Kimiyo Ōtsuka

A spirited young teacher challenges the conservative school employing her with liberal thinking and teaching methods.

A penniless orphan loses the woman he loves, when her family arranges a marriage to a wealthy playboy. He believes she was blinded by greed, and becomes a miser.

One week into newlywed Teiko Uhara's marriage, her husband, Kenichi, leaves on a short business trip and never returns. Teiko travels across Japan to search for him, and along the way discovers some surprising facts about her husband's past. With only a pair of old photographs among his belongings to go off of, Teiko tries to figure out what has happened to him.

A coming-of-age story portrayed as the loss of all youthful illusions. Sixteen-year-old Yoichi dreams of becoming a sailor. His parents are fishmongers, and Yoichi lives together with them and his four siblings in cramped living conditions. His beloved younger sister is given to a wealthy, childless uncle; his best friend moves away; the girl he fell in love with from afar is with someone else: little by little, Yoichi loses all the people that are important to him.

Tora-San, an itinerant peddler who is thrown out of his father's house twenty years before but reconnects with his aunt, uncle and sister Sakura. Tora wreaks some havoc in their lives, like getting drunk and silly at a marriage meeting and ruining Sakura's chance to marry someone, as well as just being a real pain to those around him. There is a sentimental side to him also, and the best way to describe him is that he grows on you.

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.

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.

After winning big at the races, Torajiro Kuruma wants to take his aunt and uncle on a trip to Hawaii to partly pay the great filial debt he feels he owes them, but the plan hits a snag. Also, a pretty kindergarten teacher rents a room at Toraya.

After an encounter with a dying yakuza's son and at his sister Sakura's urging, Torajiro attempts to change his vagrant lifestyle and become an honest worker with a steady job.

Three men vying for the same job end up chasing the same girl in this comedy-drama from noted Japanese director Yasujiro Shimazu.

A musical film made for the inauguration of Shochiku's Ofuna Studio, with an all-star cast of the era.

Torajiro becomes homesick during his travels after watching a television report about his hometown and meeting a young woman that reminds him of his sister Sakura. Meanwhile, a new tenant moves into Toraya restaurant.

A young composer falls in love with the beautiful daughter of a wealthy company president and flies to Paris when he learns she is studying music there. But, when he finally wins her after many difficulties, he somehow feels empty, because his spirit has always been aroused against barriers before him.

Jie (Michiko Kuwano) attended a women's university with the financial support of her geisha sister Oha (Hiroko Kawasaki) and became a lawyer. The aim. Michiko (Kuniko Miyake), one of the seven best friends from the same women's college, is getting married. The man she's marrying is her sister's lover.

Oichi the Blind helps a woman escape the clutches of a high government official to go off with the man she loves. The official puts a reward on her head of fifty gold pieces and soon a menagerie of bounty hunters are after her skin. Three of them band together to accomplish this, one an expert swordsman, another a huge judo master and the third is deadly with a chain. To escape, she heads for the fishing town of Itso but soon comes face to face with Sankuro, the swordsman...

Flame and the Code

1939 Japanese movie

Domestic comedy involving a strong wife and a "henpecked" husband taking place in a family-run judo school.

Surging Waves

Utsukushiki Rinjin

1962 Japanese movie

A reformatory in the remote countryside houses 200 delinquents and problem children. The teachers and caretakers face much trouble. The school is often short on water, and one day, the well runs dry.

A period piece about the love of a wealthy blind woman, a teacher of koto and shamisen, and her devoted manservant. Based on a novella by Tanizaki Junichiro.