Acorns & Chestnuts

Film by Hiroshi Shimizu, featuring an early role for frequent Ozu and Naruse collaborator Hideko Takamine.

Based on the true story of a 17-year old Atayal girl called Sayun Hayun from Nan'oku village, Giran district, Taihoku Prefecture (in current Taiwan) who went missing and was thought to have drowned whilst helping carry the luggage of her teacher Masaki Takita during a storm in 1938.

Part two of Shimizu's major silent Seven Seas, a family drama of the intertwining fates of the rich, decadent Yagibashis and the far less prosperous Sone family.

During college military training exercises, the bond between two friends and athletic rivals is tested when one of them becomes involved with a woman who may be a prostitute.

In the heart of the Japanese Alps, in Kamikochi, Nagano Prefecture, botany professor Kazuhiko Onuma spends time with Tsuruko, his lover. One night, Kazuhiko's wife Kazuyo comes to see them and confronts the professor about his extramarital affair, and Tsuruko, an inevitable witness to the confrontation, leaves the professor the following morning. Over the next decade, whenever he visits the mountain cabin every autumn equinox, the memory of Tsuruko will forever haunt Kazuhiko...

The story deals with Fuji, nicknamed Waka-danna (Young Master), the star athlete on his university's rugby team. The son of a wealthy soy sauce manufacturer, Fuji basks in the glory of his athletic celebrity. Attracting the attention of admiring young women, Fuji resists family pressure to settle down and marry after college. Instead, he spends much of his time drinking and womanizing, behavior which eventually leads the college officials to expel him from the team.

In Depression-era Japan, a courteous bus driver carries an eclectic group of passengers from the mountainous Izu to Tokyo.

Michiko gets pregnant after a rape. She marries a boring business partner of her father to avoid the shame. Later she meets the rapist again who is now a union leader in opposition of her husband.

Yuki is a young, single mother supporting herself and her son, Haru, with a job as a bar hostess.

The story focuses on the widower Nemoto, ostensibly a businessman, who has one son, Kanichi, the hero of the title. Nemoto remarries; his new wife is a widow with a son and daughter of her own. However, Nemoto’s business turns out to be out a shady scam, and he disappears, leaving his wife to raise the three children alone. In order to support the family, she is obliged to become a bar hostess. She conceals this shameful employment from the children, but the truth comes out years later, after her daughter is rejected by her husband’s family when they investigate her background.

Kenji and Chuko travel to Hokkaido as migrant workers and enlist as miners under the strict leadership of Guzuyasu. On the boat journey to Hokkaido, Kenji attracts Ohama, who is travelling to Hokkaido to open a bar. When Kenji visits the bar, he chases away a sailor who was hassling a shy girl, Ofuji, which makes Ohama jealous.

A reformatory in the remote countryside houses 200 delinquents and problem children. The teachers and caretakers face much trouble. The school is often short on water, and one day, the well runs dry.

A university professor and his wife have two sons with infantile paralysis. Through trial and error, they struggle to open a school for disabled children at their own expense. Based on a true story, it features natural child performances under Hiroshi Shimizu’s skillful direction.

A spirited young teacher challenges the conservative school employing her with liberal thinking and teaching methods.

Toshie, a young, conservative secretary-typist has fallen in love with Shozo Narita, a young man she has met through her work.

A penniless orphan loses the woman he loves, when her family arranges a marriage to a wealthy playboy. He believes she was blinded by greed, and becomes a miser.