Heikuro Imanari

Wartime propaganda filmed by the Japanese in occupied China, Shirley Yamaguchi portrays an orphan rescued from the streets by a kindly Japanese merchant marine officer. Part spy thriller and part Shanghai travelogue, it was part of a popular series known as "Chinese Continental Friendship" made by the occupying Japanese in China.

A boy steals a knife from an old samurai, unaware of its value, setting off a strange chain of events.

Describes the oppressed life of the crab fishermen and their final revolt which is bloodily suppressed by the Royal Navy.

A drama about relations between Japanese immigrants and the indigenous Ainu on Hokkaido, the most northerly island of Japan. From a novel by Taijun Takeda.

An important silent film survives, Kumahiko Nishina's Umon torimonocho rokuban tegara jinenji kidan (The Samurai Detective, aka The Detective Records of Umon, aka Detective Umon Diary: Exploit Number Six, 1930). Umon on his shining white horse stops a conspiracy against the Shogun. Umon was played by Kanjuro Arashi in this early film, & long after in the post-Occupation jidaigeki revival he reprised the role in Kajiro Yamamoto's Muttsuri Umon torimonocho (1955), helping to launch the renewed interest in such films.

Prewar jidaigeki starring Denjiro Okochi

This epic depicts the battle between Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen. The focus of the story is the struggle by the unit leader in charge of the main supply wagons and the supply troops to transport materiel to the Uesugi army. To this are added episodes involving an itinerant woman.

War-time jidaigeki by Eisuke Takizawa.