Ken Ogata

A fictionalized account in four chapters of the life of the celebrated Japanese writer Yukio Mishima.Read More »

1782. A Japanese ship named Shinsho-maru is blown off course and severely battered during a wild storm, and wounds up floundering off a remote Aleut island after drifting seven months at sea. The remainder of the crew is taken in and given shelter by an expedition of Russian seal hunters, but forced to survive in very harsh and sparse conditions. Will they ever see their homeland again?Read More »

Quote:
Detective Seiji Otaki is determined to find the psychopathic killer of a young woman who was ostensibly a student but in reality a high-priced prostitute. Even though he has been taken off the case for beating up a suspect, he refuses to let it go and recruits his mistress to act as a decoy for the killer. Her involvement turns out to be a fatal mistake, and when her husband gets out of prison, Detective Otaki is in worse trouble than ever.Read More »

The world-famous woodblock artist Hokusai is a widower who lacks the ability to earn money, and he lives with his daughter Oei at the house of his friend, Bakin. Hokusai meets a woman called Onao and finds himself uncontrollably attracted to her, but she disappears all of a sudden. One day, an excited Oei brings home a young girl who looks exactly like Onao. Immediately, Hokusai starts to paint, using the young girl as a model. The illusion of Onao drives Hokusai back into the waves of youth as he painted the masterpiece of the gigantic octopus and the beauty being seduced, at the age of 90.Read More »

Synopsis:
Masumura’s 40th film, for which he collaborated on the script, shows plot irrationality perhaps due to the newspaper serial original, perhaps to the adolescent behavior he portrays. The extremes of self-sacrifice in some of the characters such as Hisayo and Sugiura contrast too sharply with the animal brutality of Sasabayashi and Namie, and the result is more caricature than realism. The harsh selfishness of Ichiro¯ and the abrupt techniques used to present his interior thoughts (double exposure of a naked Yuri as he undresses her with his eyes) prevent him in the end from winning audience sympathy. Part of a late sixties trend toward adolescent sexuality subject matter.Read More »

Synopsis:
Still strong at the age of 69, Orin (Sumiko Sakamoto) prepares herself for an inevitable yet frightening ritual. In her village, where food is scarce, life is harsh and people are desperate and cruel. Anyone who lives for 70 years is hauled to the mountaintop by their children and left to die in the dead of winter. Orin is prepared to accept her fate, but she also has one last, all-important task — she must find a suitable wife for her son, Tatsuhei (Ken Ogata).Read More »

A fierce succession battle ignites at a newspaper company when the president passes away.Read More »

Stockbroker turned yakuza Shoichi Yoshinari (Hiroyuki Sanada) has been presented with a thankless task. He is to invite an oyabun (don) of a yakuza gang to emcee a succession ceremony — the passing of the baton from the older to the younger generation.Read More »

Kiwa is Iwago’s devoted wife. A former wrestling champion, he has become a ‘zegen’ : He buys young girls from poor families to sell them to geisha houses. He is quite successful but Kiwa, though she accepts his money, loathes his work. One day Iwago comes back with a young girl he’s bought from a man who wanted to sell her in China. They adopt her and she raises her, as a respectable girl, with her two sons. But Iwago wants to manage the career of a singer who becomes his mistress and the situation becomes very tense in the couple. This is the third and last adaptation of Tomiko Miyao (mostly autobiographical) novels about the world of prostitution and yakuzas in Kochi by Gosha.Read More »