Acting: Setsuko Hara (Selected filmography)

After a young shopkeeper steals the knife of one of his costumers, a samurai, a chain of increasingly complex events is set into motion.

Teruo is an adopted son of an old samurai family that returns to Japan after living in Germany and is expected to marry Mitsuko. But he's struggling to readjust to Japan and intends to marry an Aryan woman.

The last film of director Itami took inspiration from Les Miserables. Transpiring during the Southwestern War of 1877 in Japan, which was the last civil war in the country, a criminal escapes prison only to be found by a monk. The criminal decides to turn a new leaf based on their conversation and goes on to become a town's mayor. He hears news of a mistaken arrest and identity. The revelation of truth is the start of a series of miseries.

A father with no wife has three daughters with the oldest one (played by Hara Setsuko) at the age to be married off, which means the man needs to re-marry in order for someone to take care of him and his daughters. With the eldest and father now married, there is tension and an uncomfortable distance between the two remaining daughters and the mother-in-law. The man admonishes his daughters and notices that his middle daughter is hiding a photograph of her mother that she talks to every day. The father takes the photo away from his daughter.

Two British brothers who are making money for their homeland are meeting buyers for opium in China. There is a police force to counter the dealers, but is not only ineffectual, but also corrupt and dealing in narcotics itself. Confronting the situation the government assigns an incognito bureaucrat to the issue. He confronts and arrests the police, but the bulk of the drugs is with the Britons.

The daughter of a politically disgraced university professor struggles to find a place for herself in love and life, in the uncertain world of Japan leading into WWII.

After Japan's loss in the war, the wealthy, cultured, liberal Anjo family have to give up their mansion and their way of life. They hold one last ball at the house before leaving. The seemingly cold, cynical son secretly grieves for his defeated father and the values that the war destroyed, while the daughter tries to prevent father from taking his life and to find her own place in the new Japan.

When a post-war high school girl is seen with an older boy many find the nontraditional notion unacceptable and try to trick the girl and also assail her right to continue the relationship. Cue her teacher who not only supports the girl, but encourages her pupils to do as they wish and ignore what society indoctrinates. Not everyone agrees with the teacher and her modern ideas however.

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

A grade school in Tokyo, where students curse and gamble, has a pond on-premises with one particular teacher who is in charge and takes care of it. The pond holds a number of carp, but someone is snatching them. Amidst the student, one lives with his mother in poverty. The mother works at a factory whose owner is a member of the parent-teacher association and asks her son to help her employer's son to help with homework. Her son is not happy spending time doing this. Finally one day the teacher finds out who is stealing the carp when the poor boy finds out and reports it. It is a child who is not attending the school.

A Japanese veteran, driven partially mad from the war, travels to the snowy island of Hokkaido where he soon enters a love triangle with his best friend and a disgraced woman.

Michiyo lives in a small home in Osaka and is not happy with her marriage; all she does is cook and clean for her husband.

A family chooses a match for their daughter Noriko, but she, surprisingly, has her own plans.

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

An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.

The film was adopted from the bestselling novel by Momoko Ishii, which was published following World War II. When a girl is in danger of drowning in a lake she had perceived as the clouds, the god in the sky transports her to the heavens showing her existence without her and prior to her birth. Not only that, but she comes to meet her dead relatives and get to know them as well.

This wry chamber piece from director Mikio Naruse focuses on a couple whose pet peeves and minor irritations escalate into major rifts and animosity.

The story of the man named Ushinosukein who arrives at Tokyo Station in 1927. He was born in a poor area of Shikoku and at age 18 came across a beautiful girl named Kanako in his hometown. She was so pretty that he wrote her a love letter which became talk of town and, in turn, prompted him to flee to Tokyo. Upon arrival in the capital he works at a trading company and, given his good memory and skill, succeeds. One day he returns to his hometown only to find out that Kanako is married and living in Tokyo now.

Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot take the truth of being abandoned as a child.

May Kawaguchi is a famous Japanese fashion designer. Returning to Tokyo from her home in New York, she travels incognito with a tour group, in hopes of having a quiet vacation without being noticed. But she is spotted and the press has a field-day with the returning celebrity. Her hopes of rest shattered, she agrees to put on a large-scale fashion show.

A widow tries to marry off her daughter with the help of her late husband's three friends.

The story of a family in Tokyo who live under the same roof in a large house and include the widowed sixty-year-old mother, older son and his wife, the youngest daughter and the older daughter who, while being married, is experiencing domestic problems and has moved back in. The latter woman's husband soon dies however making the move permanent. With life insurance money flowing in she not only can afford to pay rent, but also loan some cash to her brother who unbeknownst to his mother has taken on a loan from the bank with the house as collateral. The loan was needed as his wife's aunt's factory needs an infusion of funds.

The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.

After their lord is tricked into committing ritual suicide, forty-seven samurai warriors await the chance to avenge their master and reclaim their honor.