Japanese domestic drama

A small town boy dreams of being a famous fiddler; meanwhile, two convicts escape from prison and hide in the woods

A writer struggles to finish his story against many distractions, but the jazz party next door proves to be too much.

Two young brothers throw a tantrum when they discover that their father isn't the most important man in his workplace.

A single mother works tirelessly as a Ginza bar hostess to ensure a better life for her young son until--her long-lost husband returns.

Keitaro (Obinata Den) is a law student and Yaeko (Aizome Yumeko) is a high school girl. They are neighbors, and their friendship is starting to develop into something more romantic. Then, Yaeko's sister Kyouko (Okada Yoshiko) has a breakup with her husband and returns home. Kyouko is clearly interested in Keitaro and Yae becomes anxious.

When she reaches adulthood, a precocious young woman sets out to find her biological father, who, as her mother tells her, abandoned them for another woman.

The story focuses on the widower Nemoto, ostensibly a businessman, who has one son, Kanichi, the hero of the title. Nemoto remarries; his new wife is a widow with a son and daughter of her own. However, Nemoto's business turns out to be out a shady scam, and he disappears, leaving his wife to raise the three children alone. In order to support the family, she is obliged to become a bar hostess. She conceals this shameful employment from the children, but the truth comes out years later, after her daughter is rejected by her husband's family when they investigate her background.

Two geisha sisters lead a hard life in the Gion district of Kyoto. After one of them feels obliged to support a bankrupt businessman, the other sister sets up various schemes to get rid of him.

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

Two young boys are usurped from being the head of their gang of children. Their father is fired and arrested for this, and they are sent to live with their uncle, only to spend their time thinking of ways to escape back home.

The brothers of Children In The Wind deal with declining family fortunes: they must work when the father becomes sick, and eventually live with their grandfather, which means making new friends and struggling with a different environment.

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

A Japanese family weathers much hardship after their military uncle comes to live with them during WWII.

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.

In postwar Japan, an abandoned boy nobody wants to take care of grows a relationship with a cynical middle-aged woman.

A tyrannical father (the broken drum) squashes the dreams of his family.

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

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.

A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family.

The story of a father and two teen-aged sons, and the rivalry between the two siblings as they begin to discover the attraction of girls.

In Older Brother, Younger Sister, director Mikio Naruse's adaptation of an oft-filmed popular novel by Saisei Murô, the eldest daughter (Machiko Kyô) of a rural family comes home pregnant, testing some already tenuous family bonds. Naruse shows his considerable skill at portraying household dynamics, filming Kyô in relaxed and/or reclining positions (indicative of her character's exhaustively maintained independence) that are then intruded upon by her ill-tempered older brother (Masayuki Mori), whose initially comic, brute-force presence grows increasingly menacing and treacherous as the film progresses.

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?

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

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.