LEVEL: Japanese culture

The story of a decent samurai who is widely considered a scum and a criminal. His bad luck and numerous misunderstandings drag him down the social ladder straight to the gutter.

A man takes a job at an asylum with hopes of freeing his imprisoned wife.

Lord Asano Takumi-no-Kami Naganori was charged with receiving a group of envoys from the Imperial Court in Kyoto. He was young and slightly inexperienced, so he was given the task of instructing Lord Asano in the customs of the ceremony.

In this adaptation from Kawabata, a young student becomes friends with a brother and sister in a troupe of travelling entertainers, who perform at a geisha house in mining country.

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.

The setting is that of a farming family in Ibaraki from where also the originating writers hailed. The film depicts the events of a year during the Meiji era and occurrences and actualities of the farmers of the period. The family has little money. The wife has died and the teenage daughter has to work. The son attends school. The grandfather lives with them as well.

At a rural spa, a soldier accidentally cuts his foot on a hairpin. Soon enough he tracks down its lovely owner and finds himself smitten.

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.

Director Minoru Shibuya adapted Masuji Ibushi's masterpiece to film. The film depicts a doctor who has a sign that reads "Closed Today," but is busy with all kinds of people visiting the hospital.

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

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

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

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

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.

A tragic social drama set in post war Japan about a lonely woman trying to find purpose and stability in a devastated Tokyo.

The story of a group of high school boxing team members who spend their days drinking, sailing and chasing girls, and who more often than not spend their nights getting into brawls. In particular, it focuses upon Tatsuya, a sullen young man, who falls in love with Eiko, a proud upper-class girl.

In the last days of the Shogunate, a resourceful grifter seeks to outwit competing prostitutes, rebellious samurai and other inhabitants of a brothel in order to survive the hardened times.

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.

After a salary-man's fiancée attempts suicide, he remembers his gruesome family history, which sees his ancestors sacrificing themselves for the sake of their cruel lords, and realizes that he's about to repeat their mistakes.

An entomologist on vacation is trapped by local villagers into living with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.

A collection of four Japanese folk tales with supernatural themes.

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.

A doomed love between a paper merchant and a courtesan.

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.

Shinobugawa depicts the emerging love of a student, identified only as "I", for a young waitress named Shino.