Tag Archives: Japan

Ayako Wakao plays good-natured Yuko, the illegitimate daughter of a well-off executive, raised in the country by relatives. Journeying to Tokyo she finds Father’s Western-style house to be a nest of vipers straight out of There’s Always Tomorrow, replete with Terrible Children, a housekeeper who sees all, and a dog named Cal with his own doghouse. But Yuko meets it all with aplomb; she’s interested in one thing only, finding her real, cast off mother.
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An unnamed doctor has always had everything he’s ever wanted, but that has only made him develop more extreme and depraved needs. He kidnaps a young couple in the prime of their life together and forces them into a game of torment that slowly extinguishes their hopes for survival.
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Setsuko is unhappily to Mimura, an engineer with no job and a bad drinking habit. She had always been in love with Hiroshi but both of them failed to propose when Hiroshi left for France a few years ago. Now he is back and Mariko (Setsuko’s sister) tries to reunite them. She too is secretly in love with Hiroshi.
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A fortuneteller prophesizes that whoever marries the beautiful Ukio will become the ruler of the world. Naturally, this makes her very popular with those vying for power, particularly the insatiably greedy Lord Donjo.
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When a gun belonging to a police officer is stolen, it ends up in the hands of a student, who decides to use it on a yakuza who beat him recently. Now the police officer is hot on the student’s trail, and he’s determined to prevent the gun from going off.
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A doctor develops a new scientific breakthrough in female psychotherapy with the discovery of the “Dream Ring,” a device that is inserted into a woman to record her thoughts and dreams.
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The story is set in Bakumatsu and revolves around the Bunta Sugawara character, a yakuza (of course 🙂 but instead of a modern yakuza/gangster, he’s a gambler/bakuto). After he kills someone and gets wound, is saved by a blind woman (Mitsuko Baishô), who took care of him.
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When her only relative, her elder brother is accused of robbing and murdering an old woman loan-shark, pretty, young Kiriko (Chieko Baisho) travels from her home in Kyushu to Tokyo to get Japan’s top lawyer to defend her brother.
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The Yakusa clan Inoshika decides to help a small family business, Taxi Tanaka, lured by the clan Jinryûkaï and deeply in debt.
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A psychic housewife and her husband become burdened with a kidnapped girl who escaped her assailant. Junko will not let her husband call the hospital or the police for purely selfish reasons. The girl dies while still in their house and her ghost begins to haunt not only Junko but also her husband, Sato (Koji Yakusho).
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Playwright Matsuzaki (Yusaku Matsuda) crosses paths with a beautiful woman on her way to the hospital who tells him a friend is dying. Frightened of a mysterious older woman who sells the fruit of the Chinese Lantern Plant – rumored to be distaff souls – she implores Matsuzaki to accompany her.
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Yuzuki (Noriko Kijima) is accepted into the school of her dreams, but it takes quite a different turn for her when she stumbles upon Aoi (Haruna Yoshizumi) masturbating in the shower by hitting herself. Her interest in the scene is reason enough that she is roped into one of the school’s clubs, at first against her will: the Torture Club.
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A surreal period film following an university professor and his eerie nomad friend as they go through loose romantic triangles and face death in peculiar ways.
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A look at the life of renegade yakuza, Rikio Ishikawa, particularly the years from 1946 to 1950 when his violent antics get him in trouble with his own clan, Kawada, and then with the clan of his protector, Kozaburo Imai. In these years, he can rely on Chieko, a young Tokyo courtesan who gives him shelter.
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Seigo Yoshioka (Kenji Sakaguchi) is a teacher that became mute after a kendo accident. He feels lost after the accident and eventually decides to teach again on a small island where his mother was born. The children there on the island quickly name him “Kikansha Sensei” (Teacher Locomotive) after learning he is mute.
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