Minoru Chiaki

A poor village under attack by bandits recruits seven unemployed samurai to help them defend themselves.

An executive mortgages all he owns to stage a coup and gain control of the National Shoe Company, with the intent of keeping the company out of the hands of incompetent and greedy executives. (imdb)

A heinous crime and its aftermath are recalled from differing points of view. (imdb)

Kanji Watanabe is a longtime bureaucrat in a city office who, along with the rest of the office, spends his entire working life doing nothing... (imdb)

Murakami, a young homicide detective, has his pocket picked on a bus and loses his pistol. Frantic and ashamed... (imdb)

A businessman facially scarred in a laboratory fire receives psychotherapy from a psychiatrist, and obtains an amazingly lifelike mask from the doctor... (imdb)

Lured by gold, two greedy peasants escort a man and woman across enemy lines. However, they do not realize that their companions are actually a princess and her general. (imdb)

A ruthlessly ambitious lord, egged on by his wife, works to fulfill a prophesy that he would become Emperor. (imdb)

In a slum flophouse, a collection of beggars and thieves bewail their lot in life, and Osugi, the landlady, fights with her sister, Okayo, over the man they both desire, the thief Sutekichi (imdb)

Second part of a trilogy. Conscientious objector Kaji, now forced to serve in the Japanese army during the Second World War... (imdb)

A humble and simple Takezo abandons his life as a knight errant. He's sought as a teacher and vassal by Shogun... (imdb)

Kiichi Nakajima, an elderly foundry owner, is so frightened and obsessed with the idea of nuclear extermination that his family decides to have him ruled incompetent. Nakajima's fervent wish is for his family to join him in escaping from Japan to the relative safety of South America. Harada, a civil volunteer in the case, sympathizes with Nakajima's conviction, but the old man's irrational behaviour prevents the court from taking his fears seriously. (imdb)

In this second entry of the Godzilla series, another monster is introduced to fight Godzilla. The new creature is called Anguirus and looks like a big spiked turtle. The two creatures wage their war in Japan and level cities along the way. (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)

Starving Christian peasants, oppressed by landowners and samurai alike, rise up, led by a teenage boy called Shiro, against the Shogunate. (American Cinematheque)

Kiyoko, along with her husband Shinji (Keiju Kobayashi), wants to open a coffee shop and so goes to Kenkichi to ask for a loan. (Slant)

Fuyukichi is a former university professor who gets fired from the museum he is working for, because he is affected by the Alzheimer disease. First he stay with his wife but when she has to go to the hospital herself, Fuyukichi is sent to his son's place in Osaka, his son has couple problems, but his wife is committed at taking care of his father...

A successful textile industrialist from the provinces, who is beloved by his employees for his kindness, cannot find a wife because of a disfiguring birthmark on his face. Even the courtesans in Yoshiwara refuse to entertain him, until an indentured peasant prostitute, Tamarazu, takes the unsavoury assignment and treats him with brash tenderness. (imdb)

Chikamatsu's Love in Osaka (1959) places Chikamatsu, the author of the original play, as a character in the drama. Relatively classical at first, the film grows increasingly self-conscious as it proceeds. Chikamatsu, initially an observer taking inspiration for his writing from the events he views, begins eventually to intervene in events, saving the heroine from suicide, substituting a gentler ending for the tragedy which seems likely. (Sense of Cinema)

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)

Lake of Tears (湖の琴 Mizuumi no Kin?) is a 1966 Japanese film directed by Tomotaka Tasaka. It was Japan's submission to the 39th Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not accepted as a nominee. (en.wikipedia.org)

The facts surrounding the vendetta have been warped through the telling, and the villain Jinza was actually a noble man and the close friend of Mataemon Araki. And Mataemon only killed two men in the incident, not 36. The narrator tells us the actual events were far more interesting than the glamorized legend: "If one compares cutting down 36 straw figures to killing two full-fledged men, it will be obvious to see which is more difficult." And with that, we are launched into the true story. (lardbiscuit.com)

Osaka in the early 1600s, aftermath of the historical Battle of Sekigahara; a group of orphan children are wandering through the battlefield scavenging for armour when they encounter a young boy named Sasuke with magical powers he says came from a meteor that crashed onto the Earth. (imdb)

The picture belongs to the jidai gekki (historic) genre. It is a powerful story of violence and eroticism, picturing a world at once sordid and poetic, with two central themes which intermingle to compound an admirable panel of a critical period in Japanese history: the great famine in the mid 19th Century. (imdb)

The life of three beautiful princesses in feudal Japan. (The Movie Database)

The great Okawa Hashizo plays a double role in this thrilling tale of intrigue and corruption within the capital city of Edo. When Moriya Shuma, an injured Edo officer is rescued by a vassal whose appears to be his exact double, he swears to sweep out all the criminals from the city. Directed by one of Japan's most revered filmmakers, Nakagawa Nobuo, this story is filled with twists and turns, and loaded with surprises. Plenty of realistic swordplay highlights this exciting motion picture. (imdb)

Story of a beautiful blind daughter of a wealthy businessman who falls in love with a servant.

Adapted from Naoya Shiga's novel about the emotional turmoil of a man who suspects that his wife is committing adultery with his father.

First Japanese vampire film, one where the creature is not supernatural and all with the film being a riff on The Cat and the Canary. The story of a professional nude model stalked by a bizarre, unknown man wearing a hideous mask.

A family is brutally murdered in their own home and the official government's sake dealer is framed as a rebel by a corrupt member of the Shogun's Council of Elders. Young Lord decides to take on the Shogun's vile chief attendant.

The murder mystery solving Young Lord has moved on from helping out with minor crimes and infractions, taking up a new hobby of archery which may wind up putting his life at stake when he runs afoul of the shogun's chief attendant, a man so vile that Young Lord decides to take him on and find out who is really pulling the strings from behind the scenes as a family is brutally murdered in their own home...

With plenty of action, and a strong story about the growth and development of an expert swordsman, who just happens to be from an extremely privileged background.

The second film in the 20 Duels of Young Shingo trilogy directed by Sadatsugu Matsuda.

The final film in the 20 Duels of Young Shingo trilogy directed by Sadatsugu Matsuda.

In a small harbor village on a quiet Japanese island in the Inland Sea, Haruko is a young woman who raises her two younger sisters alongside some of the more colorful members of the local community, such as the doctor, the ferryman, the local shop owner, and the shop owner's son who happens to be Haruko's boyfriend. One day, the shop owner's son decides to leave the island in search of work and his destiny in Brazil, but if he leaves, where does that leave Haruko? Her future is now uncertain.

Bright samurai movie innovatively adapted from a classic story. A traveling masterless samurai is asked by a daughter of an established samurai family to pretend they are a married couple, and gets involved in the troubles of the samurai clan. (KG)