Keiko Kishi

A family drama set in the late nineteenth century Japan, as the feudal Shogun period was giving way to the Meiji Restoration. (Empire Pictures)

This film contains four distinct, separate stories. "Black Hair": A poor samurai who divorces his true love to marry for money... (imdb)

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

Harry Kilmer returns to Japan after several years in order to rescue his friend George's kidnapped daughter - and ends up on the wrong side of the Yakuza, the notorious Japanese mafia... (imdb)

A tragic TV mini-series covering an aunt's struggle to survive in Japan during World War II while caring for her niece and nephew. Not to be confused with 1988's animated Grave of the Fireflies.

Yataro Tanigawa, a one-eyed hired assassin, impresses yakuza boss Gomyo Kiyoemon with his skill. Gomyo hires Tanigawa as his bodyguard, or yojimbo, to protect him during an inter-clan conflict. Tanigawa quickly rises in stature in the clan, but finds his boss's enemies almost overwhelming. (imdb)

A story told through the eyes of an elder sister of her childhood with her younger brother.

This sensuously beautiful film chronicles the activities of four sisters who gather in Kyoto every year to view the cherry blossoms. It paints a vivid portrait of the pre-war lifestyle of the wealthy Makioka family from Osaka, and draws a parallel between their activities and the seasonal variations in Japan. (imdb)

Several young women are killed in an isolated village, leading to an intriguing search for their killer.

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)

Okatsu is a widow raising five children - adults but still mama-dependent - in mid-eighteenth century Edo, Japan. Her frugality attracts unflattering comment even amid national tough times (the region is in famine) What Okatsu tells no one is that she saves so that a friend can start his own business once he's released from prison. (The crime: stealing food for his starving baby.) She doesn't blink when she finds herself facing a robber late one night. (Variety)

An industrialist learns of a medical condition which will greatly shorten his life. He is on a trip to Europe at the time, and a glimpse of a Japanese woman in that setting causes him to fantasize about her as the personification of his impending death. As his dialogue with his imagined mortality continues, he actually meets the living woman who is the template for his fantasy, and together they tour rural churches. (All Movie Guide)

It's a man's world. Shimamura, an artist, comes to this snowbound town to rejuvenate himself. He connects with Komako, a geisha he met on a previous trip, and it seems like love. She's the foster daughter of a local family, almost engaged to the family's son Yukio, now dying of consumption. He's tended by his sister Yuko who's angry at Komako for abandoning her brother. Shimamura returns to Tokyo but promises he will be back soon. (imdb)

Drama about a group of rank-and-file Japanese soldiers jailed for crimes against humanity adapted from the diaries of real prisoners. (criterion.com)

A pitiless take on Japan's professional baseball industry. An excoriation of the inhumanity bred by a mercenary, bribery-fueled business, it follows the sharklike maneuvers of a scout dead set on signing a promising athlete to the team the Toyo Flowers. (criterion.com)

On his deathbed, a wealthy businessman announces that his fortune is to be split equally among his three illegitimate children, whose whereabouts are unknown to his family and colleagues. A bevy of lawyers and associates then begin machinations to procure the money for themselves, enlisting the aid of impostors and blackmail. (criterion.com)

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)

Zero Mostel plays an inspector on the trail of criminals who have captured a robot called Chatze(sp?) played by Felix Silas. The inspector has delusions that he is a great Samurai warrior and the movie flashes back and forth between present day and ancient times. (imdb)

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.

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 a long train trip in Japan, a young man tries to talk to an older woman which initially refuses any proximity. After several tries some aspects of her past are unfold and they arrange a meeting.

Private detective Kindaichi investigates a series of murders in scenic rural Japan.

During an air raid on Tokyo, a young couple meet and fall instantly in love. They part, promising to meet again on the bridge but unfortunately neglect to tell each other their names. After the war, and after much waiting and dreaming, the young girl-Machiko by name-marries. The marriage does not work out, however, and she decides to get a divorce, only to discover that she is pregnant. (KG)

Chronicles the chain of events that lead to the hanging of German-journalist Richard Sorge, who was executed in 1944 after he was found supplying classified information to the Russians.

Van Ekken, an old gangster, arrives in Tokyo to direct a bank hold-up, to get a very valuable diamond, so big it's named Titan. (imdb)

Pierre Marsac, a French engineer working for the Nagasaki shipbuilding yards, has fallen in love both with Japan and a charming Japanese girl named Noriko. But Françoise Fabre, a French journalist and Pierre's former lover, contacts him while visiting the Land of the Rising Sun. They meet again, find out their love might not be dead. Meanwhile, Pierre gradually becomes estranged from sweet, humble Noriko. One day, a typhoon strikes Nagasaki... (Guy Bellinger)

Director Minoru Shibuya adapted Masuji Ibushi's masterpiece to film. The film depicts a doctor who has a sign that reads "Closed Today," but is busy with all kinds of people visiting the hospital.