Challenge to Live

The first work of 27-year-old director Eizo Sugawa, contrasting a politician father and his son, a drummer in a student band. It depicts the conflict between old and new morals, and the lives of young people.

During the winter in Toyama in 1962, Tatsuo Mizushima is fretting about his feelings for his classmate Eiko Tsujisawa while agonizing about his upcoming high school examinations. When he was little, he and Eiko had heard that in April of a year when the winter has been very harsh, any couple finding fireflies together needs to get married. However, his family's situation does not allow Tatsuo to continue his worrying about such things for very much longer.

After the son of a wealthy man is kidnapped, a tenacious young reporter decides to find the culprit.

A man with a dark past comes from Tokyo to the fishing port of Izu, and tries to begin a new life as a fisherman.

The sixth "Japan's No. 1 Man" feature. Followed by "Japan’s No. 1 Disconnected Man".

Set in Osaka just after the end of the war, the story depicts an unconventional merchant who returns from evacuation. The film is based on the novel of the same name written by Teru Miyamoto, and the screenplay was written by Eizo Sugawa, who also wrote "Horagawa". The director is Takeichi Saito, who also directed "Kawachi no Osan no Uta: Yokita no Ware". Kozo Okazaki, who worked on "I am a Cat," is in charge of the cinematography.

A timid salaryman is the subject of this black comedy.

A group of friends try to find success in corporate Japan.

A war widow with a young boy manages a farm with her bossy mother-in-law. When a reporter comes to interview her, the two begin an affair. He turns out to be married and won't leave his wife. Her older brother tries to marry off his children and hang on to/ extend his farm through an advantageous marriage in the face of threatened land confiscation and the desire of his children to get comfortable urban jobs instead of the backbreaking work in the paddy fields under parental control.

Desperate to escape her grueling life caring for her paralyzed husband, Tamiko murders him and burns down their home to start anew. She is soon entangled in the dark web of an influential, elderly power broker, becoming his mistress and a pawn in his political schemes. As she descends further into a downward spiral of moral decay, Tamiko realizes that the freedom she sought is merely a new form of entrapment.

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.

Maruyama, a day laborer, is living on an abandoned ship at the port of Osaka when he meets an elusive man offering a job.

Gang of robbers quarrel about the loot, but when one of them gets killed, his younger brother seeks them out to ice them one by one.

An ambitious young woman uses her sex appeal to solve financial problems in her family, including a brother in debt to the yakuza, and a father who stole money from his firm to repay his son's debt.

A salaryman comedy.

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