Nobuo Kaneko

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A young student travelling over Japan joins forces with a circus troupe who’s on a bad string of luck. Wherever they go, they get pushed over by local big-wigs and yakuza gangs.Read More »

This film of the sleepy-eyed ronin series has the hero talked into escorting a precious religious artifact to Kyoto, Japan. A sect of Christian swordsmen are lying in wait to steal the statuette. What does it take for the reluctant man to accept the assignment? Why, enjoying the company of a virgin daughter of course.Read More »

A samurai kills a Blind Man who tells him to “repay his debts.” Because of the samurai’s actions his entire family is to bear a terrible curse.Read More »

Reiko, who tolerates abuse in her marriage to a man 23 years her senior, is friends with Mayumi, a beautiful widow. Reiko meets her husband’s business rival, a young, capable businessman, and falls for him. Meanwhile, Mayumi enters into a relationship with Shimotsuma, a friend of her late husband.Read More »

Synopsis:
In the wake of The Bomb, ex-soldier Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara) joins a Hiroshima yakuza gang — the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia — and then the shootings, slashings, betrayals, and scheming begin. Premiering a year after The Godfather, The Yakuza Papers also broke box-office records and spawned sequels, but, in contrast, took a ruthlessly de-romanticized view of the underworld. Based on an actual gang boss’ memoirs, The Yakuza Papers plunges the audience into a gritty, brutal, violent newsreel of a three-decade struggle for power of Shakespearean complexity, a nihilistic epic unlike any other.Read More »

Synopsis:
Kanji Watanabe is a longtime bureaucrat in a city office who, along with the rest of the office, spends his entire working life doing nothing. He learns he is dying of cancer and wants to find some meaning in his life. He finds himself unable to talk with his family, and spends a night on the town with a novelist, but that leaves him unfulfilled. He next spends time with a young woman from his office, but finally decides he can make a difference through his job… After Watanabe’s death, co-workers at his funeral discuss his behavior over the last several months and debate why he suddenly became assertive in his job to promote a city park, and resolve to be more like Watanabe.Read More »

Synopsis:
Fight, Zatoichi, Fight finds our favorite masseur and swordsman once again on the run. This time, he’s being pursued by a ruthless band of samurai who have been hired to kill him. Thinking they’ve got Zatoichi cornered, they instead kill a young woman, who is returning to her husband with her infant son. Ichi, feeling responsible for the woman’s death, resolves to deliver the child safely into the arms of its father.Read More »

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“8 Hours of Fear = 80 surprisingly entertaining minutes! This is the earliest Suzuki I’ve seen, before the man was even named “Seijun” (opening credits bill him by his birth name “Seitaro Suzuki”). A cast of diverse characters embark on a perilous bus journey (the railroad is out of commission, it seems) through known gangster territory. Think Stagecoach with yakuzas instead of attacking Apaches or Lifeboat with bumpy mountain roads in place of the high seas. Or, if you’re going to get all modern about it, maybe a slightly slower Speed (at 60mph).Read More »

Koreyoshi Kurahara’s ingeniously plotted, pocket-sized noir concerns the intertwining fates of a desperate bank manager, blackmailed for book-cooking, and his resentful but timid underling, passed over for a promotion. Elegantly stripped-down and carefully paced, Intimidation (Aru kyouhaku) is a moody early film from one of the Japanese New Wave’s preeminent stylists.Read More »