(JAP) SHINDÔ KANETO

Shindo's directorial debut is the fictionalized account of the death of his first wife. Following the breakout of the Pacific War, the Japanese film industry was forcibly downsized. Numazaki, a mediocre screenwriter, faces imminent dismissal. His wife Takako encourages him to seek work in Kyoto. Numazaki fails his aptitude test, which is to write a script for the famous but demanding director Sakaguchi (a veiled reference for Kenji Mizoguchi). Takako offers to support his husband for a year, so that he can hone his craft from scratch.

Post war Hiroshima: It's been four years since the last time she visited her hometown. Takako faces the after effects of the A-bomb when she travels around the city to call on old friends.

Shusei Tokuda's starkly realistic novel about a poor girl pressed into becoming a geisha was forcefully adapted by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba). When Ginko (Nobuko Otowa, Shindo's wife) falls in love with one of her clients, she is handily rebuffed by the young man's wealthy family, and left to wander from geisha house to geisha house.

Postwar Tokyo. Pin (Jukichi Uno) and Toku (Taiji Tonoyama) live in the squatter area of Kappanuma. Pin and Toku are avid gamblers. They take in Tsuru (Nobuko Otowa), a slightly demented woman who has run away from a geisha house.

Time; a few years after the surrender of Japan in the Second World War. The country is in ruins, economy devastated, and the vulnerable masses deprived of work; let alone the basic amenities of life. A new order, led by voratius opportunists is in the make where the weak are easy prey to the hydraheaded mountebanks. Betrayed and exploited by their employer, a group of five trainee insurance brokers face the challenge of commuting suicide, or taking the path of felony. They choose the latter and decide to rub a money truck to ease the suffering and pain of their family members.

The story of a Japanese fishing boat whose crew were accidental victims of fallout from the Bikini hydrogen bomb tests.

A family of four are the sole inhabitants of a small island where they struggle each day to irrigate their crops.

The ship Kaijin Maru is left adrift after losing all means of navigation in a storm. The four people on the ship are becoming increasingly desperate as food and water run out.

Tamiko is a divorced mother with a seriously ill son, struggling to save him and give both a sense of their existence. She lives with her mother and brother, but will marry a man older than her. The dramatic shadow of Hiroshima bombs is always hovering over the fate of the characters.

Two women kill samurai and sell their belongings for a living. While one of them is having an affair with their neighbor, the other woman meets a mysterious samurai wearing a bizarre mask.

A morally-suspect and self-serving retainer rashly baits her high-ranking employer, a regional governor, with a salacious story of a former acquaintance and catastrophe ensues.

Two women are raped and killed by samurai soldiers. Soon they reappear as vengeful ghosts who seduce and brutally murder the passing samurai.

Otowa is a former Seto Inland Sea island farmer who has moved to the mainland in order to find work, but instead ends up dead.