Kôichi Satô

A grifter divides his time between being an unwelcome guest in the home of a former fellow student now a computer programmer and attempting to make lots of money by running fraudulent businesses.Read More »

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John Lone, the star of the Oscar-winning The Last Emperor (89), portrays a Chinese revolutionary in Shadow of China. Pursued by the Communists, Lone escapes to Hong Kong, where he builds up a multimillion dollar business enterprise. He hopes to use his international clout to effect changes in Mainland China, but he is defeated by revelations of his earlier underhanded business practices, and by the “dangerous” aspects of his previous political activities.Read More »

Mid 50s: the trials and tribulations of Shinsuke Ibuki, freshly arrived in Tokyo from Kyushu.Read More »

Kinema Jumpo “Best movie”-winner of 2000.

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Veteran director Shinji Somai lensed this heart-warming family drama about a shabby looking coot claiming to be the father of an elite salaryman. Hiroshi Nirasaki (Koichi Sato) is a securities broker desperately trying to keep the fact that his company is about to go belly-up from his high-strung upper-class wife (Yuki Saito). One day, while walking home from a particularly bad day at work, he gets accosted by an old bum (Tsutomu Yamazaki) who demands to be taken in by his son. Though his mother told him that his dad died when he was born, the drunken geezer knows enough about him and his short order cook mother (Sumiko Fuji) that he is almost convinced. Read More »

While on his daily route as the driver of the local school bus, Michio Nishiumi sees his own infant son kidnapped from the vehicle by a masked assailant with a gun. A ransom is demanded, but the boy dies. Michio wants and needs his revenge.Read More »

Tuna fishing. It doesn’t exactly evoke the stuff of drama, yet very dramatic is this gripping yarn (puns intended) about the solemn, solitary lives of the men who catch what ends up as our sushi and sashimi. Opening with a shot of a young couple traversing sand dunes, the woman posits a question – women or fishing? This question fuels the drama of the next two-plus hours. – See more at: linkRead More »

Kanichiro Yoshimura is a Samurai and Family man who can no longer support his wife and children on the the low pay he receives from his small town clan, he is forced by the love for his family to leave for the city in search of higher pay to support them. In his search he joins a notorious clan, known as the Shinsengumi where he does as much as possible to get money. Looked at as a money grubber,Yoshimura proves his strength physically and mentally by being loyal to his honor. During the dramatic period, with the rise of the Emperor and the fall of the Shogun. Yoshimura shows us the struggle of life in a personal way, by changing the lives of the people he meets and the way life is looked at.Read More »

This hard-to-find Fukasaku/Kurahara collaboration is an interesting coming-of-age story. The boy Shisuke grows up in a coal mining community in Kyushu, during and after the Second World War, and the viewer is treated to the
circumstances that shape the young man who emerges. Read More »