Takashi Shimura

In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who...

Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, "Rashomon" is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of...

Japan is thrown into a panic after several ships are sunk near Odo Island. An expedition to the island led by Dr. Kyohei Yamane soon discover...

Two fishing scout pilots make a horrifying discovery when they encounter a second Godzilla alongside a new monster named Anguirus. Without the weapon...

During WWII, Germans obtain the immortal heart of Frankenstein's monster and transport it to Japan to prevent it being seized by the Allies. Kept in...

Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the...

Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him...

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to...

Shiro Yabe, a young gangster who boarded the second class on the Tokaido Line after finishing a dangerous smuggling transaction in Kobe, is next to a...

The Yoshikawa family is a typical small town family. With only the father's and daughter's salaries to support the family's six members, life is not...

When a broadcasting company takes away its financial support from a symphony orchestra, some of the members refuse to admit defeat. The first...

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes...

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money...

Toru Sagara, a lone wolf assassin, is imprisoned for betraying his employer, Hanawa. After completing his sentence, he immediately takes revenge on...

Kiichi Nakajima, an elderly foundry owner, is convinced that Japan will be affected by an imminent nuclear war, and resolves to move his family to...

A humble and simple Takezo abandons his life as a knight errant. He's sought as a teacher and vassal by Shogun, Japan's most powerful clan leader....

Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Kurosawa's tightly paced, beautifully composed "Sanjuro." In this companion piece and...

In this loose adaptation of "Hamlet," illegitimate son Kôichi Nishi climbs to a high position within a Japanese corporation and marries the...

Kameda, who has been in an asylum on Okinawa, travels to Hokkaido. There he becomes involved with two women, Taeko and Ayako. Taeko comes to love...

Akira Kurosawa's lauded feudal epic presents the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid...

A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the...

Doctor Sanada treats gangster Matsunaga after he is wounded in a gunfight, and discovers that he is suffering from tuberculosis. Sanada tries to...

A celebrity photograph sparks a court case as a tabloid magazine spins a scandalous yarn over a painter and a famous singer.

In the midst of an attempt to take over his company, a powerhouse executive is hit with a huge ransom demand when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped by...

Based on the original work of Akutagawa Prize-winning writer Ashihei Hino, the film depicts the love of the proud geisha Nobukichi Hakata in the...

The story of Sanshiro, a strong stubborn youth, who travels into the city in order to learn Jujutsu. However, upon his arrival he discovers a new...

After facing hard times, an orphan Korean boy gets adopted to Japanese society. He meets several Japanese people who are kind to him, and grows up...

Sazae finally gets married, but right after that, Masuo is transferred to Osaka. A heartbroken Sazae sends her parents on a silver wedding trip, and...

Yoshitsune Minamoto, disguised with his retinue as monks, must make do with a comical porter as their guide through hostile territory en route to...

1962 Japanese movie

In Japan, scientifically advanced invaders from the war-destroyed planet Mysteroid cause an entire village to vanish, then send a giant robot out to...

Over more than a decade, the daughter of a Kyoto Imperial University professor comes of age as she witnesses her father fired for opposing the rise...

A young idealistic doctor works at his father's clinic in a small and seedy district. During the war, he contracts syphilis from the blood of a...

Ayako becomes the mistress of her boss so she can pay her father's debt and prevent him from going to prison for embezzlement.

Romantic melodrama

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

1962 Japanese movie

1962 Japanese movie

On his release from prison a young yakuza, along with his brother, decides to turn his back on criminal life instead of taking over the position of...

After a meteorite unleashes a three-headed beast upon Tokyo, Mothra tries to unite with Godzilla and Rodan to battle the extraterrestrial threat.

An early film by Kon Ichikawa

Bright samurai movie innovatively adapted from a classic story. A traveling masterless samurai is asked by a daughter of an established samurai...

Based on the comic by Ichio Matsushita

Young Lord Gentaro (Otomo Ryutaro) takes a journey to Edo in search of his future wife. Easier said than done, evil forces lurk in Edo and Gentaro...

Following the detonation of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese military and the government clash over the demand from the...

The stories of several young women who work in a 'precision optical instruments' factory during the second World War. Despite illness, injury, and...

Shipwreck survivors found on the presumably uninhabited Infant Island leads to a scientific expedition that discovers a surviving native population...

After being expelled from the Chiba Dojo , Hirate Zoshu , along with his acquaintances Tadaki Ganryu and Tamon Jubei, were hired as bodyguards by...

Shinichi is not only poor, he is also deaf, and leads a joyless life with his sick mother. His one happiness is his friendship with a girl who works...

During an assignment, foreign correspondent Steve Martin spends a layover in Tokyo and is caught amid the rampage of an unstoppable prehistoric...

Lt. Col. Senda resists the idea of sending Japanese fighter pilots on suicide missions. He believes that what is really necessary for Japan to regain...

Zatoichi runs afoul of some evil fugitives, working for a corrupt law official.

Zatoichi, the famed blind swordsman, returns to his home village for the first time in many years. He is befriended by Omiyo, who had the same...

An exciting film about thugs, in which murders and drugs, justice and resentment explode in the dark city of Tokyo with the help of guns and violence.

Japan, 1860. The men of the Mito clan, victims of the Ansei purge, anxiously prowl around the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle with the intention of...

A man with a dark past comes from Tokyo to the fishing port of Izu, and tries to begin a new life as a fisherman.

The famous showdown at Kagiya corner has been told many times, but never before with the realism and intensity of this version scripted by Kurosawa...

Obscure French version of the original Godzilla. The film combines elements of the original Toho version and the American King of the Monsters! in a...

Three bank robbers, Eijima, Nojiri, and Takasugi, flee the police and escape into the mountains. At an inn high in the Japanese Alps, Eijima and...

A samurai is ordered by his lord to go to Edo and investigate the truth behind the rumor of a rebellion against him.

1962 Japanese movie

In the middle of the period of high economic growth in Japan, a family is thrown into disarray over work, money, and romance. Their father's sudden...

A historical drama that depicts the touching beauty of world obsession and human love in the style of light comedy, in the center of which is a young...

Kitagawa is an engineer charged with construction of a gigantic tunnel through the Japan Alps for the transportation of equipment in the building of...

Hidejuro is sent to prison after killing the boss of a rival family. After being released, he discovers that his family has scattered and he is taken...

In this movie, Sashichi tries to catch a serial killer who kills his victims with shurikens.

A captivating operetta by Masahiro Makino based on Juppensha Ikku's humorous novel "Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige" starring Chiezo Kataoka and Kyoji Sugi.

The legend of the birth of Shintoism. In Fourth Century Japan, the Emperor's son Ouso expects to succeed his father on the throne, but Otomo, the...

The story is about the social problems faced by Japan's indigenous Ainu, mostly centered on the reactions of the characters to their oppressed state.

This is Kanjûrô Arashi's first film with Nikkatsu after his independent production company went bankrupt (many of these independent...

Taikoki is a legendary biography of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who rose to the office of taikō. And the story of this film is about the rise to power of...

A classic wartime jidaigeki about the life of the famous samurai and first of the "Great Unifiers" of Japan, Oda Nobunaga, with Kataoka Chiezo and...

Taking a message from Hiroshi's father to heart, Torajiro attempts to give up his wandering ways.

1962 Japanese movie

Slice of life film centered on a couple of years in the life of a rural high school girl.

A girl rebels against her mother, who runs a brothel in Yokohama, and attempts to find freedom on her own.

Sen Rikyu is a ceremonial tea master who advises warlord Hideyoshi in sixteenth-century feudal Japan. His daughter, the beautiful Lady Ogin, has an...

An adventurous and daring sailor sets sail to the castle of an ailing king to stop an evil premier, hungry for power and wealth, from succeeding the...

Just released on parole, one young man hurtles towards a face-off with the gangsters controlling Shinjuku and its lucrative prostitutes.

Based on the old tale of Jiraiya, this 1937 version is essentially a revenge story with fantastic visuals.

During the reign of Hidetada, the second shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty, the advisor Okubo Hikozaemon (Ganjiro Nakamura) entrusts the young Takechiyo...

A film by Hideo Suzuki.

Part one of The Masterless 47.

Japanese war film.

A jazz pianist named Shiro Tsuda returns from an overseas tour unwittingly carrying drugs that have been sewn into his jacket. When he stops by to...

Adventures of Mori no Ishimatsu, a famous member of Jirocho gang. Ishimatsu is strong in righteousness weak to mercy, who falls in love at first...

This is one of the many films based on the legend of Chuji Kunisada, a wandering gambler and a defender of the weak in the Edo period. In other...

“Dokuro sen” (The Skull Coin) is the first film adaptation of the popular novel by Kikuo Sumita. The story evolves around the seven...

After the death of a colleague, the workers at a factory form a labor union.

Remake of Kurosawa's films Sanshiro Sugata and Sanshiro Sugata part 2. A young man, Sanshiro Sugata, troubled by personal problems, takes up judo....

As the Killer Priest Shinkai travels around Japan during the Meiji era, he comes to the aid of a village headman fighting corruption from up above....

A young scriptwriter with a yakuza upbringing, an iron-fire dancer, a young painter, and a pure-hearted downtown girl fall in love in Asakusa in this...

One of Japan's most popular stories is the tale of Kutsukake Tokijiro, a traveling gambler who finds that he must take care of the wife and child of...

1962 Japanese movie

Forty-seven Ronin of the Ako clan are waiting for the right moment to avenge the insult and death of their master. The film tells the story of one of...

A man is brutally murdered and his famed shamisen (a three-stringed musical instrument) called the "Yamabiko" stolen. Prince Kogenta swears to avenge...

A re-edited Italian-language dubbed version of the original Godzilla, using as a basis the U.S. version, "Godzilla, King of the Monsters!" (1956),...

After a chance encounter with Hiroshi's father on a bus, Tora decides to get serious and reflect on the mortality of man. His plans are derailed...

In 1976, a drifting star named Gorath is discovered to be on a collision course with Earth. Although it is smaller than Earth, its enormous mass is...

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....

Early Japanese three-part samurai / fantasy serial.

1945 Japanese movie

A fishing village is terrorized by a giant whale, and the fishermen are determined to kill it.

When Katsukawa, a low ranking vassal, learns that his greedy superior, Tatewaki, has hatched a plan to expand his territory, he and his comrades...

1952 Japanese movie

Lt. Koji Kitami is a navigator-bombardier in Japan's Naval Air Force. He participates in the Japanese raid on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in...

Shinkichi, a peasant employed as a cloth-dyer, has a dream: in the midst of the civil war which ravages Japan, he hopes to revive the long-banned...

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, a brilliant tactician, is a loyal subject of the emperor, despite his grave misgivings about leading Japan's navy into war...

A tale of three Yakuza gamblers who traveled Japan during the samurai era living by their wits and sword skills. Told in 3 separate vignettes, each...

Koharu, a young geisha, is in love with Kenichi, an apprentice carpenter to her father Masagoro. Their love life comes to a sudden halt after an...

Story of loyal sailors giving their lives for their country as human torpedoes towards the end of the War.

Japanese film directed by Tadashi Imai.

A melodrama based on the novel by Yasunari Kawabata, telling about the tragic fate of a mother and daughter who are attracted to the same man.

When a young soldier is killed while trying to prevent his younger sister, Kaoru, from being sold into a life of prostitution, his commander, Col....

The Way of Drama unfolds in the world of kabuki in Osaka, but also addresses the politics of popular culture and the rivalry between theatrical...

Third part in Tadashi Sawashima's Theater of Life trilogy.

The Angry Street includes a great deal of location shooting in the rebuilt city, including downtown streets, residential neighborhoods, the campus of...

During the raging war between the Toyotomi and Tokugawa clans, the swordsman Mohei (whose family has been completely decimated) is recruited by...

Walking home late one night, a down-on-his-luck sewage worker runs into a drunk businessman with a briefcase full of cash. His impulsive decision...

Lord Taro must deliver a money chest but is robbed by brigands led by Jibu. One of Jibu's men, Rokuro, steals the money from Jibu, but after meeting...

An umbrella maker with a shopping addiction finds himself in dire straits when his debts force him to consider selling his attractive, desirable...

Based on Matsumoto Seicho's classic mystery novel of the same name, the story centers around a group of detectives who are determined to find the...

During the 1200's, legendary Buddhist monk Nichiren returns from his studies to lead Japan out of moral crisis and prepare to fight Mongol invaders...

A woman and her daughter are in love with the same man, a chef at the restaurant that the mother manages. He is slightly crippled from frostbite in...

Based on a 1956 television feature on Japan’s national network, NHK, this is one of Uchida’s rarest films. A socially conscious drama...

Japan, 1701. A group of samurai become rônin after their lord is forced to commit seppuku for assaulting a court official, who will become the...

The story of Kanesuke and Entaro who are master elephant trainers in charge of two elephants, Taro and Hanako at the Metropolitan Zoo.

The tale of Katakana Yonetaro aka "The Shark," a rough-and-tumble horse trader in Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido, despite being a father and...

Former soldier, Suehiro Katsuji, fights violent gangs and powerful Chinese merchants during the post-war period in Japan.

An attempt is made to suppress a journalist's investigation of collusion between a rural police chief and the local gangster bosses.

Young coal miner Takeda leaves Kyushu in search of a better job in Tokyo, only to fall into the lucrative yet dangerous life of a yakuza.

A 1944 propaganda film that depicts the fictionalised career of IJAAF pilot Tateo Kato, who led the 64th Sentai during the early months of the...

The story of Yoshinaka during the tumultuous period of warring related to us in the Heike Monogatari. Close in setting to Kinugasa’s famous...

The life of three beautiful princesses in feudal Japan.

The story of an airport and its air traffic control crew in a remote and northern Japanese town. Three of the air traffic controllers are female with...

A young man, convicted of a crime and imprisoned in the penitentiary, comes to believe that his wife is being unfaithful to him. He contrives his...

A Japanese woman, the mistress of an American, falls in love with her servant.

The picture belongs to the jidai gekki (historic) genre. It is a powerful story of violence and eroticism, picturing a world at once sordid and...

Yukiko Nogami is rescued during a mountain blizzard by handsome forester Shinkichi, and the two subsequently fall in love. But when Shinkichi dies in...

Coach Shimamura of the hapless Sparrows baseball team is pleased to obtain a hot new pitcher named Onishi. But when Onishi begins a romantic...

Yakuza boss Furuya leans more and more on his protege Takao Shoji, though Shoji has become romantically involved with Furuya's mistress, Natsue....

Kikumori runs a cabaret on the docks, while his friend Kaji operates transport boats. When a gang of drug dealers tries to force the pair to...

A skilled country doctor's talents are such that he can even perform operations as difficult and novel as removing a patient's kidney for the first...

A Japanese detective, Kikuchi, is framed for a murder and sent to prison. When he is paroled, he joins a private detective agency to investigate his...

A gritty, noirish gangster saga.

In 1943, the Aleutian island of Kiska was fortified by a small contingent of Japanese soldiers. When word arrived of an impending attack by an...

A good set-in-per-WW2 ninkyô type film with outstanding performances.

In 1943, Japan is amidst the Pacific War. Sobei Sonoda is one of the wealthiest landowners of the San'in region. His land spread for miles, as far as...

Mine, the only daughter of Kiyagen, is faced with running the family's timber business when her father falls ill. Under a great deal of pressure to...

Ryoma is a former military man who gets to know the leader of a yakuza group and begins to work with them, helping them defend themselves against...

Suehiro Katsuji, a prisoner of Abashiri, is sent to Shikoku to work at a dock where a fierce turf battle takes place between a local gang and the...

Dramatic story of one man trying to make a difference.

An actor, hit on the head, dreams that he has become legendary one-eyed gangster Mori no Ishimatsu.

Soldiers Hayate and Yaheiji secretly escape from their besieged castle. Hayate has left behind his lover, Kano. On his way, Hayate is wounded and...

A legendary gangster raises himself out of a small town and gathers followers on his rise to power.

Lord Oda Nobunaga gains control of nearly all of Japan and tries to enlist the aid of Magoichi and his 3.000 gunners.

Japanese soldiers stranded in Manokwari, New Guinea, improvise a theater play to keep their spirits up and endure the extremely difficult conditions.

A group of criminals whose diamond heist goes wrong retreat to a WWII era bunker where tensions begin to rise.

A skilled assassin's services are called upon to put an end to the ugly turf battle between two yakuza families, Mitsuwa and Aikawa. Forced by the...

A Japanese bullet train is threatened with a bomb that will explode automatically if the train slows below 80 km/h, unless a ransom is paid. Police...

On the night of the summer Obon festival, Hagiwara Shinzaburo meets a beautiful courtesan named Otsuyu. Not knowing she's a ghost, he becomes...

The 11th and final film in the Gang series. Most of the films had different directors and cast, and were only connected by the title and Toei's...

Fifth film in the long-running series Daiei Studio's Woman Gambler with Kyoko Enami starring where she plays the woman gambler Ogin.

Eighth film in the long-running series Daiei Studio's Woman Gambler with Kyoko Enami starring where she plays the woman gambler Ogin.

Two sisters, one a dancer and the other a script supervisor at a big movie studio, become embroiled in union activities when a strike is called in...

Historical and political detective. The main characters are drawn into court intrigues, and the investigation of corruption in the administration of...

With a Kansai syndicate vying for Tokyo, one man reunites with his roguish half-brother in the midst of negotiations, when all hell breaks loose.

There is an inn named Asano Ya in the port town, and a beautiful woman works there. Every year, during a local festival, travelling artists and...

Kogure, an industrial spy, is tasked by Sawada, head of the research department of the Nisshin Corporation, to learn the secrets of the design of a...

Young Sentaro struggles to avenge the murder of his younger sister Osuga and their father.

Somewhat unique as it appears to be one of the very rare appearances of master thespian Itô in a yakuza role.

Documentary made by Toho for the Masterworks reissue of all of its Kurosawa films. This one focuses on "Ikiru" (1952).

Ken, son of a former samurai settles with his family in the west from Japan. Soon his family is killed in front of him by stagecoach robbers, making...

Two youths - the serious son of a Buddhist abbot and his rakish pal - quarrel over a restaurant keeper's daughter. When one of the youths die the...

The Blue Pearl depicts the interplay between a young man from Tokyo and two ama (pearl divers; literally “women of the sea”) in a...

Japanese mystery film.

Drama about two college friends, now working for the same banking firm, torn apart by jealousy over their inequitable positions and love lives.

A woman marries, gives birth to a stillborn child, and divorces, falls in love with a hotel-keeper, only to find herself subordinated to his drive...

In the midst of the warring age, a young samurai Kyonosuke defies his former lord Hojo Ujikatsu in order to avenge his parents’ deaths.

Japanese drama film.

When a group of young geologists declares a mountainside marked for residential development unstable, they are met with scorn on two fronts. On one...

Japanese family drama.

A resolute young man searching for his mother, whom he was separated from as a child, defies a family who mistreat the poor and homeless.

Ken Takakura stars as Ryoji one of the Aramasa family's loyal lieutenants whao takes the burden of his family being insulted by the Tanuma's family...

An employee at an oil cartel (Mihashi) is haunted by an act years before when he euthanized a fellow soldier when the two were adrift at sea during...

The eighth installment in the popular film series starring Tomisaburo Wakayama. Embarrassed by the chairman of the Seiyu-kai for not having a family...

An honorable yakuza syndicate deeply rooted in Kyoto fights for survival when a new breed of gangsters threaten their very existence.

The tale of Nakayama Yasubei’s duel is famous, even if he in reality probably did not cut down 18 opponents. The story has been related in...

A romantic melodrama about the shifting relationship between Ryosuke and Miki as their precarious employment and social circumstances shift around...

A prehistoric monster called Gigantis emerges alongside another creature named Angurus.

Kansuke Yamamoto is a samurai who dreams of a country united, peaceful from sea to sea. He enters the service of Takeda, the lord of Kai domain. He...

The vassals of the Asano clan, who surrendered the castle & became wanderers, deceive the enemy and the public, wait for an opportunity to avenge...

A young girl moves to Tokyo and endures the rivalries between other high school girls of varying cultural and economic backgrounds.

The fall of an accountant enthralled by the sexual charms of a cabaret dancer.

A gorgeous tragic love picture scroll depicting a beautiful woman who weeps over her strange fate and falters in her search for true love!

Youth movie.

An Ishiro Honda film.

A young man and woman are determined to marry despite opposition from her parents.

An Ishiro Honda film.

Set in Japan's Tenpyou era (729-749 CE), four young monks are sent to China to study Buddhism and bring a high priest back to Japan with them. The...

Adaptation of the novel by Kan Shimozawa.

Professor Nishiyama, after studying and interpreting the prophecies of Nostradamus, realizes that the end of the world is at hand. Unfortunately,...

A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six...

The tale of a feudal swordsman who cynically takes no responsibility for anything, relegating it to others, and then taking the credit.

1950 Toho film directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

Sumako, a country girl, becomes a great actress with the help of Hogetsu,a scholar who brought some of European realism to the Japan's stage. The...

With his simple appearance, eyes shining with love and a sense of justice, and voice burning with youthful passion, the eleven students felt...

1947 Toho film directed by Tadashi Imai

Three and a half years after Japan was bombed, the tax authorities organized the T-Men. Nango is in love with a girl called Mibu, and the two are...

1958 Theater of Life adaptation.

Set at the end of World War II and after Japan's defeat, it is a melodrama about a man and a woman at the mercy of war. Wataru is entrusted by his...

Film directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1948 Japanese drama film.

Megastar Kataoka Chiezo is Vice-commander Hijikata Toshizo of the Shinsengumi in this realistic tale of Japan’s inner battles that led to the...

Because of trickery, the Jinya Group has only seven days to complete a mountain road project or it will forfeit a major dam construction job to the...

Japanese war movie.

The most dangerous hired gun in Kyushu's underworld has managed to trigger a vicious gang war, and now, there's a contract on his life. Though nobody...

Also known as Crazy Uproar.

Wataru Naohiko who has the prosecutor general as his father became a young composer and its symphony "saint" invoked the world echoed. But his...

Lord for a Night is a 1946 Japanese film directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa.

It is a historical drama that follows Katsu Kaishu's efforts to surrender Edo Castle bloodlessly in the first year of the Meiji period.

Tadashi Imai 1946 movie

Naosuke, a servant of Okajima Yasoemon, devoted himself to his master. One day, his master Okajima Yasoemon, lost his face in front of people. It...

Jida-geki by Santaro Marune.

This action film depicts the conflict between two brothers, one a detective and the other a yakuza.

A 1961 film directed by Yoshiyuki Kuroda.