iCM Japanese watchlist

A doomed love between a paper merchant and a courtesan.

Trilogy about the travels of the kindly bakuto Kunisada Chuji. Film depicts Chuji's attempt to save the geisha Oshina, a rebellion against the rigid social structure of Edo Japan. Part 3. "The Chuji Patrol"

A housewife living under her tyrannical husband has her life stressfully turned upside down after getting raped by a burglar.

Kon Ichikawa examines the beauty and rich drama on display at the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo, creating a record of observations that range from the expansive to the intimate.

The orphaned Makioka sisters look for a husband for their third sister, Yukiko, as the rebellious youngest sister, Taeko, is kept waiting her turn.

When Wabisuke's father-in-law unexpectedly dies, the family goes through a series of events and occurrences as the funeral unfolds over three days in their home.

Akanishi Kakita moved from the countryside to a big city. Although he comes from the samurai class, he now lives in poverty among the common people in times of rebellion, but the failed Kakita is not skilled in martial arts.

A widow sends her only son away to receive a better education. Years later, she visits him, finding him a poor school teacher with a wife and son.

A young woman becomes a mistress of her boss in order to support her family.

The legendary Forty-seven ronin plot to avenge the death of their lord, Asano Naganori, by killing Kira Yoshinaka, a shogunate official responsible for Asano being forced to commit seppuku.

A schoolteacher struggles to raise his son Ryohei by himself, having neither money nor future prospects.

Alternating in time, between the end of World War II and 1953, Haruko, a widow, does what she can to keep her daughter Utako and son Seiichi safe, fed, and sheltered. By 1953, it's clear that the children, as they enter adulthood, want little to do with their mother. They have a different view of their childhood and her sacrifices: in their eyes, she abandoned them to live a life of pleasure. The self-pitying Haruko is sure her life was one of pain and humiliation, for her children. As Seiichi, now a medical student, announces his plans to let a wealthy man adopt him, and as Utako considers the offer to go away with a married man who is her English teacher, what is left for Haruko?

What is the life of a Geisha like once her beauty has faded and she has retired? Kin has saved her money, and has become a wealthy money-lender, spending her days cold-heartedly collecting debts. Even her best friends, Tomi, Nobu, and Tamae, who were her fellow Geisha, are now indebted to her. For all of them, the glamor of their young lives has passed; Tomi and Tamae have children, but their children have disappointed them. Kin has two former lovers who still pursue her; one she wants to see, and the other she doesn't. But even the one she remembers fondly, when he shows up, proves to be a disappointment.

Two cops on stakeout wait for a murderer.

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.

A young hoodlum decides to work for a criminal organization that is tearing itself apart.

Set in Kawaguchi, just north of Tokyo in the early 60s, the movie chronicles the lives of poor foundry workers and their families; and one girl's dreams of self-improvement through going on to higher education.

A Korean man is sentenced to death by hanging, but he survives the execution. For the following two hours, his executioners try to work out how to handle the situation in this black farce.

During World War II, a Japanese soldier finds himself assigned to a kamikaze mission against a U.S. battleship.

Two interwoven stories. The first is a biography of anarchist Sakae Osugi which follows his relationship with three women in the 1920s. The second centers around two 1960s students researching Osugi's theories.

Tora-San, an itinerant peddler who is thrown out of his father's house twenty years before but reconnects with his aunt, uncle and sister Sakura. Tora wreaks some havoc in their lives, like getting drunk and silly at a marriage meeting.

A young boys' coming of age tale set in a strange, carnivalesque village becomes the recreation of a memory that the director has twenty years later.

Detectives investigate the murder of an old man found in a Tokyo rail yard.

Third (Toshiyuki Nagashima) is an aimless young man who hangs around with a couple of girls who are amateur hookers. One day, while acting as their pimp, he gets into a conflict with a young gangster and winds up killing him.

A surreal period film following a university professor and his eerie nomad friend as they go through loose romantic triangles and face death in peculiar ways.