Chishû Ryû

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)

A collection of tales based upon the dreams of Kurosawa.

An elderly couple journey to Tokyo to visit their children and are confronted by indifference, ingratitude and selfishness... (imdb)

After moving to the suburbs of Tokyo two brothers struggle to fit in at their new school. Their father, who made the move to have more in common with his boss, tries to help them become self assured while encountering similar problems at work.

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)

In Kurosawa's HAMLET-like story of corporate scandal in post-war Japan, a young man attempts to use his position at the heart of a corrupt company to expose the men responsible for his father's death. (imdb)

A kabuki actor's mistress hatches a jealous plot to bring down her lover's son.

A fictionalized account in four segments of the life of Japan's celebrated twentieth-century author Yukio Mishima... (imdb)

Somiya was an old widower with a daughter, named Noriko, mature for marriage but would rather live with her father... (imdb)

This movie takes a look at a very Westernized subarban Japan in the late 50's. It focuses mainly on the daily lives of a small community and the way its members interact (imdb)

In a charity hospital, a hard-bitten but honorable older doctor, Dr. Niide, takes a young intern under his guidance through the course of a number of difficult cases. (imdb)

In this third part of the trilogy Kaji, a Japanese WWII soldier, finds himself struggling to survive behind enemy lines towards the end of the war.

Set in 1999, a woman (Dommartin) has a car accident with some bank robbers, who befriend and enlist her help to take the money to a drop in Paris... (imdb)

A young man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital romance.

The great actress and Ozu regular Setsuko Hara plays a mother gently trying to persuade her daughter to marry in this glowing portrait of family love and conflict (DVD Beaver)

Shuhei Hirayama is a widower with a 24-year old daughter. He gradually comes to realize that she should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life, and so he arranges a marriage for her. (imdb)

In post-war Japan, a man brings a lost boy to his tenement. No one wants to take the child for even one night; finally, a sour widow, Tané, does. The next day, complaining, she takes the boy to his neighborhood and finds his father has gone to Tokyo; it seems the boy has been abandoned. Tané wants to leave him there, but he follows her home... (imdb)

Ozu creates a picture about an entire family, enriching the several strands of his story with many anecdotes. The film is unusually rich in character vignettes: at the same time it is one of the director's bleakest films.

A young Japanese mother must prostitute herself while her husband is away. When he returnns, her shocking secret changes both of their lives for ever.

Two sisters live with their father. The younger sister is embroiled in an affair and becomes pregnant. The elder sister has run away from her husband and returned with her child to her parent's home. Both sisters are astonished when their mother, long thought dead, turns up alive. The sisters are even more stunned when they learn what their mother's life has been. (imdb)

A business man is often approached by friends for advice and help regarding marriage as well as family and romantic relationships. He is always very calmly and objectively able to give great insight and assistance to these particular situations. However, when it comes time for him to be objective regarding his oldest daughter, he finds it very difficult... (imdb)

In 1923, in the province of Shinshu, the widow and simple worker of a silk factory Tsune Nonomiya (O-Tsune) decides to send her only son to Tokyo for having a better education. Thirteen years later, she visits her son Ryosuke Nonomiya (Shinichi Himori), and finds that he is a poor and frustrated night-school teacher with a wife, Sugiko (Yoshiko Tsubouchi), and a baby boy. (imdb)

Takeo, a capricious wife from Tokyo high-society, is bored by her dull husband, a quiet and reliable company executive raised in the country (Shin Saburi) After a crisis, she understands better his true value. A parallel sub-plot shows her niece rebelling against the tradition of arranged marriages. (imdb)

Two detectives investigate the murder of a 60-year-old policeman. The victim is well-liked, and there does not seem to be any motive for the murder. The investigation finally leads to the discovery of the hidden past of a young rising composer. (hkflix.com)

Schoolteacher Hisako Oishi struggles to imbue her students with a positive view of the world and their place in it, despite the fact that she knows full well that most of them will die in the war. (imdb)

The film opens as an effective heist drama pastiche, with Okada trussing up bank clerks and dodging the long shadows of a police dragnet, fox-like; we follow him home to his wife and their critically ill baby daughter, as does a wily police chief. As captor and prey sit out the night, waiting for the child's recovery, the scene is set for a claustrophobic battle of nerves. (timeout.com)

Sanae Sakanishi, widowed at the film's outset is left a substantial inheritance that soon becomes the instigator of much familial discord. (Slant)

Tamio Moroi graduates from a prestigious university and obtains a job at the Camel Brewery in a distant town. He is keen to work hard, but is warned to take it easy and just appear as if he were working. He receives a letter from his father saying that his mother is going crazy. After hiring a psychiatric student from his university to investigate his mother, she comes to visit him to tell him that it is really his father that is going insane... (imdb)

Emi (Kinuyo Tanaka) inadvertently loses her ornamental hairpin in the spring waters and is "found" by a soldier in recuperation from a war injury (Chishu Ryu) who cuts his foot on the object. Attempting to downplay the incident, the soldier calls the episode as almost "poetic", a sentiment that the professor (Tatsuo Saito) then misconstrues as the soldier's implicit romanticism for the owner of the hairpin. (Strictly Film School)

Ryoichi and Chikako are brother and sister. They live together. Chikako works during the day in a office and at night she prostitutes herself to fund her brother's studies in university. (imdb)

Moved by the work of director Yasujiro Ozu, Wim Wenders travels to Japan in search of the Tokyo seen in his films. (imdb)

This is a story about a gangster and his girl friend who used to be a good girl.

It tells the story of an unemployed and homeless single father (Takeshi Sakamoto) with two sons looking for work in depression-era Tokyo, whose lives intersects with those of a single mother of a little daughter likewise forlornly seeking a way (and a place) to live. (imdb)

This is a story about a young son who need to work overseas and he had to left his mother and his youngest sister to the care of his married brothers and sisters. When he is back to visit his mother, he was dismayed by how his mother and sister were treated by his siblings. He gave his siblings and in-laws a good tongue lashing and decided to take care of his mother and sister himself.

Following the detonation of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese military and the government clash over the demand from the Allies for unconditional surrender. Minister of the Army Anami leads the military officers who propose to fight on, even to the death of every Japanese citizen. Emperor Hirohito, however, joins with his ministers in asking the unthinkable, the peaceful surrender of Japan. (imdb)

Shuhei Horikawa, a poor schoolteacher, struggles to raise his son Ryohei by himself, despite neither money nor prospects. (imdb)

This movie takes place almost in the same environment with very little changes, students bedrooms, mountain resort, sky sloops and bedrooms again. The external scenes are unfortunately a little bit spoilt by the early cinema technology, but still there are some rather catching shoots, one worthy considering is the one where the directors shoots the young man and the wanted lady from behind while they are side by side enjoying the landscape. (imdb)

Ozu's follow-up to I GRADUATED, BUT... actually plays somewhat like a prequel: a student fails when the shirt on which he wrote his exam cheat sheet gets mistakenly sent to the laundry. The student contemplates his outcast fate as his graduating dorm-mates all face the working world. (imdb)

The story is simple, two young boys are usurped from being the head of their gang of children by the son of the man who indicts their father on charges of embezzlement (him being fired and arrested for this.) They're sent to live with their uncle and spend their time thinking of ways to escape back home. Father is found innocent, and they live happily ever after. (imdb)

Hiroshi Shimizu's government-pressured, militarism-era film A Star Athlete is a breezy, refreshingly lighthearted, and subtly subversive slice-of-life comedy that centers on an all-day student march in formation and armed combat drills through the rural countryside for military training exercises.... (Strictly Film School)

On a beautiful island in Seto Inner Sea, Seichi and Minko make their living by transporting rocks to construction sites by boat. They cherish the deepest affection for this piece of land they call home, and the simple life they lead. But rapid industrial growth makes it all but impossible to continue their chosen living style, and they are forced to leave their beloved hometown in search of a brighter future.... (imdb)

''Sorekawa'' is set in Tokyo in 1909 and is based on a novel by Soseki Natsume, which was published in that year, when the modernization of Japan was well along though far from being universally accepted. Daisuke (Yusaku Matsuda), the 30-ish younger son of a rich and powerful businessman, has broken away from his family to the extent that he lives in his own modest house, though the bills for it and for his servants are paid by the older brother who runs the family business. (nytimes)

An epic about one man's family's journey to discover the new Japan. They are Seiichi Kazami, a young, out-of-work coal miner; Tamiko, his wife; their two small children, and Genzo, Seiichi's old father. (nytimes)

Setsuko is unhappily to Mimura, an engineer with no job and a bad drinking habit. She had always been in love with Hiroshi but both of them failed to propose when Hiroshi left for France a few years ago. Now he is back and Mariko (Setsuko's sister) tries to reunite them. She too is secretly in love with Hiroshi. (imdb)

Twenty years after leaving the small town of Shibamata, Tora-san returns home and is reunited with his younger sister Sakura, who has been raised there by their aunt and uncle. Sakura is now a beautiful young woman with many suitors. When Hiroshi, a neighborhood factory worker, vows to win Sakura over, Tora-san stirs the pot with clumsy schemes that backfire into disaster.

Tora-san, the näive and romantic peddler, returns once more to his home in Hokkaido where, as usual, he falls in love with a lovely young lady. The girl this time is Rinko Ueno, who has come home in an attempt to repair her relationship with her gruff veterinarian father, Junkichi 'Jun' Ueno. Tora-san gets caught up in the entanglements not only between Rinko and her father but between Dr. Ueno and Etsuko, a restauranteur with amorous plans for the ornery veterinarian. (imdb)

A poor rickshaw driver finds himself taking care of a young woman and her son after the woman's husband dies suddenly. (imdb)

Ryoko Itakura returns as the government tax agent willing to tackle the toughest cases. This time she takes on a fanatical but lucrative religious cult run by a vile lecher. (imdb)

An old man, being rowed along a river, sees a field of wild chrysanthemums and thinks back to when he was fifteen. (imdb)

A girl who had left her small Japanese village for the excitement and adventure of the big city--in this case, Tokyo--returns home years later for a visit. (imdb)

During World War II, a Japanese soldier finds himself assigned to a kamikaze mission against a U.S. battleship. (imdb)

Tora san, a drifter, falls for Lily, a kind nightclub singer who shares his lifestyle.

The story of a father and two teenaged sons, and the rivalry between the two siblings as they begin to discover the attraction of girls (Hulu)

Hideko Takamine is the widow of the oldest son of an extended family -- and runs the family's grocery. The upcoming threat of super-marketization is mentioned in passing -- but not followed through here. Much of the machinations here involve a marriage proposal for one of the younger daughters. (imdb)

At a dormitory for an ironworks in Kitakyushu, a young man is frustrated in his attempts to get a job in the foundry because of his poor school record, while an iron worker pines for a woman who works there. (Shochiku)

In The Good Fairy Kinoshita juxtaposes two extremes - the smarmy world of tabloid journalism and the hero's (Rentaro) romantic longings for a sweet 19 year old girl who is scheduled to die within the next few months. She has no prospect of future life and her family is poor, which means that loving her makes absolutely no practical sense at all. If she dedicates herself to him, it is an easy dedication; with only a few months to live, she has nothing to lose. (Fully Reconditioned)

Keisuke Kinoshita's wartime film, Army is anything but the rousing call to arms and reinforcement of patriotism that the authorities had envisioned the film would be. Known for his Ofuna-flavored shomin-geki "women's pictures", Kinoshita subverts the official themes of duty, allegiance to the emperor, and national glory. (Strictly Film School)

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)

Tora-san returns to his family's home to attend an elementary school class reunion. After he embarrasses himself by getting drunk and insulting all his ex-classmates, he resumes his travels. In Kyushu he meets an outspoken 18-year-old girl who becomes enamored of Tora-san and follows him around. One of Tora-san's old friends is terminally ill and makes Tora-san promise him to marry his wife once he is gone.

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.

Hoping to repay his family for the trouble he has caused them in the past, Torasan gambles and wins at the horse races. He plans to give his uncle and aunt a vacation in Hawaii, but the travel agent turns out to be a con-artist, and makes off with his money. Torasan falls in love with Haruko, a young kindergarten teacher who is renting a room in his uncle's home.

The film opens with Tora-san arriving home in Shibamata, at the family's sweets shop in Tokyo, just as his sister Sakura and her husband, Hiroshi are visited by their son's substitute teacher, 20-something Masako Yagyu. Of course Tora-san instantly falls for the pretty young woman. As his embarrassed family looks on, Tora-san completely usurps the meeting away from Sakura and Hiroshi, chatting away and trying to charm the teacher, even to the point of walking her home.

The well-intentioned, kind-hearted, and somewhat awkward but always lovable Tora-san makes one of his periodic visits to his sister and her family in Tokyo. His nephew, Mitsu, is depressed because he has failed his university entrance examination, and also because Izumi, a young girl he is in love with, has transferred to a school in Saga, Kyushu. Mitsuo leaves home and finds her, but her bad-tempered uncle disapproves of her riding around with a young man from Tokyo.

Tora-san becomes involved with a lady barber, Fuko, after she unsuccessfully lobbies for a job with a local barber then cutting Tora-san's hair. They have much in common, even a nickname, but mostly a shared unhappiness and wanderlust. They decide to travel together to Hokkaido, but are joined by a gloomy single father, Eisaku Fukuda trying to reconcile with a wife who left him some time before.

Tora-san returns home from his hobo trip to Tora-ya cafe in Shibamata, to his usual line up of relatives consisting of step sister Sakura, her husband Hiroshi, his uncle Ryuzo who's the owner of the cafe, aunt Tsune, and president of next door printing company Tako. Tora confesses that he has an important announcement about a lady named Okinu later in the evening. Everyone at the house is convinced that it will be his engagement announcement, and are excited.

Tora-san returns to his family's home in Shibamata, Tokyo, to find a large American peddler living in his room, leading to various conflicts. As Tora-san struggles through his love with the local Madonna (references?) the American admits to falling for Sakura. Ultimately the two men find they have more in common than they thought

When his travels bring him to Western Japan, Tora-san decides to pay his respects to the late Hyoichiro Suwa, his sister's father-in-law. He gets drunk with the priest at the temple, falling in love with the priest's daughter in the process. When the priest is too hung-over to deliver a eulogy the next morning, Tora-san takes his place, with great success. Tora-san's sister and his brother-in-law's family show up for Hyoichiro Suwa's memorial service, and an argument breaks out over his estate.

Tora-san's family's neighbor, Akemi, who had been married in Marriage Counselor Tora-san (1984), runs away from her husband, who is only interested in work. Tora-san follows her to Shikinejima, and attempts to bring her back to her home. In doing so he encounters a school-reunion group who are traveling to meet their elementary school teacher. Tora-san joins them and falls in love with the teacher.[

Tora-San, an eccentric and resourceful tramp, is always cheerful. Although he is an orphan, he decides to go back home after a long absence. He thus sees again his sister Sakura Suwa, who has bloomed into a pretty young lady. After a while, Tora-San agrees to go with her to an interview with the family of one of her suitors. But that is without counting Tora-San's terrible clumsiness. His cheeky humor, for instance, is not fully appreciated by the family.

Hoping to find rest from his wandering life, Tora-san returns home. He becomes infatuated with a widow and leaves to travel again, keeping his feelings secret.

Tora-san meets three women on vacation when he travels to Fukui. One of the women meets him at his home, and he believes she has fallen in love with him, unaware that she hopes to marry a potter in the countryside.

When Tora-san returns to visit his family, he is surprised to find an arrogant professor occupying his room. The professor and Tora-san become rivals for the affection of Chiyo.

Tora-san watches the family shop while the rest of his family takes a vacation to Kyushu. An old friend introduces Tora-san to his sister Ritsuko, and he promptly falls in love with her. She is an artist and has no time for Tora-san.

During his travels Tora-san meets a troubled father with a baby. He shares a drink with the man who then abandons the baby into Tora-san's care. At his hometown in Shibamata, Tokyo, the family is worried about who will take care of the family shop once Tora-san's aunt and uncle have died. Tora-san arrives with the baby causing family and neighbors to speculate that he is the father.

Tora-san meets an old girlfriend on his travels. When she returns home with him, his family attempts to arrange a marriage between the two. After a misunderstanding occurs, the woman leaves, and the family is left regretting that they interfered.

In his travels through Japan, Tora-san meets and falls in love with a female doctor, however he is afraid of committing to a relationship.

Tora-san returns to his family's shop in Shibamata, Tokyo to find himself accused of being the father of a 17-year-old girl. It turns out that Tora-san had only given help to the girl's mother after her husband had left her. Tora-san becomes infatuated with the female archeology student who is staying with his family, and attempts to take up intellectual pursuits to get near her.

During his travels, Tora-san meets Ikenouchi, a drunken old man whom he assumes is poor and homeless. Tora-san takes the old man home. When he wakes up, Ikenouchi begins ordering Tora-san's family around in such an authoritarian manner that no one can muster the courage to suggest he leave. On the road again, Tora-san meets Botan, a geisha who has lost her life savings to a dishonest customer. He and his family's neighbor are determined to help her out.

Tora-san returns to his family home in Shibamata, Tokyo, but soon leaves again due to squabbles involving a dog they have named Tora-san. During his travels in Shikoku, Tora-san makes the acquaintance of a descendant of a local daimyō. The old man asks Tora-san to find his son's widow in Tokyo, whom he had previously alienated.

Tora-san plays at matchmaker, trying to arrange a romance between Ryōsuke and Sachiko. His advice proves disastrous and Tora-san instead falls in love with Ryōsuke's sister.

Tora-san returns from his travels throughout Japan to his family's home in Tokyo to find his uncle recovering from an illness. After a family fight erupts, he returns to the road and becomes friends with Tomekichi. When the pair come to Tokyo, they both fall in love with stage dancers.

Mistakenly believing that his brother-in-law's boss is planning to commit suicide, Tora-san attempts to prevent him.

Tora-san convinces the hesitant Hitomi to go through with her plans to marry her intended spouse.

Lily, the lounge singer with whom Tora-san fell in love in film 11 (Tora-san's Forget Me Not, 1973) and film 15 (Tora-san's Rise and Fall, 1975) sends Tora-san a letter informing him that she is terminally ill. Tora-san rushes to Okinawa--taking his first plane trip in the process--to be at her side and nurse her to health.

Tor-san takes care of the teenage daughter of a friend after he dies. He takes the girl to Tokyo where she wishes to study, and becomes worried over her romantic life.

During his travels, Tora-san gets drunk with an old man in Kyoto. Though Tora-san never fully comprehends his importance, the old man is a Living National Treasure ceramist. At his home, Tora-san makes a good impression on the old man's maid, who apparently falls in love with Tora-san.

Torah returns to Shibamata. There he learns that his mother Kiku is bored in the city. Reluctantly, he is persuaded to visit them. There is a dispute between the two, because the mother wants grandchildren and Torah seems unable to ever win a wife for himself. Sadly Torah draws away again travels on and meets the sweet Hanako. She appears to be mentally a little slow. He lovingly cares for her and gives her his address. Later on she shows up in Shibamata.

Tora-san returns to his family home to learn that his brother-in-law cannot go to Mitsuo's (Tora-san's nephew) athletic event. Tora-san volunteers to take his place, but gets into an argument with his brother-in-law's boss and returns to the road. He meets a young woman in Niigata who, unbeknownst to him, is a popular enka singer.

In Nagasaki, Tora-san and an acquaintance help an old woman who has fallen and injured herself. She invites them to her home where the three share a night of eating and drinking. The old woman's health deteriorates and she dies. At her funeral, Tora-san falls in love with the old woman's daughter, but winds up acting as a go-between for her and a young law student.

During his travels, Tora-san comes across a traditional theater he used to visit, and discovers that one of his old friends has died. Tora-san and his family help the friend's daughter, who becomes romantically involved with an aspiring artist.

It stars Kiyoshi Atsumi as Torajirō Kuruma (Tora-san), and Kumiko Akiyoshi as his love interest .

A father living in Nara has three daughters who become involved in complicated marriage arrangements. One couple communicate by cabling love poems to each other (bfi.org.uk)

It stars Kiyoshi Atsumi as Torajirō Kuruma (Tora-san), and Kumiko Goto as the love interest.

During his wandering throughout Japan, Tora-san meets a suicidal man. He travels with the man to Vienna, but winds up homesick for Japan.

Vagabond Tora-San (Kiyoshi Atsumi) meets an old flame while helping his nephew's (Hidetaka Yoshioka) girlfriend (Kumiko Goto) solve personal crises.

During his stay in a seaside village, Japan's favorite drifter meets a lonely female barber with marriage on her mind.

Based on a screenplay by Keinosuke Kinoshita, "Koibumi" explores the wounds of war, the limits of love and the need to forgive. (imdb)

The story of HANAKAGO NO UTA revolves around a pork-cutlet diner along a cluttered back street of Ginza, Tokyo. Keizo (Reikichi Kawamura), the owner and the master of the diner, and his daughter Yoko (Kinuyo Tanaka) are running a small but successful business. The Chinese chef, Mr. Lee (Shin Tokudaiji), cooks the best pork-cutlet, as they say. Two of the most frequent customers are Ono (Shuji Sano) and Hotta (Chishu Ryu), a pair of rather lazy collage students. (vermillion and one nights)

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)

In Part I we see the young would-be swordsman setting out to achieve greatness in war, achieving nothing because fighting on the losing side, & then beginning his long period of wandering & training, with the goal always in mind of his duel with Kojiro. Part II builds toward that great duel on Ganryu Island, with considerable focus on Musashi's planning & forethought as to how to gain an advantage. (weirdwildrealm.com)

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)

Yoshimura brought satire back into the film in his 1947 The Fellows Who Ate the Elephant (Zo o Kutta Renchu), which was about five hungry men who, after eating a zoo's elephant, dead from natural causes, get into an enormous amount of difficulty with bureaucratic authorities. (Donald Richie)

During his summer holiday, Kawasaki Ryuichi (Ryuzaki Ichiro), a handsome engineer in his late twenties, visits his teacher and mentor, Professor Inagaki (Sugai Ichiro), at his seaside home. There he meets the professor's lovely young wife, Sachiko (Hamada Yuriko), and is unsettled by the striking resemblance she bears to his wife, who died three years earlier.

The eldest daughter of a noble family is in love with an aviator while being courted by a fellow aristocrat she thinks is a dullard. (letterboxd)

When a family has to relocate due to the war, they are ostracized by their new community.

Okada and Kato, students at 'W' [i.e. Waseda] University, in Tokyo, live in the same lodgings. One morning, Kato receives a tailor's bill. Okada has seen the letter arrive, so Kato tells ... (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)

Japanese coming of age youth film. (themoviedb)

Japan and Russia clash in what comes to be known as the Russo-Japanese War. An attempt by the Japanese fleet and army to take Port Arthur fails, and a Russian fleet bears down on the Sea of Japan. Admiral Heihachiro Togo sends his fleet to confront the Russians, with results which stun both nations. Meanwhile, Major Genjiro Akashi makes secret negotiations with the Bolshevik revolutionaries in Russia, negotiations that have repercussions far beyond the conflict at hand.

With one of the busiest film industries in the world, Japan was able to submit several films into competition at the 1957 Berlin Film Festival. One of the best of these was Arashi, directed by Hiroshi Inagaki of Rickshaw Man fame. Anticipating Hollywood's Table for Five by nearly a quarter of a century, the film concerns the efforts by a recently widowed high-school teacher to raise his four children alone. Chihu Ryu is terrific as the central character, while Izumi Yukimura is... (themoviedb)

A 1944 drama starring Chishû Ryû & Kinuyo Tanaka.

Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign Film in 1956

Jie (Michiko Kuwano) attended a women’s university with the financial support of her geisha sister Oha (Hiroko Kawasaki) and became a lawyer. The aim. Michiko (Kuniko Miyake), one of the seven best friends from the same women’s college, is getting married. The man she’s marrying is her sister’s lover.

In the movies of those times, you can see young boys in the company scene often. Those boys were called kyuji (給仕), which means “waiter” literally. They are doing odd jobs in the company including serving tea, ushering visitors, buying tobacco, etc. Ordering lunch for the individual requests was also an important job. Those boys were hired often as soon as they graduated from elementary school.

Toyomatsu Shimizu, a barber, father and husband, is suddenly arrested by the Prefectural Police as a war criminal and sued for murder. According to the accusation, he "attempted to kill a US prisoner", which was an order from his superior. He is sentenced to death by hanging. Prior to execution, he writes a long farewell letter to his family "If I ever incarnate, I hate to be a human being any more.... Oh yes, I would like to be...a shellfish living on the rock-bottom of the sea."

Two men who feel oppressed by their wives, yet still manage to wind their way through brothels, end up at odds with each other after a mishap at the local shops. Things are resolved most unexpectedly to humorous effect.

There’s no place like home: even with four children,the Uemura family is able to live a modest but happy life in their cramped, rented flat. The parents support the two elder daughters’ artistic ambitions to the best of their ability, using all the means at their disposal to make it possible for Tomoko to paint and Nobuko to sing in a choir. (KG)

Three daughters have graduated from the music school and have gone their separate ways. On the day of the outbreak of war, the three girls meet again for the first time since their graduation ceremony. This film was made at the end of the war to promote the military song “Song of the Annihilation of the United States and Great Britain” and to raise the will to fight.