Susumu Fujita

A crafty ronin comes to a town divided by two criminal gangs and decides to play them against each other to free the town. (imdb)

Based on the mystery novel by Tsutomu Mizukami, the intense drama starts with a murdered dead body found at a shipwreck.

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)

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)

Sugata, a young man, struggles to learn the nuance and meaning of judo, and in doing so comes to learn something of the meaning of life. (imdb)

February 17 to March 3, 1860, inside Edo castle. A group of assassins wait by Sakurada Gate to kill the lord of the House of Ii... (imdb)

Yukie, the well-bred daughter of a university professor, is shocked when her father is relieved of his post for his political teachings... (imdb)

A greedy developer unwittingly hatches a gigantic baby moth upon Tokyo, while Godzilla strikes once again. (imdb)

During WWII, a human heart taken from a certain lab in Europe (Dr. Frankenstein's) is kept in a Japanese lab, when it gets exposed to the radiation of the bombing of Hiroshima. The heart grows in size, mutates and sprouts appendages, and eventually grows into a complete body and escapes. Later, a feral boy with a certain physical deformity (a large head with a flat top) is captured by scientists who refer to the boy as Frankenstein... (imdb)

Aliens arrive on Earth and ask permission to be given a certain tract of land for their people to live on. But when they are discovered to be invaders, responsible for the giant robot that is destroying cities, the armed forces attempt to stop them with every weapon available. (imdb)

A fugitive lord and his bodyguards and followers, all disguised as monks, traverse a forest, where they must avoid capture and outsmart the border guards. (imdb)

Two sisters, one a dancer and the other a script supervisor at a big movie studio, become embroiled in union activities when a strike is called in sympathy with striking railroad workers, one of whom boards with the sisters and their parents. The girls' father argues with them about their strike, but finds his views changing when he himself loses his job. (imdb)

In this government-suggested sequel, Sugata again grows as a judo master, and demonstrates his (and by extension, all Japanese) superiority to the foreign warrior. (imdb)

Contemporaneous Japanese WWII film about war in the Pacific.

A lavish retelling of the true story of the final voyage and ultimate destruction and sinking of the battleship Yamato, Japan's greatest flagship during the Second World War. (imdb)

To apply this model of kitsch to a Japanese film from 1946 is to suggest that A Descendant of Urashima Taro constitutes a kind of phantasmagoria of the lost opportunities of a revolutionary democracy based in the collective aspiration for national renewal. As a studio product made under fairly strict terms of censorship, it is a film that does not take itself entirely seriously. (Catherine Russell)

Tower of the Lilies is the true story of a group of high school girls on the island of Okinawa, who were mobilized into military service as nurses in the closing months of World War II.

Naomi is a university student who is leaving for the US to study in a week; Shuichi is a washed-up gumshoe who's hired by Naomi's father to bodygard his daughter until she leaves. Shuichi finds the job annoying and wants to quit. But he also has a screwed-up ex and alimony to pay. Things go from bad to worse when Naomi and Shuichi stumble upon a murder which might involve the yakuza. They decide to find out who committed the murder but God knows what it will lead to. (imdb)

Biographical movie about Colonel Kato, an officer serving with the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force in Southeast Asia, he was highly respected by his pilots for his fairness and excellent flying ability. (imdb)

The story of an airport and its air traffic control crew in a remote and northern Japanese town. Three of the air traffic controllers are female with one of them (Hara, Setsuko) working with her dead fiance's sister. The engaged man had gone to war and never returned. (The Movie Database)

Lt. Col. Senda resists the idea of sending Japanese fighter pilots on suicide missions. He believes that what is really necessary for Japan to regain momentum in the war is for the air force to gather its most brilliant pilots into an elite squadron and use the unit to pinpoint attacks on the Americans. Disrespected by the kamikaze pilots who think the "non-suicidal" pilots are afraid, the unit redeems itself by stunning victories. (imdb)

In 1943, the Aleutian island of Kiska was fortified by a small contingent of Japanese soldiers. When word arrived of an impending attack by an overwhelming force of Americans, the Japanese Navy attempted one of the most daring and unlikely evacuations in military history. This is that story. (letterboxd)

1956 Japanese film, originally released in two parts. (The Movie Database)

The film was produced during Second Sino-Japanese War, before the Pearl Harbor Attack in 1941. The film mainly concerns the training of newly-recruited pilots and their daily life, then their subsequent fighting experiences in China. Army supported the production, providing all the authentic airplanes, training and actual actions. They even provided the older biplanes disguised as Chinese fighter planes.

It was supposed to be about a love story, but it was and was not. An aircraft mechanic working for the government is matched by his boss with the latter man's daughter (Setsuko Hara) who is both beautiful and aggressive. Yet, he picks a woman who is less assertive as his bride. (imdb)

During World War II a young woman quits university and instead obtains a job at a magazine about film that her mentor set up for her. The mentor herself is an actress. Here the woman meets Hara Setsuko as a colleague. The work is hard however. (imdb)

Three IJN flyers Mikami (Susumu Fujita), Kawakami (Masayuki Mori) and Murakami (Akitake Kono) are good friends, and they are all renowned for their torpedo techniques. Mikami is posted as a staff officer at a base on an island in the Pacific. Kawakami and Murakami later joins him as the base squardron is reinforced. The enemy task force approaches the island and all three of them attack the fleet, killing themselves in the process. (imdb)

Story of Shinsuke and his stepmother, ranging from Shinsuke's infant-hood to his mid-teens. Coal workers and the mines dominate nearly every aspect of the life of the characters. Shinsuke's father dies while bravely using dynamite to rescue a group of trapped Korean miners. Several older men attempt to help he and his mother cope, including a kind Korean and a Harley-riding yakuza.

As Japan joins in a political pact with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is appointed supreme commander of the Japanese fleet. With Japan headed inexorably toward war, Yamamoto, despite his misgivings, believes the only possible victory lies in destroying the American fleet by surprise at Pearl Harbor. The attack succeeds, but fails to sink the American carrier fleet.

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.

It follows the lives of the wealthy Makioka family of Osaka from the autumn of 1936 to April 1941, focusing on the family's attempts to find a husband for the third sister, Yukiko. It depicts the decline of the family's upper-middle-class, suburban lifestyle as the specter of World War II and Allied Occupation hangs over.

A thug is released after fifteen years in prison for the murder of a yakuza gang boss. Things were never going to be simple and bygones were never going to be bygones of course, but to make matters more complicated the murdered boss had a young daughter upon his death. Will it be a case of vengeance? (imdb)

The film was adopted from the bestselling novel by Momoko Ishii, which was published following World War II. When a girl is in danger of drowning in a lake she had perceived as the clouds, the god in the sky transports her to the heavens showing her existence without her and prior to her birth. Not only that, but she comes to meet her dead relatives and get to know them as well. (imdb)

The son of a prominent member of a fishing community returns home after a stint with the yakuza to find his father has died under orders of a local gang leader. He sets out to avenge his father, keeping his plans secret from his mother who is cold to him since his perceived abandonment of the family. This wonderful, if little-seen, Fukasaku gem deals with family, community and what it means to do right by both. (imdb)

Lonely youth Shinji meets Hatsue, a pretty pearl diver, on the beach and the two fall in love. But Shinji has a rival for Hatsue's affections, Yasuo. Yasuo spreads unpleasant gossip about his rival, and Hatsue's father forbids her to see Shinji. But when the boy saves the passengers on a boat owned by Hatsue's father, his luck in love begins to change.

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."

A Japanese army engineer (Hasegawa) on the mainland must put his personal feelings for a beautiful Chinese woman (Ri) aside if he is to succeed at building a highway through the “bandit”- (aka anti-Japanese militia-) infested hinterlands.

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)

A group of poverty-stricken samurai eke out their existence on the outskirts of Edo. (imdb)