A group of five rookie insurance salespersons, driven to desperation by the impossibility of their work in Japan's failing postwar economy, form a plan to rob a cash delivery truck in order to provide for their families.
During the war a university professor meets a girl and marries her. Very soon however, it is apparent that their needs are not matched. He would much rather be translating Shakespeare than attending to her, and she has a secret in her past - one that results in her sleeping with a great number of men.
A young salaryman and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he embarks on an extramarital affair.
Eddie Kenner is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson, a former GI who has formed a gang of fellow servicemen and Japanese locals.
An aging foundry patriarch, gripped by terror of nuclear annihilation, tries to uproot his family to Brazil. When they petition to have him declared incompetent, a family-court counselor witnesses his obsession slide into ruin—and asks whether ignoring the atomic threat is any saner.
Elite college graduates commit perfect financial crimes though loopholes in the law during the 1950s.
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.
Apprentice chef Saori Nakagawa suddenly travels to Tokyo in 1964 to meet Ryuichi Kikuchi, a cook. From Kikuchi who devotes himself to cooking, Saori learns what is really important. The love of two people over 56 years.
Just after WW2, a romance between an innkeeper and a man with tuberculosis unravels near a thermal spring.
In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.
Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.
Air Force Major Lloyd Gruver is reassigned to a Japanese air base and is confronted with US racial prejudice against the Japanese people. The issue is compounded because a number of the soldiers become romantically involved with Japanese women, in defiance of US military policy. Ordinarily, a by-the-book officer, Gruver must take a position when a buddy of his, an enlisted man, Joe Kelly, falls in love with a Japanese woman, Katsumi, and marries her. Gruver risks his position by serving as best man at the wedding ceremony.
Follows five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation debates the passage of an anti-prostitution law.
A theater troupe master's visit with his old flame unintentionally sets off a chain of unexpected events with devastating consequences.
In post-WWII Osaka, a middle-aged woman is forced to examine her dreary life and marriage when her husband's young and flirtatious cousin arrives for a brief stay to escape an arranged marriage.
The day to day life in an establishment for delinquent teenage girls.
In postwar Tokyo, Noriko lives with her extended family. Although she enjoys her career and her social life, her more traditional family worries about her single marital status at the advanced age of 28. 40-year-old business associate Takako proposes, Noriko's family press her into accepting, but when her widowed childhood friend Kenkichi returns to the neighborhood, she finds her heart leading in another direction.
Fleeing a distressing family situation, Eiko, a very young girl, becomes an apprentice to Miyoharu, a veteran geisha. Both, determined to preserve their professional integrity, must face the selfishness and ambition of several petty people.
In post-war Japan, Michiko, a disillusioned young woman trapped in a loveless marriage, confides in her younger cousin, Tsutomo, and the two become close, but decide not to consummate their affair. He instead becomes involved with the flirtatious Tomiko, who is also conducting an affair with Michiko's husband. When Michiko finds that her husband has abandoned her, she decides to take her fate into her own hands.
Two broke sweethearts wander war-scarred Tokyo on a single Sunday, stretching 35 yen as they chase housing, small pleasures, and a little hope.