The Good-Natured Couple

1945 Japanese movie

Michiko Asakura was married to the eldest son of the Sakuma family, an unsealed family in Shinshu, but died from her husband and returned to her parents' house in Tokyo with her five-year-old daughter Yoshiko.

Romantic melodrama set in contemporary Hong Kong, Japan and Laos. Hiroshi Tanaka (Takarada) is a Japanese journalist on assignment in Hong Kong who meets and falls in love with Wu Li Hung (Ming). He proposes to Wu Li but she rejects him because of her distaste for mixed marriages (her mother was Japanese but deserted her family and returned to Japan during WWII). Tanaka locates Wu Li’s mother and unsuccessfully tries to reunite them, but eventually Wu Li accepts his proposal. A joyous Tanaka flies off to Laos to finish an assignment but on the eve of his wedding he is killed there.

1968 film

A group of hustling peddlers swindle rural towns with fake goods, facing betrayals, close calls, and constant setbacks as they chase survival and dream of a better future.

A young country boy leaves his village for Tokyo, where he begins to work as a stock trader. First part (of four) of the film adaptation of Bunroku Shishi's novel, Oban.

1958 Japanese movie

Following the Second World War, the lives of various people in a poverty-stricken area of Tokyo are entertwined. Pachinko parlor girls, shoeshine boys, a maker of costume jewelry, and a streetcorner artist all struggle to make their livings and to find happiness in difficult surroundings.

1961 Japanese movie

Film directed by Yasuki Chiba, based on the novel of the same name by Tatsuzou Ishikawa.

Engineer Shuichi defies his wealthy family to live with bar hostess Kazuyo, whose loyalty to her struggling family complicates their love. As class, pride, and temptation test them, true affection proves stronger than circumstance.

The president learns that the company's biggest stockholder is also a friend of his singing teacher and spies on his movements.

An omnibus comedy set in a newly built housing complex, the film follows seven interconnected stories about the everyday vices simmering behind thin apartment walls. The film observes the lives of ambitious young couples, suspicious spouses, self-styled rationalists, overworked husbands, and gossiping neighbors navigating the promises of modern apartment living.