Hideki Takahashi

Yoji Kitami, a fisherman’s son, is a student in Tokyo. His father had died at sea and Taichiro, his brother, is sending him to the university. But the outbreak of violence by radical students and blockade of classrooms make studying impossible and Yoji goes home. Fortunately, he meets Katsuyuki Shinoda, a childhood friend, who works on a whaling vessel. Yoji decides to join him and rediscover a meaning in life. But finding sidework on a whaler is not so easy and Ogaki, a veteran harpooner, curtly turns him down. But finally, deeply touched by Yoji’s earnestness, Ogaki reluctantly agrees to take him with them. Rules are very strict, for even one slight slip-up may jeopardize the safety of the entire ship. For a long time, it seems like a living hell, but with patience and courage, he begins to learn the ropes. And the day they sight their first whale, Yoji comes into his own and finds the real meaning of life.Read More »

Synopsis:
The year is 1926. It has been three years since the Great Kanto earthquake hit Tokyo. Everything is being rebuilt from the ground up. Odera crime syndicate saw this as an opportunity to expand its territory. The Odera boss arranges marriage between his daughter Orin (Ruriko Asaoka) and the son of notorious Gyotoku clan, but Orin’s heart belonged to Shinjiro (Yujiro Ishihara), a member of her father’s clan.Read More »

Harada, a detective at the Shinjuku Police Station, lives with his little sister Noriko, who attends fashion school. One day, Harada is told by senior detective Ijima that Noriko is dating Yoshiura, a street thug. She quits school and rebels against Harada’s concerns. Soon after, Yoshiura is strangled to death, and Noriko’s pendant is found at the scene.Read More »

After his own gang sets him up to kill a rival mobster, a hit man is forced to flee with his younger brotherRead More »

During the 1930s, a teenager yearns for a Catholic girl, whose only desire is to reform his sinful tendencies. Hormones raging, the young man channels his unsatisfied lust into the only outlet available: savage, crazed violence.Read More »

Quote:
Few novels were filmed as many times as Shiro Ozaki’s famous Theatre of Life . So rich and appealing is this roman fleuve about chivalrous yakuza that, over the decades, it was rendered in “youth”and animated versions, as a lavish epic or omnibus film (including one by Kinji Fukasaku), and indeed was initially made by Uchida in 1936 as a highly regarded “social tendency” film. But Uchida’s later version is considered the gold standard, partly because of his mastery at visual storytelling, partly because of his superb ensemble cast. The yakuza Hishakaku kills someone in a dispute over a barmaid, but turns himself in at the urging of Kiratsune, an old gangster who has just returned from eight years in Shanghai and has become his protector.When he gets out of prison, Hishakaku finds himself once again torn between his sense of duty to his gang and his sense of humanity, and is drawn back into the bloody clan feuds.Read More »

Though Suzuki created it in the midst of his stylistic breakthrough, «Our Blood Will Not Forgive» has never received the same amount of attention as other films he made around the same time. Nikkatsu icons Hideki Takahashi and Akira Kobayashi star as brothers — one a gangster, the other an ad man — who unite to avenge their yakuza father’s death eighteen years before. The film features a bold use of colour; an absurdist concluding gunfight; and, in one memorable scene, an impressively illogical use of rear projection as the brothers argue in a car while ocean waves rage around them.Read More »

Quote:
Yamamoto Satsuo directed this masterful 9 hour epic trilogy on the effects of war on the five generations of a single Japanese family. Based on Gomikawa Jumpei’s (The Human Condition) bestselling novel, the film trilogy skillfully blends newsreel and archive footage with an all-star cast, exotic locations, and beautiful cinematography. The first part follows the rise of the Godai clan rise from war-profiteers to their becoming powerful industrialists in Japanese-occupied Manchuria during the 1930s. The second part follow the the stories of two brothers serving in different units of the Imperial Japanese army from 1935 to 1937 when Japan launched a full scale invasion of China. The third and final part details the family’s trials during the Sino-Japanese War to the Soviet army’s invasion of Japanese-occupied Northeastern China at the end of World War II.Read More »

Quote:
Yamamoto Satsuo directed this masterful 9 hour epic trilogy on the effects of war on the five generations of a single Japanese family. Based on Gomikawa Jumpei’s (The Human Condition) bestselling novel, the film trilogy skillfully blends newsreel and archive footage with an all-star cast, exotic locations, and beautiful cinematography. The first part follows the rise of the Godai clan rise from war-profiteers to their becoming powerful industrialists in Japanese-occupied Manchuria during the 1930s. The second part follow the the stories of two brothers serving in different units of the Imperial Japanese army from 1935 to 1937 when Japan launched a full scale invasion of China. The third and final part details the family’s trials during the Sino-Japanese War to the Soviet army’s invasion of Japanese-occupied Northeastern China at the end of World War II.Read More »