Tomisaburô Wakayama

Quote:
A father decides to put his delinquent daughter into a temple in Kyoto known for its austere novitiate. Initially resistant to all forms of discipline, she ends up falling in love with the nun who is in charge of her.Read More »

A detective is charged with investigating a bank corruption scandal.Read More »

Shinji, a popular geisha, falls in love with a small coal mine owner Shimada and fights with him against a cruel rich coal mine owner Osuga, who exploits his workers. A lot of action, romance and swordplay.Read More »

Summary:
To satisfy her lover’s fetish for tattooed women, Akane agrees to have her body covered in eloborate tattoos by Kyogoro, an old craftsman. Kyogoro has developed a special technique, by which his assistant, Harutsune, keeps Katsuko’s mind off the pain while Kyogoro does his work. After the work is done, Harutsune makes the shocking discovery of how Kyogoro mastered his technique. Written by Jean-Marc Rocher@IMDBRead More »

Synopsis (from Letterboxed):
Aiba is a gang boss who has just got out of jail, and finds everything has changed. His old gang has broken up, and only a few people still respect him. So he becomes a consultant to another gang who are about to be clobbered by a much larger gang moving in from out of town. Aiba proves a crafty tactician, and does very well at playing gangs off against each other in order to save the smaller gang. His advice is not always taken by those he tries to help, but he is generally proved right.Read More »

The shogun’s vassal Harima Aoyama and a chamber maid are in love with each other, but they cannot be together due to a difference of their status. Soon, an offer of marriage is brought to Harima. Trying to test his love, Okiku breaks one of the plates of the family treasure of the Aoyama family, but Harima doesn’t notice. However, someone surrounding her witnesses the moment Okiku breaks the plate on purpose.Read More »

Quote:
An Osaka gangster Shimamura just got married. His new bride, Mineko is also involved in drug trafficking. When she goes to China to make a deal, things get botched pretty badly. Shimamura must travel to save her and recoup his employers’ losses.Read More »

From Kinji Fukasaku (Battles Without Honor & Humanity) comes this pivotal early crime drama in the celebrated career of the director who changed the face of Japanese action cinema. Stylish and hard-boiled, Sympathy for the Underdog stars Koji Tsuruta, one of Japan’s seminal figures in the Yakuza genre, as Gunji, an aging Yakuza who is released from prison after ten years. Gunji lives by a code of honor that has no place among Tokyo’s modern corporate gangs. He gets a new lease on life by reforming his former gang and taking over the whiskey trade on the island of Okinawa. But he is forced to make a final, fateful, bloody stand against the mainland gang that sent him to prison.Read More »

Tokyo, 1934. Gang boss Arakawa is too ill and a successor must be named. The choice falls on Nakai, but being an outsider he refuses and suggests senior clansman Matsuda instead. But Matsuda is in jail and the elders won’t wait for his release, so they appoint the younger and more malleable Ishido to take the reins. Clan honour and loyalties are severely tested when Matsuda is released, resulting in an increasingly violent internal strife. An atmospheric tale of gangland intrigue written by Kazuo Kasahara (Battles Without Honour and Humanity) and starring Tomisaburo Wakayama, (Lone Wolf and Cub, The Bounty Hunter Trilogy) and genre legend Koji Tsuruta, Big Time Gambling Boss is one of the all-time classics of the yakuza genre. Paul Schrader called it the richest and most complex film of its type, while novelist Yukio Mishima hailed it as a masterpiece.Read More »