Akira Tani

True Osaka Grit (1965)

Based on a novel by Kôen Hasegawa ...

Beast Alley (1965)

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 polit ...

Kwaidan (1965)

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a ...

The Scarlet Camellia (1964)

A young woman begins murdering all those responsible for her ailing father's condition. Because the girl is so outwardly sweet and innocent, the detective looking into the deaths does not suspect her. ...

The Rabble (1964)

1964 Japanese movie ...

Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964)

Journalists Ichiro Sakai and Junko cover the wreckage of a typhoon when an enormous egg is found and claimed by greedy entrepreneurs. Mothra's fairies arrive and are aided by the journalists in a plea for its return. As their requests are denied, Godzilla ...

The Irresponsible Fool (1964)

Picked up and raised on an island in the Seto Inland Sea, Yasukichi's only trait is his innate mischievousness. However, because his love for his hometown is exceptionally stronger than anybody's, he is trying everything he can to somehow help the inhabita ...

Whirlwind (1964)

Set at the end of the Siege of Osaka this film follows the exploits of several members of the defeated Toyotomi clan as they cope with the post battle chaos and the persecution of the Shogun's army. Five samurai decide on different fates when it becomes c ...

Blind Wolf (1963)

My Hobo (1962)

Story of a resourceful hobo (Kobayashi), a con woman (Takamine) who pretends to be a victim of the Nagasaki A-bomb, and two orphaned children who become a most atypical Japanese family. ...

The King (1962)

The film takes place at the junction of the two eras of Meiji and Taisho. Sakata Sankichi, an uneducated zori sandal maker, becomes a professional shogi player through his genius shogi skills and lives a fanatically devoted shogi game supported by the love ...

Chûshingura (1962)

After their lord is tricked into committing ritual suicide, forty-seven samurai warriors await the chance to avenge their master and reclaim their honor. ...

Our Failures (1962)

Tells the story of Shintaro, a lawyer who quits his job to work at a camera factory, and his love adventures. ...

Ōwarai Jiro chō ikka: Sanshita nitei kenjū (1962)

Comedy movie ...

Tatsu (1962)

1962 Japanese movie ...

The Wiser Age (1962)

Drama about the lives of the five daughters and daughter-in-law of a store owner. ...

Bandits on the Wind (1961)

1961 Japanese movie ...

Yojimbo (1961)

A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and ...

Daredevil in the Castle (1961)

During the raging war between the Toyotomi and Tokugawa clans, the swordsman Mohei (whose family has been completely decimated) is recruited by Toyotomi to overcome the seat of power, Osaka Castle. Mohei's daredevil skills will be put to severe tests. ...

Lord and Pickpocket (1960)

Japanese comedy film. ...

Onatsu Detective Case: Mad Slasher (1960)

Japanese crime film ...

Life of a Country Doctor (1960)

A skilled country doctor's talents are such that he can even perform operations as difficult and novel as removing a patient's kidney for the first time in Japan. Unfortunately for him, however, his wife's addiction to gambling is of such a magnitude that ...

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960)

Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her d ...

The Last Gunfight (1960)

Japanese police detective Saburo Fujioka is suspected of corruption, demoted, and sent to the city of Kojin. Kojin is the scene of fierce fighting between rival gangs. Fujioka is assigned to investigate the death of the wife of gangster Tetsuo Maruyama of ...

The Bride from Japan (1959)

A young Japanese-American comes from California looking for a bride, going on blind dates with three candidates from Osaka, Hiroshima and Nagoya. ...

The Three Treasures (1959)

The legend of the birth of Shintoism. In Fourth Century Japan, the Emperor's son Ouso expects to succeed his father on the throne, but Otomo, the Emperor's vassal, prefers Ouso's stepbrother, and conspires to have Ouso die on a dangerous mission he has con ...

The Enchanting Devil (1959)

Thriller directed by Seiji Maruyama ...

Desperado Outpost (1959)

When Sergeant Okubo's brother is murdered at a Japanese outpost in Northern China during the Second World War, Okubo poses as a war correspondent and seeks out his brother's killer. ...

Saga of the Vagabonds (1959)

Lord Taro must deliver a money chest but is robbed by brigands led by Jibu. One of Jibu's men, Rokuro, steals the money from Jibu, but after meeting and befriending Taro, Rokuro decides to return the money to Taro. But Taro's unscrupulous brother Jiro fals ...

The Beast Shall Die (1959)

A promising post-graduate literature student is transformed into a psychotic killer following the suicide of his father and a sleazy affair by his mother with a younger man. ...

Samurai Saga (1959)

Edmund Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac, transplanted to Japan. A poet-warrior with an oversized nose (matched only by his great heart) loves a lady. But she sees him only as a friend, so he helps another man to woo her by giving him the poetry of his own ...

The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (1959)

After handing in a report on the treatment of Chinese colonial labor, Kaji is offered the post of labour chief at a large mining operation in Manchuria, which also grants him exemption from military service. He accepts and moves with his newlywed wife Mich ...

The Hidden Fortress (1958)

In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains. ...

Yajikita dōchū sugoroku (1958)

1958 Japanese movie ...

The Hotelman's Holiday (1958)

Based on the novel "Ekimae Ryokan" by Masuji Ibuse, a longtime hotel employee struggles to bring his old-fashioned ryokan in line with postwar Japanese business practices. ...

Zokuzoku Ôban: Dotô hen (1957)

Ushinosuke returns to his hometown to become a farmer. Part three (of four) of the film adaptation of Bunroku Shishi's novel, Oban. ...

Geisha in the Old City (1957)

Directed by Hiroshi Inagaki, the drama, set in the brothels of Shimabara in post-war Kyoto, is a moving look at the lives of women of tenacity and resilience. ...

The Living Koheiji (1957)

The actor Koheiji is terribly in love with the wife of his best friend, the playwright Takuro; to get her, he would even kill Takuro. ...

Zoku Ôban: Fûun hen (1957)

Ushinosuke returns broke to his hometown, where everyone believes he's rich and successful. Part two (of four) of the film adaptation of Bunroku Shishi's novel, Oban. ...

Untamed Woman (1957)

A woman marries, gives birth to a stillborn child, and divorces, falls in love with a hotel-keeper, only to find herself subordinated to his drive for success, takes up with a tailor who cannot console himself with her strong personality. ...

Half Human: The Story of the Abominable Snowman (1957)

An American scientist tells two colleagues about the finding of an abominable snowman living in the Japanese alps, where it is worshipped by a remote tribe as a god, and how it was discovered by modern man after it raided a skiers shelter following an aval ...

Snow Country (1957)

It's a man's world. Shimamura, an artist, comes to this snowbound town to rejuvenate himself. He connects with Komako, a geisha he met on a previous trip, and it seems like love. She's the foster daughter of a local family, almost engaged to the family's s ...

Yagyu Secret Scrolls (1957)

In the Tokugawa Era, the clan of Lord Yagyu has hidden away three scrolls containing clan secrets which, if revealed, would cause revolution and disaster for the clan. The information is divided among the three scrolls, all of which must be possessed for t ...

Ôban (1957)

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. ...

Throne of Blood (1957)

Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit' ...

The Storm (1956)

A widowed high-school teacher tries to raise his four children alone. ...

Shozo, a Cat and Two Women (1956)

Shozo is plagued by the needs of his ex-wife and his current one, but prefers the company of his cat. ...

The Legend of the White Serpent (1956)

Lavish Japanese-Chinese coproduction based on an ancient Chinese legend about a man who falls in love with a snake goddess in human form. ...

The Maiden Courtesan (1956)

Period romantic drama. ...

I Live in Fear (1955)

An aging foundry patriarch, gripped by terror of nuclear annihilation, tries to uproot his family to Brazil. When they petition to have him declared incompetent, a family-court counselor witnesses his obsession slide into ruin—and asks whether ignoring t ...

Marital Relations (1955)

​Ryukichi, the pampered heir to a cosmetics wholesaler, abandons his wife and child to pursue a scandalous affair with a famous geisha named Choko. This betrayal leads his father to disown him, leaving the unskilled Ryukichi with no way to earn a living. ...

The Lone Journey (1955)

Forced on the road by yakuza obligations, a man sets out on a reckless journey to Tsumagoi. Movie posters for local cinemas were often displayed at sento (public baths) too. The handwritten text on the bottom here announces the film will play at Hassen fo ...

Beast Man Snow Man (1955)

Three competing parties all race against time to track down an elusive creature known only as the Snowman. ...

Floating Clouds (1955)

A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes. ...

A Gang of Five (1955)

A group of five law enforcers search Edo for a missing sword. ...

Lovetide (1955)

An Ishiro Honda film. ...

Late Chrysanthemums (1954)

What is the life of a Geisha like once her beauty has faded and she has retired? Kin has saved, and become a wealthy money-lender, spending her days coldly collecting debts. Even her best friends, fellow Geisha Tomi, Nobu, and Tamae, are now indebted to he ...

Seven Samurai (1954)

A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with ...

Farewell Rabaul (1954)

A squadron of Japanese fighter pilots realise that they are never going to win the war when they understand that Japanese military tactics have little regard for life. Seeking the companionship of any woman who will have them, they spend their days indulgi ...

Jirocho's New Year (1954)

The Red Light Military Base (1953)

Story about a poor Japanese woman living near an American army base who resorts to prostitution. ...

Omatsuri hanjiro (1953)

Every year, at the festival, familiar merchants such as Toraemon, a magic trick, Tokubei, a blowgun, Kaji, acrobatics, and Unsaibo, a ritual, gather toward the port town. ...

Youth of Heiji Senigata (1953)

Traveling with Breeze (1953)

1953 Hiroshi Inagaki movie. ...

Wife (1953)

Ten years into a marriage, the wife is disappointed by the husband's lack of financial success, meaning she has to work and can't treat herself and the husband finds the wife slovenly and mean-spirited: she neither cooks not cleans particularly well and is ...

Mr. Pu (1953)

A math teacher loses his job while falling in love with a local girl. ...

Yasugorō shusse (1953)

Husband and Wife (1953)

A married couple looking for an apartment move in with the husband's co-worker, a widower. The husband becomes jealous of the widower and his wife. ...

The Man Who Came to Port (1952)

An Ishiro Honda film. ...

Ikiru (1952)

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life. ...

Story of Lightning (1951)

Gensaburo Funaki and Oyuki were childhood friends, but Gensaburo misunderstood that Oyuki was hesitant to get married because he had to feed his father and younger brother. I left the town. ...

Pirates (1951)

___________ ...

Jakoman and Tetsu (1949)

In a village subsisting on it herring fishery, a one-eyed criminal named Jakoman terrorizes the inhabitants. One of them, the son of the head of one of the fish companies by the name of Tetsu, decides to overthrow Jakoman and his cohorts. ...

Drunken Angel (1948)

In postwar Tokyo, a blunt, alcohol-soaked doctor diagnoses a swaggering young yakuza with tuberculosis, forging an uneasy bond that's tested when the gangster's ruthless former boss returns and drags him back toward the swampy underworld he can't escape. ...