Toru Takemitsu

A Slippage in Five Movements (2023)

A visual accompaniment to Tōru Takemitsu's sonically sparse composition 'Corona for Pianist(s)'. Taking inspiration from the graphic score that interprets notes as circles and dots, the film focuses on the micro, elemental and sensual. Light flickering on ...

100 Years of Japanese Cinema (1995)

The story of the first century of Japanese cinema from the point of view of the controversial Japanese filmmaker Nagisa Ōshima. ...

Spiritual Voices (1995)

In 1994, Alexander Sokurov accompanied Russian troops assigned to a frontier military post at the Tajikistan/Afghanistan border to film their experiences. While unnamed tribal forces occasionally engaged the troops in skirmishes, Sokurov's haunting documen ...

Sharaku (1995)

A crippled kabuki player is taken into a strolling company of itinerant actors. An influential publisher notices his honest, bold drawings, and nurtures him despite persecution and betrayal. The film explores the eternal relationship between artist and pro ...

Rising Sun (1993)

When a prostitute is found dead in a Los Angeles skyscraper occupied by a large Japanese corporation, detectives John Connor and Web Smith are called in to investigate. Although Connor has previous experience working in Japan, cultural differences make the ...

Dream Window: Reflections on the Japanese Garden (1992)

Exquisite exploration of landscape and Toru Takemitsu's music for a Japanese moss garden. ...

Basara: The Princess Goh (1992)

Furuta Oribe is ordered to become tea master under Toyotomi Hideyoshi after his teacher Sen no Rikyū, the former tea master, was ordered to commit suicide. Princess Goh, daughter of the lord but adopted by Hideyoshi, is outraged when Rikyū's severed head ...

The Inland Sea (1991)

In 1971, author and film scholar Donald Richie published a poetic travelogue about his explorations of the islands of Japan's Inland Sea, recording his search for traces of a traditional way of life as well as his own journey of self-discovery. Twenty year ...

Rikyu (1989)

Late in the 1500s, an aging tea master teaches the way of tea to a headstrong Shogun. Through force of will and courageous fighting, Hideyoshi becomes Japan's most powerful warlord, unifying the country. ...

Wuthering Heights (1988)

Young orphan Onimaru is adopted by the wealthy Yamabe family and moves into their estate, Wuthering Heights. Soon, the new resident falls for his compassionate foster sister, Kinu. The two share a remarkable bond that seems unbreakable until Kinu, feeling ...

Gonza the Spearman (1986)

The tragic story of Gonza, a handsome ladies man, set in the Tokugawa Period, a time in which appearances are very important. Gonza competes with Bannojō for the honor to perform the tea ceremony to celebrate the birth of an heir to the lord of their clan ...

The Empty Table (1985)

One year after the Kidojis' eldest son Otohiko was arrested for his part in a terrorist kidnapping, which resulted in multiple deaths, all the other perpetrators' parents have either resigned from their professional positions or taken their own lives, Nobu ...

Ran (1985)

Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons. ...

Fire Festival (1985)

Tatsuo, a reverent lumberjack, seeks to disrupt plans to build a marine park on his family land, instead promoting his traditions in reactionary ways. ...

A. K. (1985)

An intimate chronicle of the shooting of Ran (1985), a film directed by the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. ...

2084: Video Clip for the Trade Unions' Reflection and Pleasure (1984)

Made for the centenary of France's trade union laws, Chris Marker's 2084 imagines a future in which a computer looks back on the labor movement of the 20th century. Mixing documentary reflection with speculative fiction, the film envisions contrasting path ...

Antonio Gaudí (1984)

Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí (1852-1926) designed some of the world's most astonishing buildings, interiors, and parks; Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara constructed some of the most aesthetically audacious films ever made. With camera work as bold ...

Lanterns on Blue Waters (1983)

The story of a Japanese man who as a 16-year-old went to Maui to work in the sugar cane fields in order to support his family back in Japan. Now 89 and still living in Hawaii he is visited by his granddaughter who brings him a letter from his disinherited ...

Tokyo Trial (1983)

A look at the trial of Japanese militarists accused of war crimes; from the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal (May 1946–November 1948). It took two days to read the charges against the 100 alleged war criminals in the docket (only 28 top ...

Prophecy (1982)

This rare documentary is one of the very last efforts from preeminent documentarist/activist Susumu Hani best known for his feature films. This one is a short documentary about the 1945 atomic bombing and its devastating consequences. The film came out of ...

Rennyo and His Mother (1981)

Rennyo was the key figure responsible for the restoration of Shin Buddhism in Japan, in particular the Honganji lineage that had a slump in its fortunes during the Middle Ages. According to the legend, his motivation was a pivotal childhood incident at the ...

The Minamata Mural (1981)

After a handful of groundbreaking films detailing the tragedy and suffering of the mercury-poisoned Japanese town of Minamata, documentary master Noriaki Tsuchimoto revisits the subject of Minamata through the eyes of the celebrated husband-and-wife painti ...

Ki or Breathing (1980)

'Ki or Breathing' is a spare concoction assembled from slow motion shots of nature and set to a score by the much-acclaimed Tohru Takemitsu. ...

The Lovers' Exile (1980)

An adaptation of "The Courier for Hell" ("Meido no Hikyaku") by Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725). ...

An Ocean to Cross (1980)

Set in Japan's Tenpyou era (729-749 CE), four young monks are sent to China to study Buddhism and bring a high priest back to Japan with them. The film tells the tale of the four monks' youth and the life and times of the high priest Ganjin. ...

House of Flames (1979)

Through puppets and animation, a traveler tells his story of walking through Settsu, coming to the town of Ikuta. He asks if someone can show him the Seeker's Mound. Late that day, a solitary maiden says she will lead him there. ...

The Japanese Part 3: Farm Song (1978)

An hour long documentary looking at the life of the Kato family, Japanese farmers living in Miyazaki city, Miyagi prefecture ...

Glowing Autumn (1978)

A very beautiful Japanese woman is in love with Persian carpets. She is being chased by lecherous Saburi Shin and a handsome young photographer. Lecherous Saburi Shin knows what she wants, and is able to produce it for her. ...

Empire of Passion (1978)

In a small Japanese village at the end of the 19th century, a rickshaw driver's wife takes on a much younger lover and the two conspire to murder him. ...

Ballad of Orin (1977)

A blind traveling musician is abused and oppressed wherever she goes, even as the modern world imposes change around her. ...

Flickering Flames (1977)

In the early hours of April 13th, a five year old hemophiliac child was kidnapped by someone from Tanemura General Hospital in Tokyo, Setagaya. Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Inspector Kitahara, who received the report, goes quickly to the Tanemura h ...

The Fossil (1975)

An industrialist is diagnosed with terminal cancer. He is abroad in Europe at the time, and a glimpse of a Japanese woman in that setting causes him to imagine her as the personification of his impending fate. As his dialogue with his imagined mortality co ...

Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (1975)

A mountain man beheads his many wives to prove his love to an alluring woman he meets in an enchanted forest. ...

Himiko (1974)

The myth of the Sun Goddess who founded Japanese society is seen through the lens of a modern view of history. ...

The Petrified Forest (1973)

Follows a young med student's relationships with two women: a dangerous affair with a childhood friend and his mother's struggle to rebuild their estranged relationship. ...

Time Within Memory (1973)

Minoru visits his home on Okinoerabu island for the first time in thirty years. Seeing the old man who used to be in love with his mother, Minoru recalls the old days spent on the island with his young, beautiful mother. ...

Dear Summer Sister (1972)

14-year-old Sunaoko travels from Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa, with her father's young fiancée Momoko in search of her half-brother whom she has never met. Their guide, a beer-guzzling ex-soldier, takes them to the locale's tourist attractions, quickly delving ...

Summer Soldiers (1972)

During the Vietnam War, an American G.I. deserts his base in Japan and escapes to Tokyo with the help of his Japanese bar hostess girlfriend. In the capital he gets involved with an anti-war organization while dodging the military police. ...

Silence (1971)

Two Jesuit priests encounter persecution when they travel to Japan in the 17th century to spread Christianity and search for their mentor. ...

Inn of Evil (1971)

In feudal Japan, when any commerce with the rest of the world is strictly prohibited, an idealist appears at an isolated inn, headquarters of smugglers with stolen money intended to ransom his loved one forced to work in a brothel. ...

The Ceremony (1971)

Oshima's magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades. ...

The Earth is Born Again (1971)

A dramatic film that recorded the history of Japan in the period of high economic growth. This work deals with Kashima Rinkai industrial zone development. The men who dream of making the overlooking wasteland as a big industrial area draw the courage to re ...

Dodes'ka-den (1970)

On a Tokyo dump's shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who "drives" an imaginary trolley, a homeless father and son designing a dream house, a young woman brutalized at home, drunks, schemers, and saints of small kindne ...

The Man Who Left His Will on Film (1970)

When a man chases down his stolen movie camera, the thief commits suicide by jumping off a building. But after the police take the camera as evidence, it becomes unclear if there was ever a thief in the first place. ...

Bullet Wound (1969)

Yuzo Kayama is an American-Japanese operative working for the US to uncover an arms deal between an American seller and Chinese communists, and to take out both parties. After almost getting assassinated himself, he takes a wounded civilian with him despit ...

Double Suicide (1969)

Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, even fo ...

Kyoto (1969)

Documentary on the city of Kyoto, Japan. Topics include the Ryoanji Temple stone garden, a geisha residence, the Katsura Imperial Villa, and the Gion Festival. ...

Hymn to a Tired Man (1968)

During WWII, Zensaku, middle-aged and deaf in one ear, learns that his son has fallen for the daughter of a war officer responsible for the maiming. ...

The Man Without a Map (1968)

A private detective is hired to find a missing man by his wife. While his search is unsuccessful, the detective's own life begins to resemble the man for whom he is searching. ...

Nanami: The Inferno of First Love (1968)

A teenage goldsmith with a dark past tragically falls in love with a young nude model. ...

Two Hearts in the Rain (1968)

Love story of a working-class boy and girl. ...

Two in the Shadow (1967)

A man is involved in a fatal car accident, and though he is blameless, his company transfers him to a remote branch in a small town. Before he leaves, he gives the man's widow a large sum of money that she uses to move back to her hometown. ...

Samurai Rebellion (1967)

The mother of a feudal lord's only heir is kidnapped by the lord. Her husband and his samurai father must decide whether to accept the unjust decision, or risk death to rescue her. ...

Clouds at Sunset (1967)

A Japanese soldier deserts his position and travels to a small town on the Sea of Japan to start over. When a young maid falls for him, he talks her into sleeping with an older man for money. ...

Once a Rainy Day (1966)

Former playmates (Naito and Tamura), both long ago abandoned by their parents, recall their youth and fall in love. ...

The Face of Another (1966)

A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his new doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality and causing him to question his identity. ...

Captive's Island (1966)

Seeking revenge against the guard who tormented him, a young man returns to the island where he was imprisoned in reform school. But his plans for vengeance are disturbed when he encounters a strange and beautiful young woman. ...

The Kii River (1966)

Epic saga of an idealistic land-owning family dealing with militarism, war, social change and economic reform. ...

The Koumiko Mystery (1965)

Koumiko Muraoka, a young Japanese woman born in Manchuria and educated in France, wanders through Tokyo while she reflects on identity, memory, and what it means to be Japanese in a rapidly changing world. ...

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 ...

Illusion of Blood (1965)

The ghost of a samurai's wife takes revenge on her husband. ...

Samurai Spy (1965)

Years of warfare end in a Japan unified under the Tokugawa shogunate, and samurai spy Sasuke Sarutobi, tired of conflict, longs for peace. When a high-ranking spy named Tatewaki Koriyama defects from the shogun to a rival clan, however, the world of swords ...

The Song of the Bwana Toshi (1965)

Traveling to Africa in a cultural exchange program, a young Japanese engineer discovers a world completely unlike the one he knows. His interaction with the Africans he meets reveals to him that he has been living a lie, and that he is not the man he thoug ...

The Last Judgment (1965)

Driven by greed and a desire for his cousin's wife, Jiro orchestrates a complex frame-up to have his cousin arrested for murder. ...

Jose Torres II (1965)

This is the sequel to Jose Torres (1959), the portrayal of Puerto Rican boxer Jose Torres, who won a silver medal in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. We follow Torres from his training in preparation to challenge world lightweight champion Willie Pastrano, to ...

With Beauty and Sorrow (1965)

When the man who seduced the famous painter Otoko as a teenager--and then wrote a bestselling novel about it--reappears in her life, her pupil--and lesbian lover--hatches a plot to destroy the man and his family. ...

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 ...

Car Thieves (1964)

Mixed-race children in Japan become involved in the petty theft of car parts. ...

The Call of Flesh (1964)

A young woman (Dan) who worked as a prostitute in the days following World War II finds herself sexually dissatisfied with her husband and contemplates returning to an old lover who comes back into her life. ...

Ako (1964)

A day in the life of Ako, a 16-year-old Japanese girl, and her friends and co-workers. An alarm clock wakes her in a dorm; she gets ready for work and travels to a large bakery. We see her with friends, chatting and laughing, as well as working. They go ou ...

Assassination (1964)

In 1863, when American warships approach Japan, an enigmatic ronin becomes an important figure in a complex game of power between the Shogunate and the empire. ...

Escape from Japan (1964)

As Japan is preparing to host the Olympics, a gang member wanting to go to America is sought after by the police after helping his friend conduct a robbery. ...

Our Happiness Alone (1964)

Mototsugu is the younger son of Akira Sakawa, a director of an advertising agency whose mother, Nobuko, is ill with cancer of the liver. His elder brother, Ichiro, works at the Bank of Japan whose wife, Masuko, is from a very high-class family. Mototsugu b ...

Children Hand in Hand (1964)

The film centres around a group of schoolchildren navigating the complexities of friendship, trust, and honesty. At its heart is a thoughtful and suppressed boy with a learning disability whose interactions with his classmates oscillate between evoking ten ...

Pale Flower (1964)

A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling. ...

Woman in the Dunes (1964)

A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them. ...

Mon-Yo: Ornamental Motifs from Japan (1963)

This is a documentary centered on traditional Japanese patterns. To capture the unique sensibility of the Japanese people, the film features 170 kimono fabrics from the Muromachi to Edo periods, along with over 1,000 family crests that have been passed dow ...

Alone Across the Pacific (1963)

Kenichi Horie is determined to challenge his family, the law and the nature crossing the Pacific to America in a small sailboat. Despite his careful planning, many unforeseen events will test his determination. ...

She and He (1963)

As her husband Eiichi becomes more entangled in his life as businessman, Naoko looks for ways to expand her own life even as her husband's life shrinks in scope and intimacy. She finds new interests, new love, and a greater sense of her place in the world. ...

Twin Sisters of Kyoto (1963)

In this Japanese drama, a dry goods merchant's daughter is surprised to discover that she has a twin sister. In rural Japan it was thought that twins bring bad luck, so the sister was abandoned at birth. Later her parents tell her that her sister was kidna ...

The Body (1962)

The sexual experiences of the passionate Sakiko, from her fling with her boss in her first job to her ending up as a prostitute. ...

A Flame at the Pier (1962)

A young dockworker who owes his life to his boss becomes embroiled in union activity on the Yokohama waterfront. The rebel Saburo works as an errand boy for a shipping company and vents his frustrations by plucking on the guitar. ...

Harakiri (1962)

Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual. The senior ...

Human Zoo (1962)

A montage of scenes that describe how people can be as bad as animals. ...

Pitfall (1962)

A man wanders into a seemingly deserted town with his young son in search of work. But after a bit of bad luck, he joins the town's population of lost souls. ...

Love at Twenty (1962)

Love at Twenty unites five directors from five different countries to present their different perspectives on what love really is at the age of 20. The episodes are united with the score of Georges Delerue and still photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson. ...

The Inheritance (1962)

A dying businessman intends to will ¥200 million to his three illegitimate children, but his associates scheme to take advantage of the situation. ...

A Full Life (1962)

A woman becomes dissatisfied with her marriage and joins a political theater troupe to protest the U.S. Security Pact. ...

Atami Blues (1962)

A young woman arrives at a resort and is soon pursued by a young man. Initially, he appears to be infatuated with her, but it becomes clear he simply wants to seduce her. ...

Bad Boys (1961)

A young delinquent takes part in a robbery and is sentenced to a juvenile detention center, where he clashes with other youths and reflects on his life experiences. ...

The Shrikes (1961)

Women of Tokyo (1961)

Youth in Fury (1960)

A reckless student contemplates terrorism in a prescient film that confirmed Shinoda as a fearless member of Shochiku's iconoclastic New Wave. At the height of student protests, Shimojo takes his aggressions to another level, beset by seemingly insoluble f ...

Jose Torres (1959)

A documentary about the eponymous Puerto Rican boxer ...

When It Rains, It Pours (1957)

Tane, the lady proprietor of an inn for amorous couples, lives there with her three children. When her eldest daughter loses her fiancé due to the fact her mother is a mistress, her despair drives her to become a cabaret hostess. ...

Crazed Fruit (1956)

Two brothers compete for the amorous favors of a young woman during a seaside summer of gambling, boating, and drinking. ...

Silver Wheel (1955)

Silver Wheel (Bicycle in Dream) is a PR film that was produced to promote the export of bicycles. However, Matsumoto Toshio, who was an employee of the Shin-riken Pictures, which had been contracted to produce the film, asked for the cooperation of Yamaguc ...

Dream Window: Reflections on the Japanese Garden (1992)

Exquisite exploration of landscape and Toru Takemitsu's music for a Japanese moss garden. ...

Brand New Day (1987)

Japan, 1986. At the tail end of the world tour promoting their latest album Revenge, Eurythmics tops the charts. Between concerts, pop duo Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart survey Japan's cultural soundscape with the help of Conny Plank: A world of sounds both ...

A. K. (1985)

An intimate chronicle of the shooting of Ran (1985), a film directed by the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. ...

The Face of Another (1966)

A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his new doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality and causing him to question his identity. ...