Japanese Essentials

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 bureaucrat tries to find meaning in his life after he discovers he has terminal cancer.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mothers trade in the late days of Geisha. But Otsuta will not give up. This film portraits the day time life of geisha when not entertaining customers.

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

A juvenile delinquent gets out of the pen and causes reckless mayhem, mostly directed at the girlfriend of the journalist who helped send him up.

An aging widower arranges a marriage for his only daughter.

When a ronin requesting seppuku at a feudal lord's palace is told of the brutal suicide of another ronin who previously visited, he reveals how their pasts are intertwined - and in doing so challenges the clan's integrity.

An executive of a Yokohama shoe company becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped by mistake and held for ransom.

After a bombing raid destroys the family store and her husband, Reiko rebuilds and runs the shop out of love stopped short by destruction.

A housewife living under her tyrannical husband has her life stressfully turned upside down after getting raped by a burglar.

A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling.

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

Kon Ichikawa examines the beauty and rich drama on display at the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo, creating a record of observations that range from the expansive to the intimate.

A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality.

After a botched assignment, a rice-fetishizing hitman finds himself in conflict with his organization, and one mysterious, dangerous fellow-hitman in particular.

Over the course of a night, a sex-obsessed young woman, a suicidal man, and a gun-crazy wannabe gangster are taken prisoner of a gang awaiting a shootout between a rival gang at dawn.

Plastics salesman Oshima disappeared without a word to anyone, and has been missing for two years. Shohei Imamura and his crew follow Oshima's fiancé Yoshie and actor Shigeru Tsuyuguchi as they investigate the disappearance.

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.

The trials and tribulations of Eddie and other transvestites in Japan.