Kazuo Katō

Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.

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

On a Tokyo dump’s shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who “drives” an imaginary trolley, a homeless father and son designing a dream house, a young woman brutalized at home, drunks, schemers, and saints of small kindnesses. Kurosawa crafts a ragged mosaic of hardship, fantasy, and flickers of grace that keep people moving forward.

A married couple of abalone divers must confront ruthless investors taking over their coastline.

An aging foundry patriarch, gripped by terror of nuclear annihilation, tries to uproot his family to Brazil. When they petition to have him declared incompetent, a family-court counselor witnesses his obsession slide into ruin—and asks whether ignoring the atomic threat is any saner.

The story of Shinsuke, a young man who lives through a stormy life as a poverty-stricken coal miner. Ranging from Shinsuke's infanthood to his mid-teens. Coal workers and the mines dominate nearly every aspect of his life. Shinsuke's father a group leader at the mine, dies while bravely using dynamite to rescue a group of trapped Korean miners. Several older men attempt to help he and his mother cope, including a friendly Harley-riding yakuza boss. This movie has it all, drama, romance, sex, yakuza and violence! It is based on a story by Hiroyuki Itsuki that was originally serialized in the magazine Shukan Gendai in 1969-70.

The survivors of a plane crash in a remote area are attacked by blob-like alien creatures that turn their victims into blood-thirsty vampires.

Toru Hayashi is an unremarkable bachelor who lives with his mother, until one day a young woman named Rumi moves in in the apartment upstairs. Rumi is a self-proclaimed master thief, but she needs socially awkward Toru's help to actually kickstart her so-called career.

On a post-war peaceful day in Japan, Toyomatsu Shimizu, a barber as well as a good father and husband, is suddenly arrested by the Prefectural Police as a war criminal and sued for murder.

In 1026, students in western China are shanghaied into the forces of crown prince Li Yuanhao of Xi Xia, who wants to control the length of the Silk Road. One student is Zhao Xingde, who becomes the favorite of his commander, Zhu Wangli. While sacking a fortress, Xingde discovers Tsurpia, princess of the Uighur. He hides her; they fall in love. When he's sent away to study Xixian, he leaves Tsurpia in Zhu's care, but returns to find her engaged to Li. Tragedy follows, and he and Zhu enter a pact to take revenge when Li arrives at Dun-Huang, the region's seat of learning and culture. Against overwhelming odds, they find a surprising way to leave a monument to their life and love.

A film about the life of Kiyoshi Yamashita, a Japanese painter with disabilities.

Masuda Toshio film starring Watari Tetsuya and Mori Masayuki, about a lone-wolf type (Watari) seeking love and defending the honor of an elderly widower (Mori).

After a passenger ship sinks in 1954, Go Akutsu devises a life-saving project in the form of a tunnel under the Tsugaru Strait. While working on this project Akutsu becomes involved with Tae Makimura leading to his estrangement from his wife.

Two women are ferried to a small prison colony on the remote and barren prison island, where they and their fellow inmates are forced to perform perilous slave labor along the island’s treacherous cliffs, overseen by both an unforgiving sun and a crew of abusive male wardens. Meanwhile, the arrival of a newcomer among the island’s administrators, a disgraced policeman who is also the son of Nagasaki’s governor, creates dissension between the officials that, along with an untimely outbreak of bubonic plague on the island, ultimately sets the stage for a daring escape attempt on the part of the prisoners.

Dramatic story of one man trying to make a difference.

Wild young people kidnap a wealthy woman and she becomes attracted to one of them. When she tells the man that she is the mistress of a religious leader, he and his posse make plans to rob her partner.

Coinciding with the LDP presidential election of the entire national public, a masterpiece depicting the reverse side of Showa political history released, superimposed cast, a group image of real politicians centered on Shigeru Yoshida and political history after the war.

A hunchbacked caretaker presides over a forlorn mansion inhabited by the ghosts of his previous masters. An unbelieving trio (a doctor, his assistant and his niece) fail to heed the caretaker's warnings and are slaughtered horribly by the jealous occupants.

Daisuke is supposed to be out looking for a respectable job and equally respectable wife. He is 30 years old and devotes his attention to music and literature; his family is wealthy and can support his interests. When his friend Hiraoka returns with his wife Michiyo, problems arise.

Kunihiko Date, a young criminal genius, puts a perfect crime plan into action to take revenge on the men who once drove his father to ruin.

Akiyama is an intern, disgusted with the noise pollution caused by the bullet trains and the heart attacks that noise has been causing in older hospital patients, plots to disrupt and, in ten days, destroy a unit of the operation. He warns the Japan National Railway, that, if nothing is done to reduce the noise, he will derail a bullet train. Takigawa is the police detective sent to stop him.

Based on the novel of the same name by Seichô Matsumoto.

A taut, economical policier-cum-gang-hostage thriller.

There are two bizarre rumors spreading about a girls' high school called “Seiwa Joshi Gakuen.” The first is a “Hanako-san in the Toilet”-like story about a painting that hangs in the principal's office = young twin sisters who escape from the painting at night and promenade around the school. The other is about Ryoko Mizumura, an art teacher who is too beautiful to be true and the object of the students' admiration, but who may actually be two people.

The story of the battles between the 3 related families Kishu, Mito, and Owari, as each vies for the shogun’s seat in the line of succession. Highlighting the series are many fights between the young lord’s Negoro ninja helpers and their mortal enemies, the Koga ninja. History comes alive with the bloody blades of the three families at war within the highest levels of government as the search for a new shogun continues!