Hisashi Taki

After handing in a report on the treatment of Chinese colonial labor, Kaji is offered the post of labour chief at a large mining operation in Manchuria, which also grants him exemption from military service. He accepts and moves with his newlywed wife Michiko, but when he tries to put his ideas of more humane treatment into practice, he finds himself at odds with scheming officials, cruel foremen, and the military police.

In a time of continuous civil wars ravaging the fields of feudal Japan, the eldest son of a very poor peasant family, living alongside the bridge over the Fuefuki river, decides to serve a warlord to escape his miserable condition, being soon followed by his younger brothers. Although not all the men of the family take this tragic path of death, women of the family will be doomed to endure the pain of loss during the next five generations.

The lives of a teenager, his impoverished family, a wealthy young woman who buys a pigeon from him, and his caring teacher converge and consequently become more complicated.

A Tokyo family running a liquor store overcome impotence and dysfunction as they induce an understanding through each other of how to deal with their individual problems.

A botanist woos the secretary of an industrialist whose company threatens the local water supply.

A group of rank-and-file soldiers are jailed for crimes against humanity, themselves victims of a nation refusing to bear its burdens as a whole.

The plans of a trio of burglars are continually thwarted by the arrival of visitors to the house they plan to rob.