Tadao Ikeda

A troupe of travelling players arrive at a small seaport in the south of Japan. Komajuro Arashi, the aging master of the troupe, goes to visit his old flame Oyoshi and their son Kiyoshi, even though Kiyoshi believes Komajuro is his uncle (imdb)

A kabuki actor's mistress hatches a jealous plot to bring down her lover's son.

In post-war Japan, a man brings a lost boy to his tenement. No one wants to take the child for even one night; finally, a sour widow, Tané, does. The next day, complaining, she takes the boy to his neighborhood and finds his father has gone to Tokyo; it seems the boy has been abandoned. Tané wants to leave him there, but he follows her home... (imdb)

In 1923, in the province of Shinshu, the widow and simple worker of a silk factory Tsune Nonomiya (O-Tsune) decides to send her only son to Tokyo for having a better education. Thirteen years later, she visits her son Ryosuke Nonomiya (Shinichi Himori), and finds that he is a poor and frustrated night-school teacher with a wife, Sugiko (Yoshiko Tsubouchi), and a baby boy. (imdb)

After the death of his wife, a man struggles to raise his son in nearly overwhelming poverty. When the father meets a beautiful young woman, the son becomes jealous of his father's attentions, and conflict arises between them. (imdb)

Ryoichi and Chikako are brother and sister. They live together. Chikako works during the day in a office and at night she prostitutes herself to fund her brother's studies in university. (imdb)

This is a story about a gangster and his girl friend who used to be a good girl.

It tells the story of an unemployed and homeless single father (Takeshi Sakamoto) with two sons looking for work in depression-era Tokyo, whose lives intersects with those of a single mother of a little daughter likewise forlornly seeking a way (and a place) to live. (imdb)

This is a story about a young son who need to work overseas and he had to left his mother and his youngest sister to the care of his married brothers and sisters. When he is back to visit his mother, he was dismayed by how his mother and sister were treated by his siblings. He gave his siblings and in-laws a good tongue lashing and decided to take care of his mother and sister himself.

Shuhei Horikawa, a poor schoolteacher, struggles to raise his son Ryohei by himself, despite neither money nor prospects. (imdb)

Kenji is a small thief who likes drinking and fighting. When he falls in love with sweet and simple Yazue, and she finds out what kind of guy he really is, she leaves him 'until he becomes an honest person'. But it is not easy to get rid of one's past... (imdb)

Takeshi Sakamoto and Tatsuo Saito are two bumbling child kidnappers (Sakamoto carries a butterfly net if that gives you an idea of his skill level) who abduct a boy (Tomio Aoki, Japan's Dennis the Menace) who turns out to be more than they bargained for. Pieces of this slapstick crime caper based on O. Henry's "The Ransom of Red Chief" are missing throughout, but it still plays coherently and has its share of hilarious moments. (imdb)

After the husband dies of a heart attack, widowed Chieko selflessly devotes herself to the raising of the son and stepson Sadao. Her unconscious refusal to deal with Sadao finally uncovers the secret of his parentage, he tries to quit the family and live on his own. The prologue in which the father dies at the office, showed their former happy domestic life and the epilogue the reconciliation with mother after the traumatic central section. (dvdbeaver)

In this film, Sumiko Kurishima plays a woman whose husband had deserted her, following the birth of her child. For lack of any better option, she has been forced to support her son and herself as working as a hostess at a waterfront bar. When her ne'er-do-well husband (Tatsuo Saito) returns, her first impulse is to reject him, but her neighbors prevail on her to give him a second chance... (imdb)

The irresponsible Bunkichi learns to be culpable after his sister's son gets into serious trouble.

Keisuke Kinoshita's wartime film, Army is anything but the rousing call to arms and reinforcement of patriotism that the authorities had envisioned the film would be. Known for his Ofuna-flavored shomin-geki "women's pictures", Kinoshita subverts the official themes of duty, allegiance to the emperor, and national glory. (Strictly Film School)

Yoshimura brought satire back into the film in his 1947 The Fellows Who Ate the Elephant (Zo o Kutta Renchu), which was about five hungry men who, after eating a zoo's elephant, dead from natural causes, get into an enormous amount of difficulty with bureaucratic authorities. (Donald Richie)

Two childhood friends go their own ways but meet again some years later after they have both married. They get re-acquainted, meet each others' families, and all is well. Then the disagreements start... (KG)

A Japanese comedy from the end of the silent era (it has music) from a popular series. A feud, a practical joke and romance are the set up for some great comedy and drama from a team of distinctive appearance who are exploiting their silent cinema styles to the full.

Shigezumi is a young stock broker from Tokyo. He is in love with young Taiko who lives in Osaka. The marriage seems impossible as Shigezumi had a difficult relationship to Taiko' father who bankrupted and drove Shigezumi's father into suicide. And now Shigezumi seems to be the next target of Taiko's father's business wars... (KG)

CHIAKI-the business owner's daughter, TUYOKO-plubisher, and YUKIE are in love with the same person: YOSHIO (Uehara Ken), a handsome young man who is an employee at a fabric export company whose boss is Yukie's father.... (KG)

Most of the students studying Ikebana with Kozoe Iemoto are daughters of rich Tokyo families. Kozoe meets and grows close to a doctor who proposes marriage but whose mother harbours ill feeling towards her because of an incident in the mountains where a child got into difficulties. Kozoe rejects the proposal but falls ill and when she recovers, decides to devote herself entirely to the world of flower arranging.

A 1937 Japanese film.

A musical film made for the inauguration of Shochiku's Ofuna Studio, with an all-star cast of the era. (themoviedb)

A gangster tries to find redemption with the inadvertent help of an innocent shop girl and his jealous girlfriend will do anything to keep him. The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress ... (imdb)

Kinuyo is a daughter of rice cracker shop in downtown. She fell in love with her sister's boyfriend. It is a story whose theme is warm human relationships in a town of customs and manners.

A story of a store that makes Tabi socks.

A struggling painter who derives inspiration from European art, a veteran actor who contemplates retirement after being jeered onstage, a lonely arcade worker who longs to escape the tawdry lights of the district, a well-intentioned actor (Ken Uehara) whose off-stage samaritan deeds and insistence on fairness and righteousness rival the heroics of his on-stage persona, an older, world wise chorus girl who takes it upon herself to protect her young co-worker’s honor. (Acquarello)

The story of a boy who befriends a lonely middle-aged man.

Two men who feel oppressed by their wives, yet still manage to wind their way through brothels, end up at odds with each other after a mishap at the local shops. Things are resolved most unexpectedly to humorous effect.

Tomotaka Tasaka’s A Pebble by the Wayside (Robo no Ishi), made in 1938 and taken from a Yuzo Yamamoto novel, takes place around 1902, was about a young boy brought up entirely by his mother since his drunken father is never home. An intelligent teacher wants to send him to middle school, but instead the father apprentices him to a clothing store to which he is in debt. The mother dies and the boy is forced to quit work when his father insults the store owner.

Domestic comedy involving a strong wife and a "henpecked" husband takes place in a family-run judo school. (KG)

The adventures of a modern day descendant of a famed Edo era thief are the basis for this short supernatural comedy romp.