film adaptation of the autobiography of Aishinkakura Hiro, who lived a tumultuous life as the consort of Fuketsu, the younger brother of Emperor Puyi of Manchukuo. (imdb)

When a wealthy, selfish family decides to take care of an elderly hobo who collapsed near their home, they are beset by visits from his numerous friends. (Criterion)

Set in a rural village in the Shinshu region, this melodrama about lovers of different social classes spans two generations: that of a mother, and her son. It depicts the anguish of people entangled in an old and exclusionary value system, and their escape from it, with numerous long shots and an experimental approach that intertwines two timelines. (filmex.net)

A romantic drama starring Jô Shishido & Kinuyo Tanaka.

An expose of conditions in an upper-class, feudalistic girls' boarding school in Kyoto. Sharply drawn characters: the spinster teacher who once had a baby; the girl forced to go to school by her father so she would be kept away from her boyfriend; the rich girl with extremely left-wing ideas. When one of the girls commits suicide because she is thought to be one of the teachers' spies, the girls break out into open rebellion.

Born to a prestigious family, Natsuko is not impressed by any one of her suitors. Determined to spend her life serving god, she sets off to a convent in Hokkaido and meets a young bear-hunter with whom she begins an adventure.

SINCERE HEART (1953, aka MAGOKORO) was Masaki Kobayashi's second film as a director -- but as with his first, YOUTH OF THE SON, it is something of a hybrid work, influenced heavily by his longtime mentor Keisuke Kinoshita, who wrote the screenplay. The resulting film is a deeply passionate and sentimental drama about a young student (Akira Inshihama) who falls into a hopeless romantic attraction to an invalid girl (Keiko Awaji) whom he can only see from afar. (Hulu)

An elderly couple travels from their rural village to post-war Tokyo to visit their grown children. Upon arrival, they find that their busy offspring have little time or patience for them, self-absorbingly consumed by their own modern lives. Only their widowed daughter-in-law treats them with genuine warmth and kindness, highlighting a painful generational rift.

A naive stripper falls for an artist engaged to the daughter of a controversial female politician. (imdb)

A family of weavers deals with an uncertain future after the father commits suicide. (imdb)

In postwar Tokyo, this household is loving and serene: older parents, their 28-year-old daughter Noriko, their married son, his devoted wife, and two rascally sons. (imdb)

The Kamiya family struggles to keep the town fishing association from going bankrupt as they deal with a dishonest captain and his degenerate crew. (imdb)

Kameda, who has been in an asylum on Okinawa, travels to Hokkaido. There he becomes involved with two women, Taeko and Ayako. Taeko comes to love Kameda, but is loved in turn by Akama. When Akama realizes that he will never have Taeko, his thoughts turn to murder, and great tragedy ensues. (imdb)

Based on the classic novel by Murasaki Shikibu, written over 1000 years ago. Genji, the son of the emperor, has gained renown among the nobility of Kyoto for his charm and good looks, yet he cannot stop himself from pursuing the one object of desire he must never obtain: his father's young and beautiful bride. Following the tragic onsequences of his obsession, Genji wanders from one affair to another, always seeking some sort of resolution to his life. (KG)

Sudo and Mori are two university students who make money by picking up rich girls in dance clubs and conning them into giving them cash. Mori is the brains of the operation, and Sudo is the suave dancer who picks up the girls. Over the course of the film, Sudo becomes involved with three different girls and is drawn into the gangster milieu, which he seems unable to resist even though he is responsible for his mother, grandmother, and sister, Masako. (Catherine Russell)

A village struggles to survive when the nearby lake becomes barren of fish.

An early Kinoshita film in which the feudal traditions of the Japanese family unit are lightly satirized. Broken Drum was mentioned very positively as being "successful" by Donald Richie in his overviews of Japanese film. It was co-written by the great Kobayashi Masaki, and Narushima Toichiru worked on it as an assistant director (along with Kobayashi), who would go on to be an important new wave cinematographer for Oshima and Yoshida as well as a director in his own right. (Steven H)

The story of a troubled romance between a mechanic and a young, blind, upper class lady.

A 1949 drama starring Kinuyo Tanaka.

The stage director Shimamura, who is bringing western theater to Japan, falls in love with the outspoken actress Sumako Matsui, and leaves his family to be with her, while trying to keep his Art Theatre solvent. (imdb)

In postwar Japan a young woman is unable to marry her sweetheart because her family's in difficult circumstances and needs her income to keep afloat. (imdb)

The sweet but naive denizens of a charming port town are hoodwinked by a couple of con men who prey on them at the outset of the war. But the hustlers' plan backfires when they come down with severe cases of conscience. Kinoshita's directorial debut is a breezy, warmhearted, and often very funny crowd-pleaser that's a testament to the filmmaker's faith in people. (imdb)