Japan

Plot
Rantaro was born into a low class ninja family. His parents hope he can one day become an elite ninja to make his family proud. Rantaro, bearing his parents’ expectations, enters the Ninja Academy. At the academy, he becomes friends with Shinbe (Futa Kimura), the son of a wealthy merchant family and Kirimaru (Roi Hayashi ), who lost his father in the war. The students at the Ninja Academy are called Nintama – which means future ninjas. Rantaro has a fun time at school, but Rantaro, Shinbe and Kirimaru have difficulties with their studies.Read More »

A group of female doctors travel to a remote village during their summer holiday to offer free medical care to villagers. There they must battle prejudice and superstition as much as disease. Stars Kinuyo Tanaka and Shin Saburi.Read More »

Blind Beast is a grotesque portrait of the bizarre relationship between a blind sculptor and his captive muse, adapted from a short story from Japan’s foremost master of the macabre, Edogawa Rampo (Horrors of Malformed Men, The Black Lizard, Caterpillar).Read More »

Told in three interconnected segments, we follow a young man named Takaki through his life as cruel winters, cold technology, and finally, adult obligations and responsibility converge to test the delicate petals of love.Read More »

Synopsis:
Satoko is a mistress by trade, or fate: when her master, the silkscreen artist of the Kohoan Temple in Kyoto, dies, she is given to the temple’s lascivious head priest Kikuchi. She is drawn to a melancholy young acolyte, Jinen, who has observed the profligacy of his cruel master and Satoko’s utter dependence on the man. Jinen is both fascinated and disturbed by Satoko’s interest in him; he is similarly caught between loathing of Kikuchi and of the dark circumstances of his birth and his own moral weakness. The story unfolds in a dreamlike manner, a flashback inspired by a now-infamous image on a silkscreen in the souvenir shop at the so-called Temple of the Wild Geese.Read More »

Quote:
Set against the backdrop of an imperial victory in the civil war leading up to the Meiji Restoration, Fallen Blossoms tells the story of the sorrows of women in a geisha house in Kyoto by recounting the relationships of its inhabitants.Read More »

The insects are taking over in this nasty piece of disaster horror directed by Kazui Nihonmatsu. A group of military personnel transporting a hydrogen bomb are left to figure out how and why swarms of killer bugs took down their plane; the answer is more deliriously nihilistic—and convoluted—than you could imagine. Also known as War of the Insects, Genocide enacts a cracked doomsday scenario like no other.Read More »

Synopsis:
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.Read More »

16 year old orphan Tomi (played by Hideko Takamine) was a wild and unsettled girl. The juvenile court punishes her to be sent into the mountains of Aoyama for reeducation. Here she is taken care of by the teacher Miss Yamada, which is kind but has troubles getting along with the girls that are sent to her…
The director Aoyagi, wo directed a number of entertainment films during the war, deals with the topic of punishment and problematic youngsters. The film is very different and much more dramatic from films by Hiroshi Shimizu or Hiroshi Inagaki dealing with similar topic. The film depicts the roughness of the young girls and the brutality amongst them in a more realistic way. He takes a rare approach by not having Tomi say anything at all during the first half of the film. The film is also interesting from a historical point of view in putting the focus on the attitude of the Japanese state towards problematic young people during the war.Read More »