Fearless Edo-period police inspector Hanzo Itami, nicknamed The Razor, has developed his own unique way of extracting information for his inquiries. His first adventure sees him investigating his superior officer’s…

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,…

In Osaka’s slum, youths without futures engage in pilfering, assault and robbery, prostitution, and the buying and selling of identity cards and of blood. Alliances constantly shift. Tatsu and Takeshi,…

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

Setsuko is unhappily married to Mimura, an engineer with no job and a bad drinking habit. She had always been in love with Hiroshi but both of them failed to…

When Wabisuke’s father-in-law unexpectedly dies, the family goes through a series of random events and occurrences as the funeral unfolds over three days in their home.

Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Kurosawa’s tightly paced, beautifully composed “Sanjuro.” In this companion piece and sequel to “Yojimbo,” jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic…

Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot take the truth of being abandoned as a child.

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…

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…

A former comic is on the run from the mob.

Japanese peasants Matashichi and Tahei try and fail to make a profit from a tribal war. They find a man and woman whom they believe are simple tribe members hiding…

In this loose adaptation of “Hamlet,” illegitimate son Kôichi Nishi climbs to a high position within a Japanese corporation and marries the crippled daughter of company vice president Iwabuchi. At…

Shiba, a wandering ronin, encounters a band of peasants who have kidnapped the daughter of their dictatorial magistrate, in hopes of coercing from him a reduction in taxes. Shiba takes…

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…

Kimiko, a Tokyo white-collar working girl, lives with her serious, intellectual, haiku-writing mother. Kimiko seeks to marry her boyfriend but needs her absent father to act as the go-between and…