Fumio Watanabe

Makoto and Kiyoshi's generation follows their desires. She's in high school when a university student... (imdb)

In the middle of the 16th century, Hideyoshi, a power hungry warlord sets out to destroy the Momochi clan... (imdb)

The story of a Ronin (i.e. a masterless samurai) who wanders the countryside of Japan with his small child, having various adventures. (imdb)

Shunya Ito directed this unusual women's prison film which spawned three direct sequels and a pair of spin-offs... (Amazon.ca)

Matsu, known to the prisoners as Scorpian, is locked away in the bowels of the prison as revenge for disrupting the smooth operation of the prison and for her disfiguring attack on the warden... (imdb)

A Korean man is sentenced to death by hanging, but he survives the execution. For the following two hours, his executioners try to work out how to handle the situation in this black farce. (imdb)

A family of four lives off of scams in which they pretend to be injured by automobiles. After suffering an injury during the war, the father believes he is an invalid... (All Movie Guide)

Oshima's most overtly political film, The Ceremony uses the backdrop of Japanese rituals (several weddings and more than one funeral) to mount a scathing attack on Japanese politics. Depicting the story of one family over 30 years, its promotion of a more tolerant society and the freedom that comes with it occasionally makes way for some genuinely moving depiction of everyday family life... (Channel 4)

Shinjuku Thief is the story of a bookstore thief named Birdey who is led through various adventures in Tokyo's Shinjuku district by salesgirl Umeko. (imdb)

In Osaka's slum, youth without futures engage in pilfering, assault and robbery, prostitution, and the buying and selling of identity cards and of blood. (IMDB)

The story is set around an American Air Force base which has attracted bars and brothels and the native Japanese who need this sordid world to scape by and make money to just barely survive. A love triangle develops among the dwellers of a falling down apartment building and a local gangster called Killer Joe. (imdb)

A sensationalistic and surreal love triangle develops between a serial rapist, his schoolteacher wife, and one of his past victims.

Oshima's first film does a wonderful job portraying the lives of those left behind when Japan's economy was on the upswing. It shows the thick glass walls of class distinction and the true difficulty of both sides being able to come to terms with each other. (imdb)

A rebellious woman enters a convent so she can learn the truth behind her mother's death eighteen years earlier. (imdb)

In the tradition of JOY OF TORTURE, this film presents three stores of sadism and perversion taking place in Edo during a time of civil war. The first story is about doomed lovers, the second is about a noblewoman who likes to do it with hairy midgets and imported black slaves because of a certain incident in her past and finally the third story is about the marvel of caesarean section.

In 1960, during the wedding ceremony between Nozawa, a journalist and former student radical of the 1950's, and Reiko, a current activist, some of the people present recall the student demonstrations against the AMPO treaty, attributing responsibility and faults one another.

Three students spend their holidays at the seaside where they are mistaken for Koreans, a minority which is looked down on in Japan (imdb)

A group of high school friends spend the summer at the beach before going off to college.

Sonny Chiba fits the title role of Assassin like a spiked glove. Chiba plays a karate expert who poses as a criminal. In this guise, he is hired as a hitman by a Japanese mob. He hopes to maintain this artifice until he can bring the other gang members to justice. He doesn't, thereby laying the groundwork for a thrilling finale. (allmovie.com)

Shihomi Etsuko plays a race car driver who also lends out her services to the Japanese Secret Service. Although there really isn't much of a "chase" to be seen, Shihomi does pursue a cartel of drug runners and assorted Japanese yakuza types.

A botanist woos the secretary of an industrialist whose company threatens the local water supply. (KG)

Hiroshi and his biker buddies get out of jail and start a human trafficking ring. A local yakuza group puts a stop to their business. Desperate for money, Hiroshi gets mixed up with a plot to blackmail the yakuza group with the help of Ocho, a traveling gambler. When the yakuza kills some of his friends, Hiroshi and his gang, knowing they have no chance of surviving, strike back... (wipfilms.net)

Based on the popular Manga/Animated Film Series, Sanctuary: The Movie is the live action version of Sanctuary telling the story of two boys who survived the Khmer genocide in Cambodia and now try to create their own sanctuary in Japan. Asami is going into politics to become a national leader, seeking to create a new and better Japan, whereas Hojo wants to improve Japan by "infiltrating" and changing the other side of Japanese society, the Yakuza... (imdb)

Nemuri arrives at a small village, a fight is posed then postponed, there's a place called the Devil's Fortress and people are being kept locked there and tortured by the villainy occupants, then at some point the villainy occupants are introduced to us by name and a shadowy connection to the Shogun is implied. (imdb)

As the Killer Priest Shinkai travels around Japan during the Meiji era, he comes to the aid of a village headman fighting corruption from up above. Before he can do anything for the townspeople, he must first face his nemesis, Whipmaster, the blind Priest, a master killer thirsting for revenge. (japanesesamuraidvd.com)

The story of men devoted to the yakuza lifestyle and their struggles during a time of fading yakuza power. (thehawaiiherald.com)

(...) A young Bunta Sugawara takes over as the oyabun of a crime syndicate in Yokohama, where he is struggling to keep operations at the port there alive. As his syndicate is eroding quickly, a major heavy industries company offers his gang the chance to chase some vagrants out of a shantytown where they are squatting on land where a factory is to be built. (...) (letterboxd.com)

Kosaka Hiroshi is the leader of a motorcycle gang in Shinjuku and a small time swindler. He lives for money but has never been able to hit the jackpot. His luck seems to change when he hits it off with the daughter of a Yakuza. When he gets involved in a scheme to blackmail a Yakuza gang and a land developer, he soon realizes he might have chewed more than he could bite. (imdb)

Young coal miner Takeda leaves Kyushu in search of a better job in Tokyo, only to fall into the lucrative yet dangerous life of a yakuza. (rarefilm.net)

Three sleazy and bloody stories of torture and death, set in seventeenth century Japan.

Criminals plant a bomb on a high-speed train. It will explode when the train slows down, unless a ransom is paid. (imdb)

President of the territorial yakuza organization is being manipulated by a crooked leader in the military and some capitalists Ishikiri. The plan is to get multiple family of the organized crime groups based in Osaka to war it out and order the Shima to the Onishi group of the branch to expand the territory. Now members of the same yakuza gang are forced to fight each other over territory and honor.

Kumi is a model who is sought after by her wealthy father. When she refuses to satisfy him orally, he takes a team of surgeons and transplants her clitoris to her throat.

Undercover cop Kikuchi teams up with the Okinawa local police to clean up the narcotics and prostitution underworld.

Hiroshi (Tatsuo Umemiya) has the biggest penis in all of Japan and everyone who touches (or is touched by) it, is blessed by good fortune. After buying his sister a washing machine for her wedding, he travels to Tokyo, where he must help his friend Masa out of a half-million yen debt. Among other hijinks, he becomes a penis god in the process.

Onna no Toba, is the first film in the long-running series Daiei Studio's Woman Gambler with Kyoko Enami starring where she plays the woman gambler Ogin. The series gets cited on lists of action yakuza films or woman avenger films, but once the films are actually viewed, it is quickly obvious they are not generally about action except in the nominal sense of acts of gambling. And while Ogin is in fact sometimes motivated by revenge, she is not as a rule a martial artist or a killer...

The woman gambler Ginko risks her life for her brother-in-law.

Upon his release from prison, Masa (Bunta Sugawara) is disappointed to not be picked up by his brother Katsu (Tamio Kawaji). After hitching a ride on a bus full of old women, Masa finds out that Katsu tried to fake a car accident and get some money for Masa to live on after prison. Together, the two decide to blackmail the woman (Yoko Horikoshi) who hit Katsu, who happens to be the daughter of a rich company president (Seizaburo Kawazu). 6th film in a series of 8.

8th film in a series of 8.

7th film in a series of 8.