The Lowest Man

The entangled relations between the son of a seductive tea-ceremony teacher and the women in his father's life. Based on the novel by Kawabata Yasunari.

When Ryoko, a ballerina turned disco dancer, gets entangled in a murder and a stolen 10 million yen, she must race against time to uncover the truth and return to her hometown.

Follows five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation debates the passage of an anti-prostitution law.

In 1939, Sakura Nishi is a young army nurse who is sent to the field hospitals in China during the Sino-Japanese war. She has to assist the surgeon Dr. Okabe with an incredible number of amputations. In the crowded wards, she gives sympathy to some of the soldiers, including sexually servicing one who has lost both arms and has no hope of returning home. She falls in love with Dr. Okabe, and follows him to the front, even though he is impotent from his morphine addiction.

On the eve of the Russo-Japanese war at the beginning of the 20th century, small-town girl Okane has married an old wealthy man to escape a life of poverty.

A young intellectual conscientious objector is forced to serve with the Japanese army in Manchuria. He joins with a dim-witted former gangster in an effort to desert by stealing a train.

Nishi is an advertising executive for a caramel company that is planning to launch a new product, in fierce competition with two other companies.

A track and field athlete falls in love with a cop. After being paralyzed by a bullet from a detective investigating her father's crimes, a high school sprinter finds unexpected love and navigates a web of family secrets and forbidden love.

Yuko is sent to the coastal regions to be raised away from the rest of her sophisticated family where she finds out from her ill grandmother that she is not who she thought she was.

Otsuya, the daughter of a rich merchant, elopes with her lover Shinsuke, an employee of her father's. During their flight, Otsuya's beauty attracts the gaze of Seikichi, a mysterious master tattooist who sees her pristine white skin as the perfect canvas for his art. The image of the large demonic spider that he emblazons across Otsuya's back marks her as the property of another man, radically altering her relationships with all around her as her personality seems to transform under its influence.

Kinichi and Akiko meet when they visit their fathers in prison. After successfully gambling on a bicycle race, they spend an enjoyable day together at the beach.

Tamio Moroi, a young university graduate, works at a large brewery where he is taught to do nothing but look busy. When his father goes insane, he is told to send money for medical research into the condition. This prompts him to pay his father a visit, leading to a series of mishaps that leaves him at the bottom of the heap in what he once expected to be a promising lifetime career.

In 8th-century China, the Emperor grieves the death of his wife. The Yang family wants to provide the Emperor with a consort so that they may consolidate their court influence. General An Lushan finds a distant relative working in their kitchen, whom they groom to present to the Emperor. The Emperor falls in love and she becomes the Princess Yang Kwei-fei. The Yangs are then appointed important ministers, though An Lushan is not given the court position he covets.

Tied to a mountain between her brutalizing spouse and her secret lover, disaster strikes; the authorities accuse her of murder and prompt a confession.

On his return from school, young Ichiro finds his father in bed with his adopted sister, Namie. Enraged, he decides to outdo his father in terms of immoral behaviour.

Michi's first encounter with Nobuyuki Ishida, secretary to the chairman of a private school, takes place in the drawing room, when she attempts to swindle him out of two million yen for alleged rape by his son. Akie, Ishida's wife and the chairman's daughter, offers her a million, but he gives her what she demands. Now Michi is not only satisfied, but she has a mad desire for Ishida and calls him every day asking for a date. His sympathy for her gradually evolves into love, and he soon allows her insatiable passion to strip him of his decency.