Acting
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67 movies sorted by popularity
Ittōsai, who trained in the Itto-ryu style deep in the mountains of Nara, joins a professional baseball team.
Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, even foregoing other customers while Jihei schemes to somehow buy her freedom. His efforts yield ruinous consequences for his business and his family life, and Koharu is meanwhile purchased by another client.
A ronin desperately seeks a way out of financial straits; he allies with the Tosa clan under the ruthless leader Takechi, who quickly takes advantage.
Tadashi Iki returns to Japan from a Soviet gulag 11 years after being captured during the invasion of Manchuria. He is offered a position in the expansive Kinki Corporation, but rival corporations are competing for a government contract to produce fighter planes.
A team of geophysicists investigating seismic activity on the seafloor discover that the islands of Japan, after suffering from massive volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, will be pulled into the ocean, killing millions.
The Americans are swiftly closing on Okinawa, an island just south of the Japanese mainland. The Imperial command sends top generals and several army divisions to defend it at all costs. The mission quickly degenerates as vital resources and troops are diverted to other islands. After a civilian evacuation ends in tragedy most of non-combatants are forced to remain on the island. Many convert to soldier status. Tokyo sends mixed messages that squander time and resources, as when they order the defenders to build an airstrip for aircraft that never come. The truth soon becomes obvious: the high command decides that the island cannot be held and effectively abandons the Okinawan defenders. When the Americans land many troops are deployed in the wrong places. As the slaughter mounts, a suicidal attitude takes hold. Okinawa becomes a death trap, for civilian volunteers and non-combatants as well.
An industrialist is diagnosed with terminal cancer. He is abroad in Europe at the time, and a glimpse of a Japanese woman in that setting causes him to imagine her as the personification of his impending fate. As his dialogue with his imagined mortality continues, he meets the living woman, the template for his fantasy, and together, they tour rural churches. Gradually, he comes to some kind of peace about the diagnosis. When he returns to Japan, he is met with a series of challenges that profoundly test the lessons he has learned.
After a passenger ship sinks in 1954, Go Akutsu devises a life-saving project in the form of a tunnel under the Tsugaru Strait. While working on this project Akutsu becomes involved with Tae Makimura leading to his estrangement from his wife.
In feudal Japan, when any commerce with the rest of the world is strictly prohibited, an idealist appears at an isolated inn, headquarters of smugglers with stolen money intended to ransom his loved one forced to work in a brothel.
The president of the Japanese National Railways is found dead during a period in which train service is plagued by numerous layoffs, strikes and shutdowns. The government says that the president was murdered; the police claim it was a suicide. A quizzical reporter follows the case for years, but the basic question remains unanswered: was the victim killed by members of the burgeoning Communist movement in Japan, or was the death stage-managed by the authorities in hopes of discrediting the Communists?
During World War II, a teenage Jewish girl named Anne Frank and her family are forced into hiding in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands.
In 17th-century Japan, two Portuguese Jesuit priests seek their mentor, who is rumoured to have committed apostasy, and to propagate Catholicism.
No description available.
A mountain bandit abducts a woman who demands he kill his other wives to please her, leading to a cycle of violence and madness fueled by superstition and obsession.
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.
A run-in with the police once again puts three former reformatory inmates on the wrong side of the law. Their situation becomes increasingly desperate as events spin out of control, culminating in an audacious hijack at sea...
The upstart Godai family conglomerate plans to strengthen ties with the hardliners in the Kwantung Army as they plan military expansion into Manchuria.
When a married man begins an affair with a woman from his past, he comes to suspect her young son intends to murder him.
A young Japanese-American man arrives at his grandmother's old hometown in Yamaguchi, begins to stay at her family's elite but dysfunctional household, and gets entangled in a sinister plot of murder.
A promising post-graduate literature student is transformed into a psychotic killer following the suicide of his father and a sleazy affair by his mother with a younger man.
A selfish playboy uses rich women to pay off his debts. Divorcing his wife and marrying the woman he loves throws him into a spiral of destruction.
"BLOW THE NIGHT!" Let's Spend the Night Together is a 1983 Japanese docu-drama shot on 16mm film starring actual Yanki gang members as many of the main characters.
The ruthless and ambitious Yasuhiko uses his charm to manipulate and exploit those around him to climb the corporate social ladder. His cold-blooded ascent eventually leads to moral decay as his past actions begin to catch up with him.
Comedy of manners set on the "Kodama" train between Tokyo and Osaka, before the opening of the Shinkansen. In the leading role, Frankie Sakai plays a straightforward but indecisive hero. The passengers also include the bubbly Dan Reiko, and Ozawa Eitaro as a dour company president. Based on the novel "Seven and a half hours", by Shishi Bunroku.
In late 1940 the Japanese were anxious to conclude peace in China and to that end sent Colonel Hidaka to inaugurate negotiations. He was mysteriously assassinated, however, when his car was blown up. The General Staff Headquarters in Japan, sends Lieutenant Shiina, a graduate of the famed Nakano School of Spies inaugurated by Colonel Kusanagi, to investigate the matter. Arriving in Shanghai, he disguises himself as a Chinese coolie and sets out to watch for developments, the only clue being a silver dollar found beside what was left of the victim.
In Meiji era Japan a sixth grade boy is smart, likable and confident and owing to his academic success liked by his teacher. Things are not going well at home, however, where his father does not work leaving the mother to toil . With the boy's family having no money he cannot progress his education and has to drop out of school. A neighbour, who is a bookstore owner, offers the family money to allow the boy to continue his schooling, but the father is too proud to accept and rebuffs the offer forcing the boy to work.
Late entry "Ekimae" feature, about the hunt for lost treasure.
The ghost of a samurai's wife takes revenge on her husband.
As Japan's economic growth policies intensify, small-scale farmers embark on a first-ever communal dairy farming initiative in their village. They are joined by Riki, a young man who thinks communal farming will give him some leisure time.
TV film about the "Nishiyama Incident", a scandal surrounding the 1972 return of Okinawa to Japan. Produced to commemorate the 20th anniversary of TV Asahi in 1978 and released theatrically by Office Henmi in 1988.
Sayo has just celebrated her sixteenth birthday when she attends a temple festival. On her way back she sees a large cherry tree which is infamous for the legend of dead white horse. When her fiancé returns from war and visits her he comes across a white horse which he takes in. The man also does not see himself engaged anymore as his family has lost its wealth.
The Shogun gets engaged to a princess who rebels against the prospect, because she wasn't consulted.
A young man from a family photo studio becomes a newspaper photojournalist, learning the risks and demands of the job through repeated setbacks. His growing dedication strains his relationship with Keiko, and on the eve of their wedding he puts everything on the line to cover a devastating typhoon.
Two soon-to-be kamikaze pilots stop by a local school near their base to play the piano one last time, leaving a deep impression on a teacher. Years later, she seeks out the relatives of the pilots when the piano is old and about to be discarded.
Ken Ogata plays Shiro Miyagi, a sprinter with Olympic aspirations whose dreams were shattered by WWII. A broken man, he leads the dissolute life of a gigolo until a chance meeting with a fiery young athlete named Hiroko (Michiyo Yasuda). Realizing that she has talent as a sprinter, Miyagi sees a second chance at Olympic glory in becoming her coach. Following Miyagi’s unconventional, military-style training, Hiroko sets a record for the 100-meter dash, but her greatest hurdle proves to be a “sex check” which all professional athletes must pass.
Executive management of a major Tokyo construction company are getting bumped off one after another. It seems obvious that it is a former partner of the company with a long-standing grudge who is responsible, but he died in the first ten minutes of the movie. Or did he? This may aptly be described as a giallo-noir for the unrelenting string of murders by a mystery man and the black-and-white gritty urban setting.
Fourth film in the long-running series Daiei Studio's Woman Gambler with Kyoko Enami starring where she plays the woman gambler Ogin.
Inspector Uno and college student Yuko Nagai are honored guests at an isolated village where 300 million yen mysteriously went missing and a deadly festival is celebrated every three years...
Sixth film in the long-running series Daiei Studio's Woman Gambler with Kyoko Enami starring where she plays the woman gambler Ogin.
A story full of youthful vigor and spirit as high school students try to work out their problems, realize the awakening of love and growing maturity and find fun and happiness in helping others.
Two hundred million years ago, Earth had a single continent. As the millennia progressed, the single continent slowly split off into smaller continents and islands. Thirty million years ago, the country of Japan was part of the continent of Asia, and has since split off into its own archipelago. Another landmass shift is about to occur...
A tribute to proletarian author Takiji Kobayashi (1903-1933)
Based on a novel by Ayako Miura.
Akira leaves for the Mt. Gassan foothills before winter's onset, visiting the local temple and interacting with the residents all while falling for fair Fumiko.
The mysterious death of a trading company employee on an overseas business trip triggers a corruption and bribery case. A bizarre mystery surrounding the bereaved family.
1962 Japanese movie
1961 Japanese movie
To pay off his enormous debt, Segawa becomes a spy for the president of a small trading company.
Film adaptation of the stage version of Samuil Marshak's "Twelve Months"
A Violent School Revolution
A daughter of Hatamoto (high-ranked soldier) Otsuyu (Akiko Kana) and a Ronin living in Choya (cheap apartment) Shinzaburo Hagihara (Yoichi Hayashi) fell in love with each other. They could not see each other for a while, but Otsuyu visited Shinzaburo's place late at night, led by a servant Oyone (Shoko Yagi). Tomorrow night and next night as well.
The story centers on the fierce competition among newspaper reporters stationed at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department as they race to break major scoops. Alongside this, the film humorously depicts a rookie reporter who grows while repeatedly making mistakes. The first film in a series adapted from an NHK TV drama. Focused on those who work at the 'Sakurada Press Club', the home base of crime reporters who pursue exclusive stories in a corner of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.
The Saika clan, that had succeeded in battle against the large armies of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, had in the Tokugawa era of Ieyasu, been driven into the mountains 7 generations later, forced into subsistence hunting. A man comes to them offering revenge: to assassinate current Tokugawa Shogun Yoshimune. (Made-for-TV movie)
