Yūnosuke Itō

A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.

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 look for the meaning of his life.

In this companion piece and sequel to "Yojimbo," jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a proper samurai on its ear.

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.

In a remote village where food is scarce, elders who reach the age of 70 are carried by their children to the top of a nearby mountain to die in solitude. Orin, a vibrant 69-year-old grandmother, has accepted her fate — but struggles to prepare the rest of her family for the ritual.

Gisuke Hayashida is an illegal dentist during the day and a burglar by night. One night during a burglary he witnesses a train derailment. Some communists are found guilty of causing the incident, but he knows it wasn't them. He can save innocent people but for that he must confess his own crime.

A high school science teacher is the butt of all his students' jokes, until their bus is hijacked on a school trip. But something more sinister lurks beneath the surface: he's building an atomic bomb in his apartment.

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 undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.

Official Shogunate executioner Ogami Itto has been framed for disloyalty to the Shogunate by the Yagyu clan, against whom he now is waging a one-man war, along with his infant son, Daigoro.

In Burma during the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier separated from his unit disguises himself as a Buddhist monk to escape imprisonment as a POW.

Set in the postwar turmoil, Akasaka no shimai paints a vivit portrait of the life of three sisters who struggle to live in Tokyo.

A youth drama directed by Kiyoshi Horiike, who was adapted from "Young Tokyo no Yane" by Akira Saiga from "Oka wa Hanazakari" based on Yojiro Ishizaka. Miwako Kazuki left the English literature department and joined Toyo Critics. She was attracted by Noro, the editor-in-chief, whose wife died a few years ago and was now living with her two orphans and her old mother....

Following the detonation of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese military and the government clash over the demand from the Allies for unconditional surrender. Minister of the Army Anami leads the military officers who propose to fight on, even to the death of every Japanese citizen. Emperor Hirohito, however, joins with his ministers in asking the unthinkable, the peaceful surrender of Japan. When the military plots a coup to overthrow the Emperor's civilian government, Anami must face the choice between his desires and loyalty to his Emperor.

A drama film based on Ken Domon's photography of the children around the Chikuho coal mines.

Period film about a feudal era judge living in Edo

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 assassinating Naosuke Ii of Hikone, tairō of the Tokugawa shogunate and responsible for their misfortune.

A soldier has been in the Japanese military for the entirety of WWII, and in that time, his dedication to the army has never faltered. However, as the war draws to a close, his commanding officers become increasingly desperate and push their men to ever more absurd extremes. The ridiculousness of the orders from above peak when the hero of the story is assigned to drive a one-man submarine straight into the hull of an enemy battleship.

Charged with insubordination for punching a superior, Sergeant Kosugi is shipped to China in the last desperate days of the Second World War. His commander, Captain Sakuma, is vicious and dictatorial. Sakuma places Kosugi in charge of training for combat what once was the military band. Kosugi must somehow prepare his inept soldiers for the rigors of combat.

Nishi is an advertising executive for a caramel company that is planning to launch a new product, in fierce competition with two other companies.

Based on the life and career of novelist Fumiko Hayashi, she bitterly struggles for literary recognition in the first half of the 20th-century – her affairs with feckless men, the jobs she took to survive (peddler, waitress, bar maid), and her arduous, often humiliating attempts to get published in a male-dominated culture.

Warlord Oda Nobunaga seeks to unite a fractured Japan. A young man trained in the arts of ninjitsu is manipulated by a ninja master into attempting to assassinate the warlord before he completes his task.

A young woman begins murdering all those responsible for her ailing father's condition. Because the girl is so outwardly sweet and innocent, the detective looking into the deaths does not suspect her.

A professor takes up a new post at an all-girls school only to discover the principal concealing a dark secret.

A shikakenin was an under-the-cover trade that undertook killing in Edo. Hanemon of Otowa, an agency that introduced laborers and maids, was also one of these. Katsugoro Iseya was a timber dealer who had come in as a client. His target was the constructions magistrate Hanno, and the Tatsumiya who sipped on the benefits. Hanemon who had a stong code towards killing, where he would only kill those who do no good to be in the world, accepts this request. Baian Fujieda, a needle doctor would carry out the killing. However, the professional killer Baian fails to bring down Tatsumiya. Hanemon then looks to another shikakenin, the ronin Sanai Nishimura for the role. Although Sanai's ability with the sword is good, he lives poorly in a tenement, and accepts this commission on the condition that it is kept a secret from his wife and child. Here, they close in on Hanno and Tatsumiya again...

TV series starring Ikko Furuya, based on the Kosuke Kindaichi mystery novel series by Seishi Yokomizo.