Toshiko Kobayashi

A budding gangster enthralls a freeloading young woman, soon taking advantage of her knack for hitch-hiking to rob middle-class, middle-aged men.

A rural village elder plans an event on the return of a farmer's daughter from the city, unaware that she has become a Westernized burlesque artist.

When a family has to relocate due to the war, they are ostracized by their new community.

A group of rank-and-file Japanese soldiers are jailed for crimes against humanity, themselves victims of a nation refusing to bear its burdens as a whole.

Masaki Kobayashi directs this romantic drama concerning a family of florists.

A young widow, made world weary by her abusive, neglectful husband, finds herself in a minor scandal when she's seen with her intense, no-nonsense childhood sweetheart.

The plans of a trio of burglars are continually thwarted by the arrival of visitors to the house they plan to rob.

Two men at an ironworks encounter roadblocks: the first does not have the grades to get a job, while the other finds himself falling for a co-worker.

A section chief at the Bureau of Construction is in a shady relationship with a construction company. Then a new, young and honest subordinate is assigned to work under the section chief. Once he learns about the shady relationship, however, the new subordinate skillfully conceals the corruption and joins the corrupt, shady relationship.

Strip dancer Carmen falls in love with Hajime, who is engaged to the daughter of a right-wing politician.

A botanist woos the secretary of an industrialist whose company threatens the local water supply.

After handing in a report on the treatment of Chinese colonial labor, Kaji is offered the post of labor chief at a large mining operation in Manchuria, which also grants him exemption from military service. He accepts, and moves to Manchuria with his newly-wed wife Michiko, but when he tries to put his ideas of more humane treatment into practice, he finds himself at odds with scheming officials, cruel foremen, and the military police.

This drama of middle-class life in postwar Japan tells the story lower-middle-class workers in the city of Kawasaki, and their troubles and travails.

Machiko Ujiie and Haruki Atomiya first meet and fall in love on Ginza’s Sukiyabashi Bridge during the Great Tokyo Air Raid in March 1945. Machiko and Haruki pledge to meet again at the bridge in six months but part without asking each other’s names.

Machiko and Haruki’s drama continues. Two meet again in Hokkaido only to be separated again.

Machiko and Haruki’s drama continues. Machiko is not allowed to see Haruki. They finally meet again, but Haruki departs to Europe.

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.

The wife of an elite government official left her husband, and a young journalist is sent to investigate the case. But his boss has a hidden agenda.

A father curries favor with his bosses to further his career, but his wife has lost faith in him. She returns to her family home while they rent out their house during the summer to pay off their mortgage, and there she meets a lonely old man...

Wakae is a 15 year old girl who lived under the same roof with her alcoholic father and stepmom. Her mother had died years ago. She spends her nights at a rundown bar, sharing drinks and cigarettes with the lowlife drunks. She has nowhere to turn and no one to talk to, until she is reunited with her childhood friend, Saburo, who brings warmth to her heart.

A detective tries to outwit a jewel thief who has kidnapped the daughter of a jeweler to get to an exquisite diamond.

A fishing union depends on two brothers to make up the losses caused by the dishonest captains they replaced.

The plight of U.S. Army deserters from Vietnam on the run in Japan, centering on the culture clash between the troubled Americans and the Japanese who try to help him.

In a time of continuous civil wars ravaging the fields of feudal Japan, the eldest son of a very poor peasant family, living alongside the bridge over the Fuefuki river, decides to serve a warlord to escape his miserable condition, being soon followed by his younger brothers. Although not all the men of the family take this tragic path of death, women of the family will be doomed to endure the pain of loss during the next five generations.

Kemono no yado

Junai Monogatari AKA Story of Pure Love is about two poor youths, Mitsuko and Kando, rebelling against society in various ways, who are desperately trying to be together despite tortuous circumstances. The film depicts their lives as thieves, menial laborers who can get little pay, society outcasts, and of course, lovers. Junai Monogatari depicts, mostly, their struggles within the Japanese reformatory system and Mitsuko's worsening sickness.

In 1928, schoolteacher Hisako Oishi takes a post on the island of Shodoshima teaching a group of twelve first grade students. In the following years, they face poverty, the rise of nationalism, and finally war.

A Woman's Life

Follows six male friends from elementary school whose career paths diverge—newspaper reporter, engineer, boxer, sushi restaurant owner—but whose romantic lives intersect. (MoMA)

Kaze no uchi so to