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 crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.

Noriko is perfectly happy living at home with her widowed father, Shukichi, and has no plans to marry -- that is, until her aunt Masa convinces Shukichi that unless he marries off his 27-year-old daughter soon, she will likely remain alone for the rest of her life. When Noriko resists Masa's matchmaking, Shukichi is forced to deceive his daughter and sacrifice his own happiness to do what he believes is right.

Based on the short story The Psychological Test by Edogawa Rampo.

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.

An aging actor returns to a small town with his troupe and reunites with his former lover and illegitimate son, a scenario that enrages his current mistress and results in heartbreak for all.

A hotheaded youth in 1880s Meiji Japan apprentices to judo master Shōgorō Yano, trading brute jujutsu bravado for discipline and humility. As Sanshirō matures, he proves judo’s spirit against old-guard challengers—including a deadly duel—while falling for his vanquished opponent’s daughter. Based on the novel by Tsuneo Tomita, son of Tomita Tsunejirō, the earliest disciple of judo.

A young army surgeon, Kyoji Fujisaki, accidentally contracts syphilis during a WWII field operation. Back at his father’s clinic, he treats himself in secret and breaks off his engagement rather than risk his fiancée’s future, even as he confronts the irresponsible patient who infected him—testing his ethics, pride, and capacity for sacrifice.

A few years after his breakthrough, Sanshiro resumes his path to judo mastery—testing his discipline against an American prizefighter and later facing vengeful karate brothers. As rival schools and public spectacle push him toward violence, he must reconcile strength with restraint and the true spirit of his art.

In the early 18th-century, Lord Takuminokami Asano, feuding with Lord Kira, tries to kill his opponent in the corridors of the Shogun's palace. The Shogun sentences Asano to seppuku and deprives the palace and lands from his clan, but does not punish Kira. Asano's vassals leave the land and his samurais become ronin and want to seek revenge against the Lord's dishonour. But their leader Kuranosuke Oishi seeks to restore the Asano clan with his brother Daigaku Asano. One year later, the Shogun refuses, and Oishi and 46 rōnin are out for revenge.

After her anti-fascist professor father is dismissed, Yukie navigates love, political repression, and wartime upheaval—ultimately forging her own path in pre- and post-WWII Japan.

Stage director Shimamura, who is bringing western theatre to Japan, falls in love with outspoken actress Sumako Matsui, and leaves his family to be with her, while trying to keep his Art Theatre solvent.

Iemon Tamiya is an impoverished masterless samurai who craves a better life, which he cannot have because of his marriage to Oiwa, who is completely devoted to her husband.

An errant salaryman's son gets lost until a man from the Tokyo tenements brings him to vendor Tane, who's reluctant to let the kid board.

Shuhei Horikawa, a poor schoolteacher, struggles to raise his son Ryohei by himself, despite neither money nor prospects.

An unemployed Japanese man and his two sons wander the industrial flatlands of Depression-era Tokyo, until he chances upon an old friend and befriends a woman and her daughter, who are in a similar predicament.

Young women at a precision optics factory in wartime Japan push to exceed production quotas, enduring illness, injury, and personal hardship to “serve the country.” Led by Tsuru Watanabe, they fight fatigue and setbacks to keep their line moving—even when duty collides with grief.

1941 Toho adaptation of Natsume's novel.

In late 19th-century Tokyo, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adopted son of a legendary actor, himself an actor specializing in female roles, discovers that the praise he receives is only due to his status as his father's heir. Devastated, he turns to Otoku, a servant of his family, for comfort, and they fall in love. Kikunosuke becomes determined to leave home and develop as an actor on his own merits, and Otoku faithfully joins him.

A story of two sisters, the older being more traditional, the younger a "moga" ("modern girl"). Their widowed father runs the family sake shop, but is running into financial trouble, causing him to tamper with his stock; Meanwhile, his long-time mistress yearns for something more serious. Amidst this, the older sister is introduced to a well-off suitor: A university boy, much more intrigued by the less traditional little sister. A doddering grandfather, an officious uncle and busybody neighbors also don't make the lives of the hardworking members of the family any easier.

Japanese Warmovie

The debut film of Shin Toho Productions

A silk factory worker is persuaded to support her son's education up to a college level despite their poverty. Many years later, she travels to Tokyo to visit her son.

Two broke sweethearts wander war-scarred Tokyo on a single Sunday, stretching 35 yen as they chase housing, small pleasures, and a little hope.

Ine Onoda, the eldest daughter of a poor family of farmers, raises a colt from birth and comes to love the horse dearly. When the horse is grown, the government orders it auctioned and sold to the army. Ine struggles to prevent the sale.

Shizuko Kasagi and Hideko Takamine star as young women who try to raise money for a needy old friend by becoming wandering singers who work for tips in Tokyo's Ginza nightlife district.

Ayako becomes the mistress of her boss in order to pay her father's debt and prevent him from going to prison for embezzlement.

In postwar Japan, two sisters—a film studio script girl and a revue dancer—become swept up in the growing labor movement when workers around them strike for better conditions. As their conservative father opposes their activism, his own dismissal forces him to confront the realities of class struggle and join their fight for a fairer future. Now considered a lost film, Those Who Make Tomorrow was produced by Toho to promote unionization during Japan’s Allied Occupation.

After the death of her husband, an elderly woman and her youngest, unmarried daughter are forced to sell their house to cover his debts and decide to move in with one of the former's children, each of whom is scarcely happy to accommodate.

A colourful study of theatrical life. Two acting troupes vie for the Kyoto market during the Genroku Era. Tojuro, an extremely popular actor, feels the limits to his acting when he sees his rival troupe put on a new type of play featuring its star, Nakamura. He has the famous Chikamatsu write a new play but cannot get used to the character he is to play in it.

Tokiko is a mother patiently waiting for her husband's return from the war when her 4-year old son becomes ill. She takes him to the doctor for treatment but has no way of paying. She resorts to prostitution. One month later her husband returns from WWII to find his desperate wife, who tells him the truth. Together they must deal with the consequences.

In early post-war Osaka, three women—war widow Fusako, her Korean expat sister Natsuko, and Kumiko, Fusako's sister-in-law—descend into prostitution, all for their individual reasons.

In the Meiji period, a schoolteacher tries to hide his lower-class upbringing as he supports a visiting liberal intellectual.

A professor, Komiya, and his bossy wife, Tokiko, are to look after Setsuko, their high-spirited niece from Osaka. Despite being a minor, Setsuko is a liberated woman who does whatever she wants, including smoking. She even convinces Koyima to take her to a geisha house. When she gets rather tipsy, the professor calls Okada, one of his students, to take her home. The wife becomes suspicious of Setsuko when she sees Okada bringing her home.

A sixteen-year-old who had been living on her own since her mother died, frequently gets in trouble with the police. She gets sent to an "institute" for young girls in the countryside. There the residents grow their own food, cook and clean for themselves, and are taught language, music, and sewing. While there the young girl slowly begins to form friendships and come out of her shell.

Kayo and Kuniko graduated from girls' school together and are as close as sisters. Kuniko's fiancé, Minakami, feels something that attracts him deeply towards Kayo. On the other hand, Kayo prays for the happiness of her best friend and marries a very ordinary man. However, at one point, this mediocre but increasingly ferocious husband died in an accident ... A triangular love story develops depicting a woman's heart that sways between love and morals.

Pre-war Asakusa was a riotous district of cabarets, dance-halls and brothels - a striking backdrop for Shimazu's story of innocence and experience. Pretty, young Reiko is the new dancer in an infamous theatre troupe, and her fellow performers try to protect her virtue in a land of vice. Meanwhile, an ageing actor wants to be a hero off stage as well as on, and the troupe matriarch Marie has to keep them all together.

When a young man inherits his father's lucrative business, he cheats the system to set up three of his college friends with jobs.

Three bank robbers, Eijima, Nojiri, and Takasugi, flee the police and escape into the mountains. At an inn high in the Japanese Alps, Eijima and Nojiri encounter a young woman and her father, as well as Honda, a mountaineer. The inn folk do not realize their guests are wanted criminals and the visitors are treated with great kindness. Honda volunteers to lead them over the mountains, but Eijima's paranoia endangers all of them as they make the perilous trip.

A man takes a job at an asylum with hopes of freeing his imprisoned wife.

This 1932 adaptation is the earliest sound version of the ever-popular and much-filmed Chushingura story of the loyal 47 retainers who avenged their feudal lord after he was obliged to commit hara-kiri due to the machinations of a villainous courtier. As the first sound version of the classic narrative, the film was something of an event, and employed a stellar cast, who give a roster of memorable performances. Director Teinosuke Kinugasa was primarily a specialist in jidai-geki (period films), such as the internationally celebrated Gate of Hell (Jigokumon, 1953), and although he is now most famous as the maker of the avant-garde silent films A Page of Madness (Kurutta ichipeji, 1926) and Crossroads (Jujiro, 1928), Chushingura is in fact more typical of his output than those experimental works. The film ranked third in that year’s Kinema Junpo critics’ poll, and Joseph Anderson and Donald Richie noted that 'not only the sound but the quick cutting was admired by many critics.

short film about Banchō Sarayashiki.

Two young brothers become the leaders of a gang of kids in their neighborhood.

Tadashi Imai 1946 movie

A geisha in the Gion district of Kyoto feels obliged to help her lover when he asks to stay with her after going bankrupt and leaving his wife. However, her younger sister opposes this, thinking that they should both find wealthy patrons to support them.

The Way of Drama unfolds in the world of kabuki in Osaka, but also addresses the politics of popular culture and the rivalry between theatrical styles like those used by amateur actors to dramatise contemporary events.

In a Tokyo boarding house a group of students and recent graduates struggle to complete their studies and find jobs. Considered a lost film.

A bizarre murder at a hot springs resort threatens to disrupt an Edo detective's (Hasegawa) vacation. When his hot-blooded wife (Yamada) starts snooping around, however, he finds himself reluctantly drawn in to the case.

Slice of life film centered on a couple of years in the life of a rural high school girl.

An aging geisha, whose angry teenage son is ashamed of her profession, works alongside a young geisha, resentful of her family for forcing her into a life of ignominy.

Though plagued by ill health all his life, a young Japanese man is obligated to fulfill his family's longstanding military tradition.

A middle-aged father has just married off his third daughter, but still has his nine year old son to raise whom he resents as he was unwanted.

The eldest daughter of a noble family is in love with an aviator while being courted by a fellow aristocrat she thinks is a dullard. This part is told from the perspective of Akemi.

When the future of his construction company falls into danger, a controlling father pushes his children into unsatisfying marriages and careers in order to regain financial stability.

Life and love in corrupt postwar Tokyo, as a young couple struggles against both the law and the mob.

My Daughter's Only Wish tells the story of a poorly paid and clumsy office clerk, played with much comedic talent by Atsushi Watanabe. His biggest problem: His daughter Hideko is too clever and is expected by her teachers to enter the school for higher girls after graduating from primary school. But how is our poor clerk supposed to pay the school fees? How does poor Hideko feel about the situation? How can they cope with the envious colleagues who have less brighter daughters? And - an important question for Hideko's mother - what will the neighbours think? What's the point about getting a good education for girls anyway?

In 1887, two businessmen, Echigo-ya and Kitahara, compete for railroad construction authorization from the government. The minister states that a local noble must not object, and his missing younger brother is the only one who could sway him. Meanwhile, Omitsu, a hotel employee tired of Echigo-ya’s wife’s arrogance, teams up with Kitahara to stage a scheme where a vagrant young man pretends to be the noble’s lost brother, aiming to trick and embarrass the wealthy woman.

After Japan's defeat in the war, the Anjo family lose their peerage and wealth. Since their mansion is due to pass into the hands of a creditor, the family holds one last ball before leaving.

The story of an airport and its air traffic control crew in a remote and northern Japanese town. Three of the air traffic controllers are female with one of them working with her dead fiancé's sister. The engaged man had gone to war and never returned.

Minowada, a young teacher at a National People's School, has his own theory of education and the daughter of his linguistics teacher becomes drawn to him. Kayo, a strong-willed doctor, is also attracted to him. A mediator tries to arrange a marriage but just at that point Minowada receives military call-up papers.