Akiko Chihaya

Kuruma Torajiro is discovered looking around Kyoto for someone special to him.

Japanese silent film from 1928, co-starring Chojiro Hayashi and up-and-coming actress Kinuyo Tanaka.

This 1932 adaptation is the earliest sound version of the ever-popular and much-filmed Chushingura story of the loyal 47 retainers who avenged their feudal lord after he was obliged to commit hara-kiri due to the machinations of a villainous courtier. As the first sound version of the classic narrative, the film was something of an event, and employed a stellar cast, who give a roster of memorable performances. Director Teinosuke Kinugasa was primarily a specialist in jidai-geki (period films), such as the internationally celebrated Gate of Hell (Jigokumon, 1953), and although he is now most famous as the maker of the avant-garde silent films A Page of Madness (Kurutta ichipeji, 1926) and Crossroads (Jujiro, 1928), Chushingura is in fact more typical of his output than those experimental works. The film ranked third in that year’s Kinema Junpo critics’ poll, and Joseph Anderson and Donald Richie noted that 'not only the sound but the quick cutting was admired by many critics.

After falling in love with a courtesan, Rikiya is blinded by ash during a fight in a brothel. Believing the blindness permanent and his opponent dead, Rikiya goes back home to his sister. Okiku, desperate to protect her brother who thinks himself a murderer, wants to sacrifice herself for him and become a prostitute to pay for Rikiya's treatment.

An onnagata (female impersonator) of a Kabuki troupe avenges his parents' deaths. Remade in 1963 as Yukinojô Henge.

A samurai returns to his homeland after a three year absence and finds his fiance is now one of the prince's concubines.

In the age of priests and warriors which the film denounces, a woman revolts after she is sold as a prostitute.