50's Golden Age - Japanese Cinema Study

The rape of a bride and the murder of her samurai husband are recalled from the perspectives of a bandit, the bride, the samurai's ghost and a woodcutter.

Farmers from a village exploited by bandits hire a veteran samurai for protection, and he gathers six other samurai to join him.

An old couple visit their children and grandchildren in the city, but receive little attention.

Several people try to talk 27-year-old Noriko into marrying, but all she wants is to keep on caring for her widowed father.

Schoolteacher Hisako Oishi forms an emotional bond with her pupils and teaches them various virtues, while at the same time worrying about their future.

A conscience-driven Japanese soldier traumatized by the events of WWII adopts the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk.

Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, a brilliant tactician, is a loyal subject of the emperor, despite his grave misgivings about leading Japan's navy into war with the United States. He opposes the attack on Pearl Harbor, but overruled, leads his forces to the best of his ability.

Meiji Tenno portrayed the ramp up to the Russo-Japan War. In addition to showing the political events that led to war, it also showed the era from the story of a farm family in rural Japan who sent their son off to war. As such, it could be considered an anti-war movie, showing how, while war is devised by governments, the people do not really understand what war is, and it's combatants often do not know what they are fighting for.

Where Chimneys Are Seen focuses primarily on the interconnected lives of two couples in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Senju, a poor industrial section of Tokyo.

A girl who had left her home village for life in Tokyo returns to her home years later, and evokes a scandal when the locals discover that she's a stripper.

A Communist spy ring in Japan is hard at work trying to sabotage the American war effort during the Korean War, using kidnapping, murder and a disturbed former kamikaze pilot. A U.S. secret agent, posing as a reporter, is dispatched to Tokyo to put a stop to these nefarious activities.

A samurai pursues a married lady-in-waiting.

After a dinosaur-like beast - awoken from undersea hibernation by atom bomb testing - ravages Tokyo, a scientist must decide if his similarly dangerous weapon should be used to destroy it.

Depicts the early life of the legendary warrior Musashi Miyamoto; his years as an aspiring warrior, an outlaw and finally a true samurai.

Musashi Miyamoto returns to Kyoto after years of absence. After a series of fights against the Yoshioka School, he challenges its master to a duel.

Musashi Miyamoto is challenged to a duel by a confident swordsman Sasaki Kojiro. He agrees to fight him in a year's time.

In the closing days of WWII, remnants of the Japanese army in Leyte are abandoned by their command and face certain death by starvation.

Follows Mizoguchi, an aspiring Buddhist monk who became involved in the temple that was owned by his father. Through a series of flashbacks, framed as a police interrogation, Mizoguchi unravels the story of his obsession with the temple beginning with his childhood.

A Japanese pacifist, unable to face the dire consequences of conscientious objection, is transformed by his attempts to compromise with the demands of war-time Japan.

As a conscript in war-time Japan's military, a pacifist struggles to maintain his determination to keep his ideals.

His ideals challenged by life as a conscript in war-time Japan's military, a pacifist faces ever greater tests in his fight for survival.

Follows a woman's fight and survival amid the vicissitudes of life and the cruelty of society.

A tale of ambition, family, love, and war set in the midst of the Japanese Civil Wars of the sixteenth century.

In medieval Japan, a compassionate governor is sent into exile. His wife and children try to join him, but are separated, and the children grow up amid suffering and oppression.