Shigeo Katō

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 possibility of reconciliation across generations.

When a space probe crash-lands on a far-flung Pacific atoll, the craft's alien stowaways decide to take over their new world one creature at a time. Soon, the parasitic life forms latch onto three indigenous critters -- a squid, a crab and a snapping turtle -- and transform them into colossal mutant monsters.

Originally released in Japan as "The Return of Godzilla" in 1984, this is the heavily re-edited, re-titled "Godzilla 1985". Adding in new footage of Raymond Burr, this 16th Godzilla film ignores all previous sequels and serves as a direct follow-up to the 1956 "Godzilla King of the Monsters", which also featured scenes with Burr edited into 1954's "Godzilla". This film restores the darker tone of the original, as we witness the nuclear destruction of giant lizard terrorizing Japan.

Tai Kato’s early 20th century set yakuza epic about an ordinary merchant girl (Hiroko Maki) who crosses paths with an assassin (Tetsuya Watari). The encounter sends her to jail as a suspected accomplice. Years later she marries a yakuza boss, whose gang is affiliated with working class people.

Ushinosuke returns to Tokyo with new ambitions. Fourth and final part of the film adaptation of Bunroku Shishi’s novel, Oban.

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.

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.

A timid salaryman is the subject of this black comedy.

A young couple, composed of a cheating wife and a retired car racer, arrive at a drive-in. A man with a gun arrives at the restaurant and takes hostages. Chaos ensues.

A young girl suffers a terrifying nightmare of a vampire with blazing golden eyes. Eighteen years later, it is revealed to be a hellish prophecy when a strange package containing an empty coffin mysteriously turns up at a nearby lake.

A young man goes missing after visiting his girlfriend's isolated country home. His sister and her boyfriend trace him to the creepy mansion, but their search becomes perilous when they uncover a gruesome family history.

It is based on the story "The Lawyer" by attorney Hiroshi Masaki and his account of Japan's "Headless Murder Case" in which a police officer beat a suspect to death during the Pacific War.

A group of friends try to find success in corporate Japan.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, a brilliant tactician, is a loyal subject of the emperor, despite his grave misgivings about leading Japan's navy into war with the United States. He opposes the attack on Pearl Harbor, but, overruled, he leads his forces to the best of his ability.

The film deals with the recruitment of race car driver Jiro Miki (Masao Kusakari) and his dog, Caesar, to a group of people who use ESP, psychokinesis, and other special mental abilities to fight crime.

A lavish retelling of the true story of the final voyage and ultimate destruction and sinking of the battleship Yamato, Japan's greatest flagship during the Second World War.

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

Shipwreck survivors found on the presumably uninhabited Infant Island leads to a scientific expedition that discovers a surviving native population along with the Shobijin, tiny twin fairy priestesses of the island's mythical deity called Mothra. After the fairies are kidnapped by an exploitative businessman named Clark Nelson, Mothra sets out to rescue them.

When a narcotics deal goes sour and a suspect disappears, leaving only his clothes, Tokyo police question his wife and stake out the nightclub where she works.

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’s farewell celebrates aging, friendship, and the sustaining ritual of teacher and pupils refusing to say goodbye.

In 1965, the space station JSS-3 is destroyed by a fleet of UFOs, which then begin a global siege on Earth, using rays to manipulate gravity and control the minds of men. In response, a global council meeting is held to determine the source of the attacks and prepare a rocket ship armada for a counter-attack, a true battle in outer space. . . The film is a sequel of sorts to Toho's THE MYSTERIANS in the reprise of the Etsuko Shiraishi character of that film as its heroine. It was edited to 74 minutes for its American release.

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 food.

In 1976, a drifting star named Gorath is discovered to be on a collision course with Earth. Although it is smaller than Earth, its enormous mass is enough to destroy the planet totally. A mission sent to observe Gorath is destroyed after the ship is drawn into the star, with a later mission barely escaping the same fate. However, Astronaut Tatsuma Kanai is left in a catatonic state due to his near death experience. Unable to destroy the invading star, Earth's scientists undertake a desperate plan to build giant rockets at the South Pole to move the planet out of Gorath's path before it is too late.

A submarine expedition to salvage the remains of Mechagodzilla is thwarted by a massive dinosaur named Titanosaurus. An Interpol investigation leads biologist Ichinose to uncover the work of Dr. Mafune and his mysterious daughter Katsura. Aligned with the Black Hole Aliens, Katsura's life becomes entwined with the resurrected machine.

After a fishing boat is attacked, the sole surviving crew member realizes it is none other than a resurrected Godzilla. However, efforts to bring the story to light are suppressed by the Japanese government amid growing political tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, who are both willing to bomb Japan to stop the monster.

Japanese counterpart to Romeo and Juliet

Struggling to elevate himself from his low caste in 17th century Japan, Miyamoto trains to become a mighty samurai warrior.

Charged with insubordination for punching a superior, Sergeant Kosugi is shipped to China in the last desperate days of the Second World War. His commander, Captain Sakuma, is vicious and dictatorial. Sakuma places Kosugi in charge of training for combat what once was the military band. Kosugi must somehow prepare his inept soldiers for the rigors of combat.

Older, wiser but still a wandering loner, the blind, peace-loving masseur Ichi seeks a peaceful life in a rural village. When he's caught in the middle of a power struggle between two rival Yakuza clans, his reputation as a deadly defender of the innocent is put to the ultimate test in a series of sword-slashing showdowns.

Youth suspense movie.

An Ishiro Honda film.

An Ishiro Honda film.

A detective goes out of his way to crack the case of a serial killer who specialises in murdering police officers.

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.

A mailman becomes obsessed with a pretty, young wife. He captures the woman, tortures her and keeps her in his basement dungeon where she becomes his private sex toy.

Towards the end of World War II, five men are tasked with freeing the son of a general from Chinese captivity.

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 uneasy bond with nature.

Tadashi Iki returns to Japan from a Soviet gulag 11 years after being captured during the invasion of Manchuria. He is offered a position in the expansive Kinki Corporation, but rival corporations are competing for a government contract to produce fighter planes.

Based on the novel of the same name by Seichô Matsumoto.

The story of an orphan girl, brought up in naive, rustic innocence by an elderly relative, who is suddenly exposed to the brutality, greed and deceptiveness of the outside world when her grandmother dies.

Suicide has long been used as a form of social protest in Japan. In this film, set in 1703, samurai culture is being transformed by the emergence of a new merchant class. Elements of the social contract are beginning to unravel, and some unscrupulous people took undue advantage of these changes before the social order was re-created. In this story, a rich merchant gives his clerk an I.O.U. instead of wages. When the impoverished clerk presents the paper to the merchant at the agreed upon time asking for payment, the man flies into a rage and pretends he never wrote it and claims the clerk is trying to defraud him. Then he sets his henchmen on the clerk to administer a beating.

Following the Second World War, the lives of various people in a poverty-stricken area of Tokyo are entertwined. Pachinko parlor girls, shoeshine boys, a maker of costume jewelry, and a streetcorner artist all struggle to make their livings and to find happiness in difficult surroundings.

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 Kozuka gang, probably at the hands of one of the Oka gang. During a gang gunfight, Maruyama is rescued by Detective Fujioka and the two become friends. But Maruyama insists on avenging his wife's murder, even if it means conflict with his new friend.

A Hiromichi Horikawa movie

Ex-conman Junpei plots revenge on a corrupt corporation by leading a team of swindlers posing as politicians. A slick crime comedy of cons and payback.

A college football star gets caught in a scandal involving a geisha teacher, endangering his team’s season and his family’s honor—until a last-minute comeback restores both.

A group of hustling peddlers swindle rural towns with fake goods, facing betrayals, close calls, and constant setbacks as they chase survival and dream of a better future.