Michiyo Yasuda

Blind traveler Zatoichi is a master swordsman and a masseur with a fondness for gambling on dice games. When he arrives in a village torn apart by warring gangs, he sets out to protect the townspeople.

Based on a polemic novel by Amy Yamada, Bedtime Eyes is about the intense love relationship between a second rate Japanese jazz singer and a black American GI on the margins of the law.

A surreal period film following a university professor and his eerie nomad friend as they go through loose romantic triangles and face death in peculiar ways.

A 1920s playwright meets a beautiful woman who may be the ghost of his patron's deceased wife.

Ogami Itto is challenged by a quintet of warriors, each armed with one fifth of Ogami's assassin fee and one fifth of the information he needs to complete his assignment.

Rui is the charismatic leader of a new religious group. Consequently, he starts to gain attention from the mass media. After becoming involved in a car accident, Rui goes to a remote island with ex-gangster now bodyguard. On the island, Rui reveals more about his religious group, while a set of ominous events are about to occur.

Zatoichi's trek through 88 temples to atone for his violent past is interrupted as he stumbles into a village terrorized by a violent yakuza boss.

When bribe money from a rigged election funnels into a dam construction project, collusion, lust, greed and even murder are on the ballot.

A middle-aged factory engineer trains, marries, and ultimately loses a teenage bride after she enslaves him to her whims.

Keizo Tsujiguchi believes his wife Natsue was having an extramarital affair when their child was kidnapped and killed. He believes of her extramarital affair she was unable to watch over their child properly and blames her for their daughter's death. To exact revenge on his wife, he then adopts the killer's child without telling the truth to his wife or their newly adopted child.

Mugiko, an 18-year-old attempts to escape her unhappiness with village life by going to Tokyo to live and work in the geisha house run by her aunt. The daughter of a once great geisha, Mugiko is entitled by blood to train in the geishas' ancient art of classical Japanese song and dance.

Following the life of Japanese artist and poet Yumeji Takehisa through the imagining of an encounter with a beautiful widow with a dark past.

Based on the first novel, Spring Snow, of Mishima Yukio's Sea of Fertility tetralogy, it follows the troubled and illicit affair between two youngsters amongst the aristocracy and rich of early twentieth century Japan.

The annual kabuki show is the main attraction in a rural Japanese mountain town. However, Yoshi's life is thrown into disarray days before the performance when his estranged wife and former best friend arrive back in town...

The story of a young man who has felt since childhood utterly alien from others around him. Since that time he has learned to put on a face to hide his alienation. He feels incapable of belonging to the human society, especially so by society's refusal to take him seriously. He then follows a descent into alcohol, drugs, & suicide ...

In late 1940 the Japanese were anxious to conclude peace in China and to that end sent Colonel Hidaka to inaugurate negotiations. He was mysteriously assassinated, however, when his car was blown up. The General Staff Headquarters in Japan, sends Lieutenant Shiina, a graduate of the famed Nakano School of Spies inaugurated by Colonel Kusanagi, to investigate the matter. Arriving in Shanghai, he disguises himself as a Chinese coolie and sets out to watch for developments, the only clue being a silver dollar found beside what was left of the victim.

A comedy directed by Mitsumasa Saito about a pair of clumsy detectives who solve a case they become involved in by chance. Shosuke Ikashima and Ryuji Kabaya, who repeatedly screw things up, encounter a real robbery during a bank robbery simulation training...

On the surface, the Kyobashis appear to be a happy family. Despite a family agreement that they are all open with each other, the entire household knows the opposite is true.

Awkward and withdrawn, Masako kills her sister in an explosion of pent-up humiliation and rage that sends her tumbling into fugitive life.

The Shinobi-no-Mono series was so successful that Daiei Studios dipped into the well one more time, making the best 60′s B&W ninja movie ever seen in the otherwise color-dominated year of 1970. Issei Mori directs Hiroki Matsukata as the reluctant leader of a small band of spies charged with kidnapping a noblewoman from a heavily ninja-proofed castle. The finality of the air slowly began to fill like smoke, and in all that had become dark the loyalty of the Ninja who dared to go shone like light as they entered a world shrouded in mystery. Things do not go as planned in what is possibly the darkest and most fatalistic of the already noir-ish 60′s fare. Both the decade and it’s distinctive style of shinobi cinema went out on a high note with Mission Iron Castle.

A directionless young man, recently released from prison, tries to make a new start in life as a boxer...

During a Soviet circus tour in Japan, a small street musician, Ken, meets a clown, Yuri Nikulin. Upon learning that his sick father is being treated in the Soviet Union, Ken sets off in search of him. The friendship of the great clown and the boy continues in Moscow.

In feudal Japan, women are vulnerable, in need of protection, and capable of deception. Jokichi of Mikogami, a drifter, has not yet fully revenged the death of his wife and son. He searches for Kunisada Chuji, who in turn has hired the knife-throwing Windmill Kobunji to kill him. Kobunji and Jokichi meet in the winter, near Sasago Pass, when both have rescued women: Jokichi has saved the lute-playing Oyae whose clan and whose lover want her dead; Kobunji has rescued Oharu, a well-born woman married to an innkeeper. Is this rescue a whim or something deeper? And why does Jokichi become the consumptive Kobunji's protector? What ultimately will Jokichi do about Oyae?

Monjiro was born into a poor farm family in Mikazuki Village, Nitta County, Ueshu, and abandoned his hometown when he was 10 years old. He has been traveling aimlessly with a long toothpick in his mouth. Monjiro avoided getting involved in anything, but wherever he went, he ended up getting involved in incidents

Set against the backdrop of the reign of the 11th Tokugawa Shogun, Ienari Tokugawa, this drama is a masterpiece of action period drama that broke the mold of traditional detective stories and attracted a great deal of attention.

Tv special that follows the life of Genghis Khan. Adapted from a novel by Yasushi Inoue.