Sumie Tanaka

Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mothers trade in the late days of Geisha. But Otsuta will not give up. This film portraits the day time life of geisha when not entertaining customers. (imdb)

Michiyo moved to Osaka two years ago, when her husband Hatsunosuke who works at a stock brokerage was transfered from Tokyo. She wash, cook and clean 365 days a year. All the dreams and hopes she had when they got married five years ago seems to be gone. From here on we follow the everyday life of Mr. and Mrs. Okamoto. (imdb)

What is the life of a Geisha like once her beauty has faded and she has retired? Kin has saved her money, and has become a wealthy money-lender, spending her days cold-heartedly collecting debts. Even her best friends, Tomi, Nobu, and Tamae, who were her fellow Geisha, are now indebted to her. Kin has two former lovers who still pursue her; one she wants to see, and the other she doesn't. But even the one she remembers fondly, when he shows up, proves to be a disappointment. (imdb)

Kiyoko is 23 and works as a tour guide. She lives with her mother and has two sisters and a brother, all from different fathers. Despite and because of various forms of pressure, the problems she sees and experiences around her make her suspicious of men and marriage, and very ambivalent about her relations to her own family.

A Wanderer's Notebook, also known as Her Lonely Lane, is director Mikio Naruse's hollow biopic of authoress Fumiko Hayashi, whose work the director often adapted for the screen. (Slant Magazine)

Zushio and his sister Anju are kidnapped and sold to a cruel slave-master. Will they ever be reunited with their mother again?

Fumiko, mother of two children and wife of an unfaithful man who shows a low self esteem, shares her family life with her asleep vocation as a poetess. The beginning of her successful literary career coincides with her divorce and the development of a serious illness: a breast cancer, which leads her to lose her breasts. In the last stage of her life she meets a young journalist arrived from Tokyo, an admirer of her work, who want to write a story on her life. Both live a secret love history. (imdb)

Five women classmates from a college in Tokyo are on the first stretch of a walking tour when one of them, Fujimura Masako, falls ill at a railway station. Osen, a middle-aged maid from a nearby inn, takes her in and nurses her, assisted by Dr. Minami, a young physician who diagnoses her illness as a mild case of pneumonia. With Masako in good hands and needing ten days to recuperate, her classmates continue their tour. Masako's recovery, however, is hampered by her spoiled and immature nature (KG)

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

The woman-only prison has a cast all with a story of their own and with no dull or routine day. There is an employee who is divorced after her husband had an affair. She loves the jailed criminals and almost sees them as family. One day at a workshop someone faints while working hard to make money because she has a poor boyfriend. Another inmate is knocked up Another is a mother and has her child with her. (imdb)

Eldest daughter Kiwa (Fujiko Yamamoto) fuels the business with her ambition and unquestionable talent, but her attraction to a genetics professor will take her and her family's practice to an unforeseeable direction… (KG)

As Japan became more prosperous, the Ginza district of Tokyo emerged as the luxury bar and cabaret center it remains to this day. While the charming and beautiful women who operate these establishments are privy to political and financial deals of national importance, Yoshimura's film reveals that their hopes, their businesses and their very lives are as fragile as butterflies. (KG)

In Asakusa, Tokyo, a couple of a violinist Yamano and a revue dancer Hanae lives in poverty. One day Hanae’s little sister rolls into their apartment and begins to stir things up with her riotousness. (KG)

Kuniko, a former prostitute, tries to leave her past behind, with the support of her reform counselor and friends. But the more she tries to lead a regular life, the more society rejects her.

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)

Based on the book by Tsuboi Sakae, which drew on her involvement in Japan's anarchist counterculture and opposition to Korean War rearmament. Combined live action (handled by Akio Jissoji) and animation (handled by Shigetsugu Yoshida). Released as a TV special.