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.
Elite college graduates commit perfect financial crimes though loopholes in the law during the 1950s.
A 28-year-old single woman is pressured to marry.
An American veteran returns to Tokyo to try to pick up the threads of his pre-World War II life there, but finds himself squeezed between criminals and the authorities.
The lives of five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation is debating the passage of an anti-prostitution law.
When a theater troupe's master visits his old flame, he unintentionally sets off a chain of unexpected events with devastating consequences.
Two broke sweethearts wander war-scarred Tokyo on a single Sunday, stretching 35 yen as they chase housing, small pleasures, and a little hope.
Set in post-war Japan, The Lady of Musashino tells the story of Michiko, a disillusioned young woman trapped in a loveless marriage. She 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.
Michiyo lives in the small place Osaka and is not happy with her marriage; all she does is cook and clean for her husband.
In the black market, a war orphan is confronted with the struggles of people living in the immediate aftermath of WWII.
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.
The world is a perplexing, peaceful mystery to Amélie until a miraculous encounter with chocolate ignites her wild sense of curiosity. As she develops a deep attachment to her family's housekeeper, Nishio-san, Amélie discovers the wonders of nature as well as the emotional truths hidden beneath the surface of her family's idyllic life as foreigners in post-war Japan.
In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.
Set in post-war Okinawa, Japan, Gusuku had 3 close childhood friends: On, Yamako and On's younger brother Rei. On was the oldest of the group and he was like a leader to everybody else. He was also a heroic figure to them. On led his friends into the U.S. military base and they stole supplies to give away to the local residents. Everybody in the neighborhood praised On. One night, they entered the U.S. military based to steal supplies. During their raid, On was chased by U.S. soldiers and went missing. Years later, Gusuku now works as a police officer. Yamako is an elementary school teacher. Rei is a member of the yakuza. These three people are still unable to get over the disappearance of On. They chase after the truth behind On's disappearance and uncover a shocking answer.
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.
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.
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.
A gentle, war-shattered ex-soldier, Kinji Kameda, arrives in wintry Hokkaidō and is pulled into a volatile tangle of love and pity between the disgraced Taeko Nasu, the proud Ayako, and his possessive friend Akama. Kameda’s saintly compassion exposes everyone’s wounds, steering the quartet toward jealousy, violence, and inexorable tragedy. Adapted from Dostoevsky’s novel.
A young Tokyo salary man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital affair.
A man who survived the war carries the will of his comrades in arms, walking across the country visiting the bereaved families.