On This Earth

Before Dawn

Their Legacy

Heitaro, who had served his firm loyally for 30 years, reaches the retirement age. He has four unmarried daughters and decides to split his retirement allowance he has received from his firm into 500,000 yen for each daughter as a wedding dowry. He considers them all old enough to handle the money, and gives them a free hand to use it as they wish.

The Beauty and the Dragon

​A powerful priest uses his magical abilities to imprison the rain gods within a waterfall, causing a devastating drought. The imperial court sends a princess to his remote mountain retreat to seduce him and break his spiritual concentration.

Kenkaku Shōbai

Kohei Akiyama, a popular master swordsman, and his son Daijiro live in the town of Edo in good faith. While running a dojo, Daijiro and his father find themselves wrapped up in a series of events with the town's people.

Cape Ashizuri

Among Yoshimura’s complex and political works, this episodic film, set in the early 1930s, follows the life of a young left-wing student activist disenchanted by the increasingly hawkish state of Japanese society.

Five Siblings

A businessman runs afoul of the law and commits suicide, leaving behind a wife and five children. The eldest son takes the family to Tokyo and labors to restore its name and fortune

The House of the Sleeping Virgins

About an establishment where old men pay to sleep besides young girls that had been narcotized and happen to be naked, the sleeping beauties. The old men are expected to take sleeping pills and share the bed for a whole night with a girl without attempting anything of bad taste like putting a finger inside their mouths.

Bamboo Doll of Echizen

Kisuke, a young bamboo worker marries Tomoe, a courtesan who was once involved with Kisuke's late father.

Miniature

Ginko, a poor cobbler's daughter, becomes a geisha to support her family. She passes from one geisha house to the next, trying to find love and hope in the process. No matter how hard she tries, she just can't escape her sad fate.

Our Neighbor, Miss Yae

Keitaro is a law student and Yaeko is a high school girl. They are neighbors, and their friendship is starting to develop into something more romantic. Then, Yaeko's sister Kyouko has a breakup with her husband and returns home. Kyouko is clearly interested in Keitaro and Yae becomes anxious.

The Story of Tank Commander Nishizumi

Following a young man through his childhood ambition to follow his father into the military to losing his life in combat in China.

Children of Hiroshima

Shows the devastation caused by the atomic bomb, and by use of a fictional storyline, portrays the struggle of the ordinary Japanese people in dealing with the aftermath.

Ishimatsu of the Forest

The tale of a feudal swordsman who cynically takes no responsibility for anything, relegating it to others, and then taking the credit.

Fisherman's Fire

Fisherman Choon-sam (Yoon Buk-yang) is suffering financially because of a prolonged scarcity of fish. Pestered by miserly Mr. Jang to pay back his debt, Choon-sam goes out to sea in hopes of a catch but meets a watery end instead. As payment for the debt, Mr. Jang tries to take Choon-sam's daughter In-soon as his second wife. Meanwhile, In-soon (Park Noh-kyung) is mutually in love with Chun-suk (Park Hak), but torn about the suggestion of Ok-bun (Chun Hyo-bong), who lives in Seoul, to join her in the city. In order to get a job and pay back her father's debt, In-soon follows Mr. Jang's son Chul-soo to Seoul, not knowing that he harbors illicit intentions toward her.

Reminiscence

Kazuo Miyagawa’s prizewinning black-and-white cinematography draws out the moral shadings of Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata’s 1952 novel Thousand Cranes, a quietly devastating story of a young man, orphaned during the war, who stumbles into a passionate yet tragic relationship with his late father’s mistress and her daughter.

The Ball at the Anjo House

After Japan's defeat in the war, the Anjo family lose their peerage and wealth. Since their mansion is due to pass into the hands of a creditor, the family holds one last ball before leaving.

Strike

Workers in a factory in pre-revolutionary Russia go on strike and are met by violent suppression.

Hachiko

The tragic, true story about Hachikō, an Akita dog who was loyal to his master, Professor Ueno, even after Ueno's death.

Born in Flames

In near-future New York, ten years after the “social-democratic war of liberation,” diverse groups of women organize a feminist uprising as equality remains unfulfilled.