Asian

After moving in to their dream home, newlyweds decide to rent out their second floor to save money. They soon discover the woe of being landlords in director Yamada Yoji’s memorable debut film.Read More »

The story of Thirteen Assassins begins with a vassal of the Akashi clan committing seppuku in front of a daimyo’s house. As it turns out, it’s in protest to his lord raping and killing a girl and her samurai husband. This scandal is quickly covered up as the Akashi lord happens to be the Shogun’s younger brother. What makes matters worse is that this reckless scoundrel will be soon appointed to a higher political position which could prove to be detrimental for the entire Shogunate. In response to that, a plot is hatched: 13 assassins will undertake the suicide mission to murder him on his way back from Edo.Read More »

A man who was once a student activist marries the daughter of the head of a big trust company. He uses his position as an elite salary man to do whatever he pleases. However, a black shadow from his past starts to creep into his life…

This work from Wakamatsu’s early period was considered lost for a long time, but was later unearthed from the storage of the film center in Tokyo’s National Museum of Modern Art.Read More »

Bored with school, 15-year-old Daisuke Kawashima embarks on a pilgrimage to visit the 7,000-year-old cedar tree on distant Yakushima Island. Through his journey, Daisuke meets a number of interesting people, including friendly truck driver Sumire and a mysterious mountaineer girl.
—AnonymousRead More »

A drama about relations between Japanese immigrants and the indigenous Ainu on Hokkaido, the most northerly island of Japan. From a novel by Taijun Takeda.Read More »

Plot:
An oddball science teacher, Makoto Kito, decides to risk life and limb to steal plutonium from an atomic power plant in order to undergo the hazardous task of building his own home-made atomic bomb. He simultaneously builds a dummy bomb to send to the authorities, who know the plutonium is missing, to prove he means business. Calling himself “Number Nine”, Kito’s first demand: Don’t preempt his baseball game!Read More »

Orin (Shima Iwashita) is a blind woman in the early 20th century who as a young girl became a goze, or itinerant entertainer, one of the few options available to women like her in Japan at the time (one of the others was to be a prostitute). Orin’s life is largely miserable, her misery the result of traditionalist attitudes, but she never grasps that her society is punishing her merely for the twin crimes of being a woman and disabled.Read More »

To save her husband and child from drowning a woman seeks help in a village nearby.Read More »

The story of a high school boy (Toshiyuki Nagashima) in Tokyo returning to his home town of Nagano upon the death of his father.

Kaerazaru hibi was nominated for the Award of the Japanese Academy in 1979 for Best Director and Best Screenplay. Director Toshiya Fujita won the Readers’ Choice Award given by Kinema Junpo in 1979 as Best Japanese Film Director for the film.Read More »