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107 movies sorted by popularity
Island of Java, 1942, during World War II. British Major Jack Celliers arrives at a Japanese prison camp, run by the strict Captain Yonoi. Colonel John Lawrence, who has a profound knowledge of Japanese culture, and Sergeant Hara, brutal and simpleton, will witness the struggle of wills between two men from very different backgrounds who are tragically destined to clash.
In the Sengoku period, a woman and her daughter are raped and murdered by soldiers during a time of civil war. Afterwards, a series of samurai returning from the war through that area are found mysteriously dead with their throats torn out. The governor calls in a wild and fierce young hero to quell what is evidently an Onryō ghost.
In Tokyo's Shinjuku district, the lives of a young man prone to theft, a young woman he meets at a bookstore, and a kabuki actor intersect.
After being used and betrayed by the detective she had fallen in love with, young Matsu is sent to a female prison full of sadistic guards and disobedient prisoners.
The world-famous woodblock artist Hokusai (1760-1849), a widower in need of a steady income, lives with his daughter Oei in the house of his friend Bakin.
A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but somehow survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.
Agent Zero is a cop that uses her own methods for dealing with criminals. After she unlawfully kills a rapist in a violent fashion, she is sent to prison and stripped of her badge. But very soon after, a rich politician's daughter is kidnapped by a ruthless gang. Agent Zero is let out of prison with the mission of going undercover to find the politician's daughter and return her safely. Using her deadly red handcuffs, she disposes of the criminals one by one.
After a young boy captures a rare butterfly in Nagasaki, a caterpillar begins a relay-trip toward the northern tip of Hokkaido, serving as a silent witness to a series of vignettes featuring people struggling with the psychological and social scars of post-war Japan.
The most dangerous hired gun in Kyushu's underworld has managed to trigger a vicious gang war, and now, there's a contract on his life. Though nobody is more skilled in the arts of dealing death, can the tattooed hitman fend off the entire Japanese mafia as he searches for the man who wants him dead?
Ogami Itto is challenged by a quintet of warriors, each armed with one fifth of Ogami's assassin fee and one fifth of the information he needs to complete his assignment.
A dramatisation of the 24-hour period in which the Japanese government was deadlocked over the decision to accept or reject the Allies' demand for an unconditional surrender following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In 17th-century Japan, two Portuguese Jesuit priests seek their mentor, who is rumoured to have committed apostasy, and to propagate Catholicism.
Naomi, a corporate heiress from Japan, vacations to Hong Kong with her two colleagues. Bored, she sneaks out to visit the city and befriends a local rock band and, appreciative of the company, later helps the members with their debit issues. Meanwhile, Naomi's colleagues received news that the big boss of their company succumbed to a heart attack and that Naomi must sign a document to prevent the company from being turned over to a corrupt executive. The colleagues try to locate Naomi, just as a relationship develops between her and the band leader.
Two young women must come to terms with the fact that a man they're deeply linked to is a murdering rapist.
A story of Japanese writer Kafu Nagai (1879-1959), a man about sixty with a huge reputation of seducer who falls madly in love for a young geisha named Oyuki. Meticulous and smartly dressed, Nagai patiently wrote in his diary his thoughts during many years. A melancholy reflection on the passage of time and a brilliant interpretive exercise.
Kiba is back again, but this time he has fallen from grace and sent to prison for all the violent acts he has committed. Once he's out, he begins working as a bodyguard in a club that is crawling with gangsters.
This is a film about a real person. Sanada Yukimura fought a war against Tokugawa Ieyasu.
After committing murder, businessman Atsushi is blackmailed into keeping a suitcase of embezzled money. What follows is a descent into lustful, reckless actions and regret.
A crossover between Wakayama's Gokudo and Sugawara Mamushi series. Gokudo runs a restaurant and makes Takuzo Kawatani his kitchen bitch. He tries to do the same for the Mamushi bros. but the boys don't play along, which pisses Gokudo off. Things get worse when he starts helping a young teacher and Bunta has a crush on a pretty girl... and unbeknownst to them it's the same woman! Yes, the film has not one but two romantic subplots! Of course it all ends in bloodshed.
Zatoichi is forced to kill a young man who owes a debt to a yakuza boss. Moments later, his sister Osode arrives with the money she earned (prostituting herself) to pay his debts. The bosses true motives are revealed and he attempts to steal Osode even though the debt is paid. Zatoichi realizes his grievous error and protects the girl from the gang. Osode and Zatoichi are caught in a dilemma as she must rely on her brother's killer for protection and Zatoichi wrestles with the injustice he has caused.
In Osaka's slum, capricious folks without futures engage in pilfering, assault and robbery, prostitution, and the trading of ID cards and blood.
A man hires a Private Investigator in order to find proof that his wife has been cheating on him. Soon, we learn that the man’s plan is to set the wife up, divorce her and remarry again in America with the daughter of his boss.
Hanpei is a gentle young samurai that loves flowers. One day, he witnesses an old man's quick draw of the sword. He is so impressed that he becomes the old man's pupil. Soon, Hanpei's skill of sword comes to attention of his lord. The lord orders him to assassinate a man...
Detective Kikuchi is sent to Okinawa to investigate why a girl jumped from a window after shooting heroin. There, he encounters the usual assortment of addicts, dealers, pimps and sleazy American GIs.
Also known as: For My Daughter's 7th Birthday. Many years following her mother’s suicide, Maya seeks out her father, who deserted them, for revenge. All intertwined with the investigation of journalists into local murders, the manipulations of a palmist known as the “blue moth”, and political corruption.
In feudal Japan, gangsters chase a young girl who might testify against their boss. When the gangsters murder the girl's grandfather on sacred ground, the door is opened for the Yokai Monsters to step in.
Zatoichi makes friends with a dangerous chess player, while fending off angry yakuza and bloodthirsty relatives out for revenge, and trying to save a sick child. Meanwhile, his luck with dice is turning.
When a young soldier is killed while trying to prevent his younger sister, Kaoru, from being sold into a life of prostitution, his commander, Col. Miyagi, tries to honor his dying wish to rescue his sister. Upon finding Kaoru at a party working as a geisha and later rescuing her from committing suicide, Col. Miyagi allows her to move in with him. Over time, the two grow close, but in spite of Kaoru's growing feelings for him, Col. Miyagi is unable to bring himself to return her love. On the night of his deployment to war, Col. Miyagi finally admits his feelings for Kaoru, but will they ever be able to enjoy a peaceful life together now that a very violent and bloody military revolt is under way...
A sex-obsessed woman, a suicidal man she meets on the street, and a gun-crazy wannabe gangster become trapped in an underground hideaway.
Long takes and a highly theatrical visual approach combine to form a tense and confrontational look at the decline of a socialist student activists' movement in Japan.
Years of warfare end in a Japan unified under the Tokugawa shogunate, and samurai spy Sasuke Sarutobi, tired of conflict, longs for peace. When a high-ranking spy named Tatewaki Koriyama defects from the shogun to a rival clan, however, the world of swordsmen is thrown into turmoil. After Sasuke is unwittingly drawn into the conflict, he tracks Tatewaki, while a mysterious, white-hooded figure seems to hunt them both. By tale’s end, no one is who they seemed to be, and the truth is far more personal than anyone suspected. Director Masahiro Shinoda’s Samurai Spy, filled with clan intrigue, ninja spies, and multiple double crosses, marks a bold stylistic departure from swordplay film convention.
1973 Toei film.
A woman takes revenge on her husband after he leaves her for a younger woman by harassing the couple with unwanted phone calls at night.
Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades.
In Part I we see the young would-be swordsman setting out to achieve greatness in war, achieving nothing because fighting on the losing side, & then beginning his long period of wandering & training, with the goal always in mind of his duel with Kojiro. Part II builds toward that great duel on Ganryu Island, with considerable focus on Musashi's planning & forethought as to how to gain an advantage.
Towards the end of WWII, a black American pilot is captured and imprisoned by rural Japanese villagers, who await official instructions as to how to proceed with their 'catch'.
Easily bored, but still innocent and naive countryside girl discovers partying in Tokyo is a ton of fun. Yakuza-to-be is an acquaintance who tries to rape her, and the typically bland but very-good-here the first boyfriend.
The men who surround and torment the young protagonist (demanding teacher, owner of the company that rapes his own daughter, despotic and uncompromising father) are opposed to women (victims of men) as embodiment of salvation.
Story about a gambler who gets involved in a struggle between companies.
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.
Movie based on a book by Kakou Senda about the use of women as sexual slaves by the Japanese Army during WW2.
14-year-old Sunaoko travels from Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa, with her father’s young fiancée Momoko in search of her half-brother whom she has never met. Their guide, a beer-guzzling ex-soldier, takes them to the locale’s tourist attractions, quickly delving into the underlying scars of the island’s wartime history.
Toshihiko, a high school boy, hates Kozo, his father, enough to kill him. His mother had lived in terror of him and, at last, broken in spirit, she had left and her pitiful departing figure is still seared in Toshihiko's mind. Soon, Kozo marries Asako who is young and beautiful. An idea forms in Toshihiko's mind to get even with his father for the shabby way he had treated his mother. He wonders if he can do it through Asako.
After the closure of a coal mine leaves her husband unemployed, Fumiko travels from Kyushu to Kyoto with her daughter Kimiko, and they become hostesses at a cabaret.
In a small town, high school students in their final year try to balance their studies while also playing together in a rock band.
Ryuko, a plain and introverted college student. One day, Ryuko accidentally witnesses a gang rape committed by the three popular students. Impulsively, Ryuko pretends to be a victim and reports the three to the university, succeeding in getting them expelled. Five years later, Ryuko catches the eye of Okino, a powerful figure in the business world, and under his protection, she thoroughly refines her appearance, shedding all her former awkwardness and transforming into a sophisticated beauty. As Ryuko enters high society, the three men she expelled reappear before her. This time, Ryuko is in control, skillfully seducing and manipulating the three while quietly plotting her perfect revenge. However, when the real victim, Miyako, suddenly appears, Ryuko's deception begins to unravel, and the intricately intertwined threads of fate start moving in an unexpected direction. What will become of Ryuko's butterfly-like transformation and revenge drama, which began with impersonation?
A fearless man confronts a yakuza organization pushing the envelope of extravagant & all sorts of violence.
Three students spend their holidays at the seaside where they are mistaken for Koreans, a minority which is looked down on in Japan. The action develops into a crime story.
Japan, 1948: Hiroki Matsukata stars as a man facing a nine year prison sentence. He incites prisoners of Shimane Prison to the biggest riot in jail history. A fighter by heart, he sees a way out of any situation, but will he survive this, the gutsiest assault ever attempted?
In Tokugawa-era (1637) Shimabara, oppressed peasant Christians revolt against the shogunate with the aid of charismatic Christian rebel leader Shiro Amakusa.
Film with Junko Miyazono.
Michio Yamada, a recent school graduate, is sent to Tokyo to work as a fruit-packer in a department store as part of a government programme. He takes a gun from a house on an American base and uses it to kill several people. The scene changes to Yamada's childhood. Yamada is born the child of a reprobate and a weak-willed woman. As a boy Yamada, experiences poverty and the rape of his sister at first hand.
While out for a stroll, the famous detective Kogoro Akechi enters a museum and encounters a woman staring at a poster of someone who looks exactly like him. The woman is the renowned art photographer Fujiko Maiya...
A young female samurai comes upon a dying messenger and agrees to deliver the scroll he was carrying to its destination. However, unbeknownst to her, the scroll is actually a formula for a new kind of gunpowder. An evil clan that is planning to overthrow the Emperor is also after the scroll, and they try to take it from her.
A mother discovers that her 14-year-old daughter Yumi has leukemia and only six months to live. She decides to keep the information secret and pushes her past tutor Akira, now a university student, to reconnect with her.
Undercover cop Kikuchi teams up with the Okinawa local police to clean up the narcotics and prostitution underworld.
In the book of the world's greatest rogues, the number one man can only be one person.
No description available.
A 20-year-old drifter and a precocious 16-year-old girl slowly form a bond in a small town haunted by its wartime past.
A sequel to the popular "The School of Spies", this film continues the adventures of one of the graduates who is assigned to crack a powerful spy ring working out of Kobe. Various people are suspected but, finally, it seems that an Army captain and his geisha friend might lead them to the ring.
The rich punk Junya has only one thing in mind: to race with the police on his motorcycle. That makes him unpopular, not only with the police, even with his Bosozoku buddies, who slowly but surely distance themselves from him. Junya falls in love with the equally speed-hungry Hiroko.
Based on a true story, an elderly woman resiliently spends nine months attempting to retrieve her husband's dead body, fighting government bureaucracy and indifference all along the way.
A Jonan Station detective, Kikuchi, is framed for smuggling drugs and sent to prison. When he is paroled, he joins a private detective agency, where he is asked to investigate Mitsue Takazawa, the wife of a local trading firm president. While secretly conducting his own research, he finds out that Takazawa's husband is the one, responsible for Kikuchi's imprisonment, who also have set sights on Setsuko, a woman Kikuchi becomes romantically involved with.
In 1947, in Kobe, Japan, a local street gang fights for their survival when its turf is overrun by United States occupation forces and international gangs.
All the protagonists move about in a Tokyo Bar that has an entire wall taken up with a black-and-white reproduction of a photo of Monument Valley. The action starts as Billy the Kid, in full living color, walks out of the photo and gets a job as a waiter. Along with him on the working staff are a samurai straight out of the history books, a G.I. from World War II, and several other anachronistic characters. The plot (as such) revolves around keeping away the brutal mobsters and thugs who dominate the city streets outside of the bar, making the tavern safe for its easily recognized facsimiles of well-known characters.
Haru, an aging scriptwriter, has isolated himself somewhere in the woods of Nagano to work on his first novel. As the last surviving member of his kin, he intends to chronicle the family he grew up in.
The son of an assassinated feudal lord, in the Muromachi period, attempts to avenge his father's death and meets Kagemaru, a renegade ninja helping peasants and farmers rebel against Oda Nobunaga's regime, all depicted through an experimental form of filming pages from the original manga set to sound.
At a seaside city somewhere in the Tohoku area, the corpses of Nozomi, daughter of an affluent family, and Yamazaki, son of an engineer at the local nuclear power-plant, are found tied-to on a beach, as if they intended to commit double suicide. Nogami, a reporter, begins to investigate.
In the 19th century Edo period, sisters Oshizu and Otaka have sacrificed their personal happiness to work and care for their ailing father. Otaka falls in love, but can’t accept a marriage proposal since her older sister needs to marry first. When Oshizu learns of this decision, she takes matters in her own hands.
The legendary sleeping lion is back in the modern era! Skyline GTR (BNR32) VS GTR (KPGC10) With Keiichi Tsuchiya of the "Megalopolis Expressway Trial" series.
A yakuza is released from prison after serving a long sentence. He immediately sets about creating a new gang and attempts to pull off a huge ransom score.
Well before “Shogun” as warring clans were fighting for power throughout Japan, a Portuguese vessel ran aground off Tanegashima. Lord Tokitaka helped Captain Pinto repair his ship. The grateful captain offered the lord a gift--a matchlock musket—the first firearm ever seen in Japan. But like a great stone hurled into placid waters, this simple gift will start a revolution. Tokitaka tasks Kinbei, his greatest swordsmith, to copy this musket and build guns for Japan. While Kinbei struggles to forge Japan’s first musket, a great love blooms between Captain Pinto and Kinbei’s daughter Wakasa. But for Kinbei, to let Wakasa marry Pinto and go to Portugal is unthinkable. And as Kinbei creates Japan’s first matchlock factory, Lord Oda Nobunaga will seize upon firearms as the key to sweep all other clans before him, tearing a blood-soaked path of destruction through Japan.
The story tells of the adoration of Sasuke for his mistress, the blind samisen-teacher Shunkin, who treats him imperiously and subjects him to cruel beatings.
A three parts movie following people forgotten by a society that modernizes at the price of expelling part of its individuals.
Accused of being a spy for a rival clan by Nanbu Clan samurai who then attack him, the 'Lowly Ronin' barely escapes with his life after being shot. Nursed back to health by Yamaoka Daijiro, the one Nanbu Clan retainer that believes him, he must find a way to prove his inno-cence to the others. The two team up together to uncover the mystery and find out who the real spy is that threatens the security of the clan. Against all odds, the two master swordsmen must rely on all their skills to defeat a vast conspiracy and save the clan from being abolished.
After an elderly man is discharged from a hospital following a misunderstood, life-affirming impulse toward a fellow patient, he finds himself caught between his wife’s empathy and his children’s judgmental scorn. As his health wavers, he and his wife attempt to reclaim their intimacy and vitality during a seaside getaway, even as their son becomes entangled with the same young woman from the clinic.
Nagisa Oshima's documentary details the rise of Chairman Mao during the revolution and shows the Communist Party's struggle and cultural upheaval. Made in 1969 for NTV station, this TV documentary also questions Mao's dictator tendency during the cultural revolution.
Ryô is a young leopard, Maki a rhythmical wave. The barrier between a teacher and a student gives way to the passionate embrace of a man and a woman desperately in love.
Haneda, the president of a company dealing in gold, is shot to death on the Raicho 9 limited express from Osaka to Kanazawa. Detective Kamei begins an investigation in cooperation with the Fukui Prefectural Police. In the Green Car, Detective Nishimoto had noticed a beautiful woman talking to the victim just before he was killed. Looking into her background, she turns out to be Yumiko Miura, living in Setagaya in Tokyo. An eyewitness who claims that she is the murderer also appears, and she is taken into custody. Before long, the victim's unexpected relationships will be revealed one after another...
A group of teenagers grow up in Okinawa amid the protests and resistance against the presence of the American base in the island.
The Shinobi-no-Mono series was so successful that Daiei Studios dipped into the well one more time, making the best 60′s B&W ninja movie ever seen in the otherwise color-dominated year of 1970. Issei Mori directs Hiroki Matsukata as the reluctant leader of a small band of spies charged with kidnapping a noblewoman from a heavily ninja-proofed castle. The finality of the air slowly began to fill like smoke, and in all that had become dark the loyalty of the Ninja who dared to go shone like light as they entered a world shrouded in mystery. Things do not go as planned in what is possibly the darkest and most fatalistic of the already noir-ish 60′s fare. Both the decade and it’s distinctive style of shinobi cinema went out on a high note with Mission Iron Castle.
An ex-detective who accidentally kills a suspect becomes a dog of the yakuza
A young woman turns to the supernatural to wreak revenge on a murderous warlord.
Sequel to 'Sniper THE SHOOTIST'
During clashes between demonstrators and police that rage on the streets of Tokyo, a young man hides in the house of his brother - a police officer. The latter is accidentally shot by his wife, which forces the young man to flee with her.
Japanese crime film
Minoru visits his home on Okinoerabu island for the first time in thirty years. Seeing the old man who used to be in love with his mother, Minoru recalls the old days spent on the island with his young, beautiful mother.
Nobuko Otowa plays a former Seto Inland Sea island farmer who has moved to the mainland in order to find work, but instead ends up dead. The film begins with the discovery of her corpse, which leads to an investigation that uncovers the narcotics, prostitution, and murder in which many poor farmers had found themselves trapped after World War II.
Yasu, the son of an exiled man, discovered his passion for swordsmanship and went to Edo, where he trained under the name Ito Yagoro. Yagyu Sekishusai, fearing Yagoro's skill, sent his disciples to kill him.
1973 Toei movie.
An employee in an assurance company threatens to commit suicide when management announces a massive layoff, the company uses this threat to its own advantage by turning the incident into an advertising campaign. With the success of the campaign, however, he is no longer a desperate man pointing a gun to his head, but a potential leader who wishes to take advantage of his failed suicide.
Shuji Kanzaki, who lives in the underworld of Manila, winds up in a fierce battle with Japan's biggest gangster.
Japanese crime film.
Yoji Himuro (Hayato Tani) is a ruthless bully terrorizing the classroom with his buffoons. New teachers (Kunie Tanaka and Mari Atsumi) get assigned to tame him down, but they fail miserably. Yoji continues his no-respect rampage until the school principal brings in a new student, an American educated karate expert Noboru Ohinata (Yuki Meguro), to counter Yoji’s terror!
Mysterious incidents occur around geiko in Fukagawa, and there is always the presence of a black cat at the scene of the tragedy. The woman, unaware of her presence, is pulled away by the banya, but a ronin, pretending to be a bouncer of the geisha district, appears and saves her, finally unraveling the fate of the woman.
Yumiko Tateno, an office worker, is somewhat interested in the opposite sex, but she has had few opportunities and remains a virgin. On the thirteenth anniversary of her father's death, Yumiko visits the grave with her mother, Tokiko. There, she meets Yuki, the manager of Yumiko's company and a friend of her father's...
“Ten girls set out on a journey…the first died after being struck by a waterfall…” A succession of homicides occur as sung in the lyrics of a song by a new singer, while radiation is detected from the corpses of the victims. Made for "Operation: Mystery".
Originally commissioned to record urban redevelopment in Osaka’s Kamagasaki district, Hideo Arai transcends reportage to capture a haunting portrait of displacement during Japan’s economic miracle. With a dissonant score by experimental composers Toshi Ichiyanagi and Yuji Takahashi, the film juxtaposes the brutal reality of shantytown "barracks" against the state's modernization projects. Slum remains a visceral critique of social erasure and a vital, observational work of Japanese documentary film.
The program investigates the secrets behind the success of Japan’s most famous baseball team, the Tokyo Yomiuri Kyojin-gun, affectionately known as the Giants. An interview with Kawakami, the coach at the time, retraces the glorious history of this team, which was Japan’s baseball champion for seven consecutive years, until 1971.
Nobuo Nakagawa’s two-part adaptation of San’yūtei Enchō’s classic ghost tale follows the doomed romance between Shinzaburō and Otsuyu, whose death does not end their relationship. As Otsuyu’s spirit returns night after night, the greed of their neighbour Banzō sets in motion a widening chain of betrayal, murder and supernatural revenge. In 2007, the two parts were screened together theatrically as a single 95-minute work during a repertory run at Cinema Vera Shibuya in Tokyo.
