Noriko Honma

Madadayo (1993)

In postwar Tokyo, beloved writer-professor Hyakken Uchida retires and is buoyed through hardship by the fierce devotion of his former students, who honor him each year with a raucous "Not yet!" birthday toast. Told in warm, gently comic vignettes, Kurosawa ...

Rhapsody in August (1991)

An elderly Nagasaki hibakusha spends a summer caring for her four grandchildren, whose curiosity about the 1945 bombing stirs buried memories and moral questions. When an American nephew from Hawaii visits, the family confronts grief, guilt, and the possib ...

Dreams (1990)

Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa's own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier's ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh's canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity's ...

G.I. Samurai (1979)

A squadron of Japanese Self-Defense Force soldiers find themselves transported through time to their country's warring states era, when rival samurai clans were battling to become the supreme Shogun. ...

Battle of the Japan Sea (1969)

Japan and Russia clash in what comes to be known as the Russo-Japanese War. An attempt by the Japanese fleet and army to take Port Arthur fails, and a Russian fleet bears down on the Sea of Japan. Admiral Heihachiro Togo sends his fleet to confront the Rus ...

The Homely Sister (1967)

In the 19th century Edo period, sisters Oshizu and Otaka have sacrificed their personal happiness to work and care for their ailing father. Otaka falls in love, but can't accept a marriage proposal since her older sister needs to marry first. When Oshizu l ...

Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966)

Searching for his brother, Ryota stows away on a boat belonging to a criminal alongside two other teenagers. The group shipwrecks on Letchi island and discover the Infant Island natives have been enslaved by a terrorist organization controlling a crustacea ...

Red Beard (1965)

Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Bear ...

Oh, Bomb! (1964)

During the mayoral election, two ex-prisoners decide to replace the lucky pen of an annoying candidate with a mini-bomb. ...

Anything For Success (1962)

A "hustler's hustler" (Takarada), works his way up the corporate ladder at a camera company. His biggest scheme involves winning the business of a foreign visitor by setting him up with a beautiful "model" (Tsukasa), actually a bar hostess, but the plan ba ...

Varan the Unbelievable (1962)

In an effort to find an economic means of purifying salt water, a joint U.S.-Japanese military command is set up on an isolated Japanese island where an unusual salt water lake is situated. However, their purifying experiments arouse the prehistoric monste ...

Kiriko no unmei (1962)

1962 Japanese movie ...

The Pacific War and Himeyuri Corps (1962)

The last fight put up by remaining forces and a special volunteer nursing corps in 1944-5. ...

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 ...

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 ...

Someday I'll Know (1959)

A modern love story involving different affairs. ...

The Big Boss (1959)

Ryuta and Mineo Komatsu are brothers, both yakuza (gangsters). Mineo, although complicit in crime, even murder, wants out of the gangster life, hoping to become a successful singer instead. Ryuta loves his brother, but Mineo's possible defection presents p ...

Varan (1958)

When a rare species of butterfly is found in a mysterious valley in Japan, a pair of entomologists go to investigate and find more. They discover Varan, a giant monster, who decides to leave the valley and head straight for Tokyo. ...

Summer Clouds (1958)

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 ...

All About Marriage (1958)

Ultra-perky model likes single freedom but feels ryosai kenbo ("good wife, wise mother") pressure, exemplified by her bored-to-tears sister. ...

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. ...

A Rainbow Plays in My Heart: Part 2 (1957)

An Ishiro Honda film. The second part of A Rainbow Plays in My Heart released the same day as the first film. ...

A Rainbow Plays in My Heart: Part 1 (1957)

An Ishiro Honda film. The first part of A Rainbow Plays in My Heart released the same day as the second film. ...

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. ...

People of Tokyo, Goodbye (1956)

A Wife's Heart (1956)

A young woman tries to raise money to open her own coffee shop. She arranges a loan when her rigid family won't help and then her husband becomes jealous of the loan officer. ...

Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island (1956)

A humble and simple Takezo abandons his life as a knight errant. He's sought as a teacher and vassal by Shogun, Japan's most powerful clan leader. He's also challenged to fight by the supremely confident and skillful Sasaki Kojiro. Takezo agrees to fight K ...

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 ...

The Surf (1954)

Lonely youth Shinji meets Hatsue, a pretty pearl diver, on the beach and the two fall in love. But Shinji has a rival for Hatsue's affections, Yasuo. ...

Ditch (1954)

Postwar Tokyo. Pin and Toku live in the squatter area of Kappanuma. Pin and Toku are avid gamblers. They take in Tsuru, a slightly demented woman who has run away from a geisha house. ...

Last of the Wild Ones (1954)

A legendary gangster raises himself out of a small town and gathers followers on his rise to power. ...

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 ...

Girls in the Orchard (1953)

Girls in the Orchard (1953) is about tension between the life of a family in a rural area with all the traditions (continuing family business, taking care of the land)-- and the modernity and lure of a life in the city. ...

Brother and Sister (1953)

The eldest daughter of a rural family Mon returns home from Tokyo pregnant after an affair with a college student Kobata, which causes a scandal that will threaten the marriage prospects of the younger sister San, in her cash-strapped family. The ill-tempe ...

Adolescence Part II (1953)

A story of unhappy youths and the perils of lack of sex education. ...

Their Father's Wife (1953)

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 ...

The End of the Night (1953)

Walking home late one night, a down-on-his-luck sewage worker runs into a drunk businessman with a briefcase full of cash. His impulsive decision will lead to a long, dark night of the soul, while his lady love, a bar hostess, tries to cope with her sudden ...

Where Chimneys Are Seen (1953)

Where Chimneys Are Seen focuses primarily on the interconnected lives of two couples in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Senju, a poor industrial section of Tokyo. ...

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. ...

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. ...

Mother (1952)

A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family. ...

The Ataka Family (1952)

Soichi Ataka is the eldest son of Ataka family. Although mentally challenged, he's a person with a gentle heart. Soichi's wife, Kuniko is devoted to her husband and together the couple runs the family farm. Their happy family life comes to an abrupt halt w ...

The Blue Pearl (1951)

The Blue Pearl depicts the interplay between a young man from Tokyo and two ama (pearl divers; literally "women of the sea") in a superstitious coastal town. Though raised within the same tradition-bound crucible, the two women – Noe and Riu – are port ...

Nightshade Flower (1951)

Japanese "kayo" film based on the song "Ieraishan" by Yoshiko Yamaguchi. ...

Rashomon (1950)

Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife. ...

Snow-Flake (1950)

Town of Violence (1950)

An attempt is made to suppress a journalist's investigation of collusion between a rural police chief and the local gangster bosses. ...

Stray Dog (1949)

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo's sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of c ...

The Whole Family Works (1939)

A large family scrapes by on the meager salaries of the father and three eldest sons, who left school in order to work and support the family. The fourth eldest is soon to graduate and follow in their footsteps, though he'd rather continue schooling. The e ...

Composition Class (1938)

Masako, the daughter of an impoverished itinerant tinsmith, wins a grammar school composition contest with an essay about her neighborhood. The much publicized essay ends up causing the family problems and their chronic money troubles threaten Masako's fur ...